Making Vampires Grim Again: Life, Death & The Vourdalak (2023)

When we think about vampires, our expectations have inevitably been shaped by popular literature, which has in turn – for the last century – also found expression in cinema. In the nineteenth century, popular reading habits created a set of cultural expectations about vampires. The birth of horror fiction, which stemmed in turn from the […]

Examining La Cabina (1972)

Made in 1972 for Spanish TV, Antonio Mercero’s short film La Cabina (The Phone Booth) didn’t appear on British television for around a decade after that, but it was a case of once seen, never forgotten for those people who first saw it in the early Eighties, appearing as part of a suite of programmes […]

Alien: Romulus – an Ecocritical Study

Ecocriticism looks at the relationships between humankind and nature; it reinterprets our place in the natural order of things, looking at how we live, where we live and how our decisions as a species impact upon the world around us. As such, science fiction and dystopia offers a rich source of ecocritical ideas: this seems […]

Coming soon: Fantasia 2024!

For the past few years, Warped Perspective has been fortunate enough to cover the Fantasia International Film Festival remotely and, every year, it’s a high point in the film lover’s calendar. This year looks to be no different. Whilst the availability for press coverage varies, Warped Perspective has high hopes that we may get a […]

Interview: Ian Mantgani, director of Nosepicker

Warped Perspective has long been promoting short films, and thanks to the ALTER channel on YouTube, it finally seems that there’s a decent outlet for them which extends beyond the enthusiastic, but limited remit of the festival scene. And so, we recently reviewed a body horror/cautionary tale called Nosepicker: if you haven’t already, then you […]

Interview: Alberto Corredor, director of Baghead

Following up from my recent review of Baghead (2023) – a broadly successful and often intriguing supernatural horror tale – Warped Perspective has been fortunate enough to have a chat with its director, Alberto Corredor, about his experiences working on this film, his first feature. Keri asked the questions: many thanks to Alberto, his team […]

Sublime Disorder – Liminal Spaces in the Cinema of Jean Rollin

By guest contributor Matt Rogerson The phenomenon of liminal spaces is one that traditionally exists in both Architecture and Psychology. With its beginnings in the term ‘liminality’, conceived by Arnold Van Gennep in his book Rites de Passage (1909) and determined to mean a passageway, be it from one physical location, situation, status or time […]

Decoding Late Night with the Devil (2023)

Late Night with the Devil is an adroit piece of work, a tribute to a time and a place but also an enjoyable and imaginative trip into fantasy, breathing new life into two tired formats – the mockumentary and the found footage phenomenon – by making them entirely engaging and, at least in terms of […]

“The Flame Still Flickers in the Fen”: Penda’s Fen at 50

A wounded hand disappears into nothingness as a modern, chain link fence divides us, at least initially, from an idyllic English churchyard; if Penda’s Fen (1973) can be seen as fairly recusant in its treatment of themes and narrative structure, then you could equally argue that it spells out its key themes, or at least […]

Nightmare (1981)

You’ve gotta love a film that straight away states its intent (and understand a film which needs to sell its merits pretty damn quickly) and Nightmare (1981) does both of these things. We’re off with a dream of a dismembered body, a shrieking nightmare, a man in a straightjacket – and the immediate need to […]

Interview: Joanna Tsanis, director of short film Smile (2021)

Continuing with Warped Perspective’s interviews with the directors behind ARROW Player’s recent Sharp Shorts, we asked director Joanna Tsanis about her own short film – a very brief, super-focused study of depression, grief and fear. Oh, and it’s a monster film, too. Here’s our conversation about Smile (2021). Warped Perspective: This is a very brief […]