A Terrifying Tale of Sluts and Bolts! Frankenhooker (1990)

You know a film still has something, however many years pass, when you consider what would happen to it if it was pitched today. So at a guess, and alongside most of the best horror and exploitation films ever made, a film which involves exploding drug addicts and reanimated hookers via bad science would be […]

The Basket Case sequels…

If you freeze-frame in the opening reels of Basket Case 2, a curious thing happens. You can almost – almost – sense the utter surprise on Frank Henenlotter’s part that he’s making a sequel to his surprise grindhouse hit at all. At the end of Basket Case, see, it seems that both Duane and Belial […]

Boy Meets Girl? Frank Henenlotter’s Bad Biology (2008)

By anyone’s standards, sixteen years is a hell of a hiatus for a filmmaker to take between films. Yeah, from time to time this happens (Herschell Gordon Lewis went a staggering thirty years between The Gore Gore Girls and his next film) but overall, it’s still unusual. After all, if you’d taken that long a […]

“When he gets hungry, someone gets killed”: a loving tribute to Brain Damage (1988)

If you didn’t already know from your experience of watching Basket Case that bad things are almost certainly around the corner, then you could be forgiven for thinking that the beginning of Brain Damage (1988) features a perfectly respectable elderly couple, in a well-decorated New York apartment, doing something perfectly reasonable. Sure they’re feeding…something, but […]

“I’m a strange little person”: it’s our Henenlotter Special!

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 […]

Line-up Announced For Arrow Video FrightFest 2018

We’re no longer the 100% horror site we used to be back when we still went by Brutal As Hell (sigh, remember those days? Anyone…?) However, the genre is still very close to our blackened hearts, and as such we’re as excited as any bloodthirsty Brit for the upcoming horror festival season. While the bulk […]

Comics Retrospective: Sabrina The Teenage Witch

Do you remember that brief time in the nineties when Melissa Joan Hart was the Queen of teen? With her fashion forward outfits and sharp take on teen/tween issues, she became an unofficial icon of young girls in ugly overalls everywhere, taking her unique brand of YOU-nique across the after-school TV plateau spanning from Clarissa […]

“Most contemporary films leave me cold”: Interview with director Alex Bakshaev

A few years ago, the site (in its old incarnation) was approached with an indie film which looked decidedly different to most films we receive; this turned out to be abundantly and delightfully the case. Whilst we do get a fair range of styles and genres, The Devil of Kreuzberg was a revelation: it’s rather unusual […]

“Men sometimes have strange motives”: Witchfinder General at 50

Times of great uncertainty and bloodshed have always seemed to bolster paranoia and irrational thought. Change offers to dispose of the unconscionable practices of the past, but even as old beliefs and practices are on the verge of being swept away, people still to seek them out, retreating into watchful suggestibility any time the pace […]

So long then, Ash Williams…

Big props to fans for the effort, but I’m retired as Ash. #timetofrysomeotherfish https://t.co/Di1aeBV0dl — Bruce Campbell (@GroovyBruce) April 23, 2018 “Big props to fans for the effort, but I’m retired as Ash.” [Bruce Campbell on Twitter, 23th April 2018]. This message on the social networking site came in the wake of a wave of […]

Agency and Responsibility in Lady Macbeth (2016)

Please note: this feature contains a full description of events in Lady Macbeth and as such contains spoilers.  Marriage in the nineteenth century – particularly between the lower middle classes, perhaps, who had enough to lose but little enough to boast – must have been for many women a miserable existence. Firstly, women often had […]