Old Dark Houses are a horror cinema staple, bequeathed to the genre by Gothic literature, penny dreadfuls and all manner of other earlier terrors in print. Perhaps surprisingly, then, this particular Old Dark House (1932) is based on a J. B. Priestley novel, Benighted, written just five years previously. Priestley is better known for social […]
Re:Born marks the grand return of action star Tak Sakaguchi, in what is obviously a bit of a passion project. More a showcase of raw talent than a particularly coherent film, Re:Born is nevertheless hugely enjoyable if you like watching a whole load of remarkable fight choreography. The narrative is familiar: former special operative Toshiro […]
Whilst I have something of a handle on Japanese cinema of the 70s and 80s – well, in so far as the films have made the great leap to Western screens – I know comparatively little about Chinese cinema of the same period, and in that I have to include Hong Kong/Taiwan. I’ve seen a […]
The sadly missed stop-motion animation pioneer Ray Harryhausen is one of the most unique figures in film history. The attachment of his name alone tells you basically all you need to know about the film, despite the wide variety of actors and directors he collaborated with over his decades-spanning career. While special effects may have […]
A teenage girl, angry at her father for wanting to remarry, invites her schoolfriends to spend the summer break with her at her maternal aunt’s house in the countryside. Once there, the girls realise not all is right with the house, and they need all their wits about them to escape the terrible place. A […]
There don’t seem to be a huge number of horror films produced in Vietnam, but one of the most memorable of recent years was Tran Ham’s 2014 possession film Hollow. The similarly supernatural The Housemaid now arrives in the UK on Blu-ray after festival screenings last year, and this is a classy, if flawed, haunted […]
Sometimes a film self-consciously goes for the ‘epic’ tag, and it’s clear from the very outset that this is the case with Park Hoon-jung’s 2015 movie The Tiger. With its sweeping Korean vistas, Sturm und Drang musical score and lone figure set against an unforgiving world it clearly fits the bill, and actually that’s just […]
For a filmmaker largely forgotten by the wider audience, the late Bob Clark’s directorial career had a surprising impact. With 1981’s Porky’s, he blew the doors wide open on the teen sex comedy boom; and I understand 1983’s A Christmas Story is something of a perennial festive favourite in the US (I myself have never […]
Any horror fan of a certain age can tell you that 1996 was a big year for Neve Campbell. Off the back of that year’s The Craft and (more pointedly) Scream, the then-23 year old Canadian actress was elevated from “one of the girls off Party of Five” to a genre movie star, a status […]
Hammer is best-known for its Kensington Gore and its literary monsters, usually shot against a 60s-coloured 19th Century which is a distinctive aesthetic all of its own; the studio deviated from this formula quite considerably at times, though, in a range of films which seem to have divided critics ever since. Fear in the Night […]
I have a real love/hate thing going with Japanese director Sion Sono. On one hand, his so-called ‘hate’ trilogy contains, for me, some of the most genius, subversive films I have ever been immersed in; they’re absolutely jaw-dropping, to the point that I don’t know if I can feasibly revisit Guilty of Romance for fear […]