Despite its Belgian production, Calvaire (2004 – also known as The Ordeal), became an integral film within the cinematic phenomena of New French Extremity that reared its grim and nasty head around the birth of the new millennium. The movement that championed directors such as Gaspar Noé, Pascal Laugier, Xavier […]
Reviews
Blood and Black Lace (1964) Style Over Substance in Vignettes of Violence (Review)
Newly restored from its original negative and presented in its original uncut form, Mario Bava’s classic 1964 giallo Blood and Black Lace has recently been released by the good people at Arrow Films. Starring Cameron Mitchell and Eva Bartok, this stylish slasher concerns a series of murders centring around Rome’s […]
Time Addicts (2023) The Foul-Mouthed Sleeper Comedy of 2023? (Review)
Time Addicts is one of the most singular concoctions that I’ve seen in some time. It tells a tale of time travelling, drug addiction, and eventually, intergenerational neglect and trauma, and all within the guise of an australian stoner comedy in possession of the godly gift of creative (bad) language. […]
The Guard from Underground (1992): Kiyoshi’s Kurosawa’s Brutal Nineties Slasher (Review)
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa has explored a variety of genres in a career spanning over forty years, and this release of his fourth feature, The Guard from Underground, demonstrates that his confidence in genre-hopping came early on. The film begins as a work-based drama, but gradually shifts into slasher horror as […]
The Wicker Man (1973): Folk horror’s towering icon catches ablaze in new 4K restoration (Review)
It towers over the horizon, casting shadow over everything below. It inspires dread, reverence and devotion, cutting an impressive figure of iconic proportions. It catches alight quickly and blazes with a terrible truth, and it becomes impossible to look away from its purifying, eye-opening vision. And we’re not just talking […]
The Psycho Collection (1983-1990) Rehabilitating the Most Unlikely of Horror Franchises (Review)
On June 16th 1960 New York cinemagoers saw Janet Leigh step into a shower, and the world was forever changed. Even 63 years later, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic suspense stunner Psycho (1960), is widely regarded to be one of the greatest films of all time – a statement which this reviewer […]
The Angry Black Girl And Her Monster (2023) A Real Frankenstein for the 21st Century (Review)
Fans of Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus have been clambering for a cinematic adaptation that isn’t another Victorian era verbatim remake. Bringing the OG gothic science-fiction horror firmly into the 21st century, interwoven with modern anxieties over race relations is The Angry Black Girl And Her Monster. […]
She Shoots Straight (1990) There’s more to Joyce Godenzi than being Mrs. Sammo (Review)
She Shoots Straight and she kicks ass, but there is a lot more to Joyce Godenzi than being Mrs Sammo Hung. Hollywood could have learned a lesson or two from Hong Kong cinema in the late 80s and early 90s, and whilst it would slowly catch on towards the end […]
Final Summer (2023): A Summer Camp Slasher Without A Deep Cut (Review)
Time is a great equaliser, and if you rewind to the mid-to-late 1980s then movies like Final Summer would’ve been ten-a-penny. It’s fair to say that this could result in fatigue, but there was an audience for movies like John Isberg’s feature directorial debut (he’s also done plenty of work […]
Interrogation (1982): merciless, Kafkaesque, a two-hour pressure cooker (Blu-Ray Review)
There aren’t many home media releases where a highlight of the additional features is the transcript of a government meeting. But then, there aren’t many films with a history like Ryszard Bugajski’s Interrogation, released on Blu-Ray by Second Run. Second Run have previously released this film on DVD, but that […]