As much as devotees of horror and science fiction will often quite reasonably complain about their favoured genres failing to get the respect they deserve, I’m not sure there’s any genre with quite so bad a name as the erotic thriller. The very utterance of the words invariably elicit titters, not just from childish types […]
I can’t speak for all horror movie reviewers when I say this, but personally I tend to take very little pleasure from seeing my initial preconceptions proved 100% correct. As soon as we first got word of The Sound, everything from the title to the premise to the blank, lifeless expressions on the faces of […]
To the best of my recollection, the first time I heard the name Lee Marvin was in Reservoir Dogs, when Mr Blonde suggested Mr White must be a fan of his. Personally, I’m afraid to say I never really have been. Not that I have anything against the actor, I’ve just never seen enough of […]
Ryûhei Kitamura has had a pretty interesting and varied career. After directing his first films more than 20 years ago, the Japanese filmmaker really broke through with 2000’s action horror crossover Versus. A few years and a few movies later (2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars among them), he headed stateside. Alas, despite the kinetic energy and […]
If you’ll pardon me starting off in didactic mode, there is a clear distinction between a film review and film analysis. A review, as I understand it (and I should bloody well hope I do, given I’ve written hundreds of the things over the past eight years or so), should give a reasonably succinct overview […]
As every horror fan under the sun (or silvery moon) will bore you to death explaining if you let them, the 1980s were the greatest decade for practical creature FX work in the movies; indeed, it was the era in which the term ‘special make-up effects’ really entered the vernacular. Small wonder, then, that the […]
Few modern directors have such a distinctive, visceral style as Adam Mason, and it’s fair to say that I’ve taken a keen interest in his career so far: over the years I’ve reviewed his feature films Blood River, Pig, Luster, Junkie, and Hangman, and also interviewed Adam (together with collaborator Simon Boyes). I’ve always felt excited and challenged […]
We sometimes like to think that overblown, overpriced high-concept blockbusters with tacked-on love stories, two-dimensional bad guys and awkwardly inserted comic relief are an entirely modern phenomenon. Not so much, as this 1959 take on Jules Verne’s classic science fiction adventure stands to demonstrate. Decades before the Pirates of the Caribbean set sail, the Transformers, […]
Few writers have had their work adapted for the screen half so much as Stephen King, nor with such variable results, but then this is exactly to be expected when the man himself’s work has varied so wildly over the years. When it comes to the huge tomes from his early days, such as The […]
Has any two-word alliterative descriptor inspired so much abject despair in the past two decades as ‘found footage?’ (Don’t answer that, I’m sure there are plenty worse if I put my mind to it.) While the handheld, shakey-cam, first-person perspective mock-real approach has produced a good few gems – say, the REC movies, Cloverfield, Troll […]
Though a few notable films have bucked the trend, it’s still comparatively rare, at least in Western cinema, that we see so much of a mention of Stalin or the Soviets whilst Nazi bad guys are ten a penny in all manner of horror, sci-fi and exploitation cinema. So, when I saw the promo material […]