For a brief, shimmering moment, it almost looked as if the oft-maligned SyFy might finally have cast aside its long-held status as the home of subpar genre material, and had finally developed into a platform for genuinely well-made and entertaining films from creators who were really putting forth the requisite effort. The moment I’m talking […]
As I remarked the last time we got a Blu-ray edition of Re-Animator (it wouldn’t surprise me if there have been more since), there are times when the task of reviewing a ‘new release’ of an old genre favourite feels arbitrary in the extreme. For anyone who knows their movies, there are some titles that […]
A few years ago, at the Dead by Dawn horror festival in Edinburgh, I was invited to take part in a ‘play dead’ competition with the rest of the auditorium. Quite unusual as a pastime, you might think, even for a horror fest. Well, this was all off the back of a competition being held […]
We might say that the lasting legacy of all the great horror movies can be measured by the number of imitators they spawn. However, while the likes of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween and The Blair Witch Project presented a format that opportunistic filmmakers could easily duplicate on a limited budget, one influential horror […]
A fairly solid point about Rawhead Rex is made in the accompanying press release for Arrow’s new Blu-ray edition. It’s long been said that Clive Barker, who wrote the screenplay from his own short story for director George Pavlou, was so appalled with the resulting film – not to mention their earlier collaboration, Underworld (AKA […]
The Company of Wolves (1984) really is a force of nature – a vivid array of stories-within-stories which capture the insurrectionist tendencies of Angela Carter’s book, The Bloody Chamber, a collection of familiar fairy stories reworked into unfamiliar forms. The film brings several of Carter’s tales to the screen, albeit via a new, modern framing […]
By Keri O’Shea Since the widespread colourisation of film replaced black and white as the go-to format for popular cinema, horror movies have frequently led the charge when it comes to the most creative use of colour palletes, special FX and lighting. It’s something of a myth, a myth which persists, that horror always takes […]
Review by Keri O’Shea. If it’s true that ‘the Devil has all the best tunes’, then what does that tell us about unholy forces on our cinema screens? Well, it appears that Satan not only sells, but has found himself a comfortable niche in horror and exploitation movies. The results of this can be great; […]
The Funhouse (1981) Distributor: Arrow Video Blu-Ray release date (UK): 18th July 2011 Directed by: Tobe Hooper Starring: Elizabeth Berridge, Shawn Carson, Sylvia Miles Review by: Stephanie Scaife Tobe Hooper is an incredibly inconsistent filmmaker; when he is good he is very, very good (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Poltergeist) but when he is bad […]
Vamp (1986) Distributor: Arrow Video UK Release Date: 21st February 2011 Directed by: Richard Wenk Starring: Chris Makepeace, Robert Rusler, Dedee Pfeiffer, Gedde Watanabe, Grace Jones Review by: Ben Bussey “I’m in the mood for love, simply because they’re naked!” It all starts out like any other 80s college comedy. Keith (Makepeace) and AJ (Rusler) […]