By Tristan Bishop Dear old Michael Winner. Loathed by serious film critics and restaurant owners worldwide, and engendering responses in the public ranging from revulsion to fascination, Winner was undoubtedly an original – an opinionated playboy whose films often seemed more like excuses for him to hang out with his Hollywood heroes than personal works […]
By Keri O’Shea Well, here’s a blast from the past: if I remember correctly, and that’s a big ‘if’, Return of the Killer Tomatoes was one of the ragtag assemblage of films which seemed to play regularly on my dad’s illegal cable film channel back in the mid-to-late eighties. Between this film, Adventures in Babysitting, […]
By Ben Bussey The new wave of anthology horror has tended to be a little haphazard; take the none-more-random ABCs of Death movies, or the Dread Central-produced Zombieworld and Monster Land, which literally strung together entirely unrelated short films. It’s nice, then, to see portmanteau movies which harken back to the great days of the […]
By Keri O’Shea Saw has a lot to answer for, doesn’t it? Since it appeared a little over a decade ago, it’s had a long-lasting and far-reaching impact on horror – for good, and for ill. Saw showed us that a horror story could be effective and gripping whilst being incredibly economical with characters and […]
By Ben Bussey The late, great British auteur Ken Russell was never one for doing things by halves. As such, when he crossed the pond to give Hollywood a whirl in the early 1980s, no way was he about to leave his abrasive, in your face attitude behind. Russell’s time in the US was brief […]
By Keri O’Shea Most horror fans who have delved beyond the physical jerk-invoking shitfests being screened every Halloween will probably have an idea who Debbie Rochon is; add in a soft spot for low budget indie cinema, and chances are you’ll have seen more than a few offerings from her very extensive CV, especially if […]
By Marc Patterson Around these parts we’re big fans of short horror films. Creating a perfect anthology of shorts is a significant challenge to any producer. There’s a real art to the curation of shorts into a masterful anthology. One needs to consider the broad theme, the mood, and what overarching story (if any) there […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi I can’t say I’m overly familiar with the cheerleader subgenre (can we even call it that?) of exploitation filmmaking, but to say that The Swinging Cheerleaders lives up to my expectations of what a cheerleader film would be like is almost right. Luckily, it’s got those little Jack Hill flourishes that make […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi In cinemas soon, The Lighthouse is Chris Crow’s fourth feature as director, and his second feature collaboration with producer David Lloyd. Following Devil’s Bridge, Panic Button and The Darkest Day, The Lighthouse is a chamber piece, a psychological drama based on a real life event in Welsh maritime history. Chris and David […]
By Ben Bussey Rock stars in movies have a somewhat chequered past. For every David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth, there’s a Roger Daltrey in Vampirella; for every Mick Jagger in Performance, there’s a Mick Jagger in Freejack. The original wild child Iggy Pop doesn’t exactly have a spotless track record here […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi We’re big fans of Chris Crow’s work here at Brutal as Hell, following Devil’s Bridge, Panic Button and The Darkest Day. With the arrival of his latest feature, I don’t think that’s going to change. It’s an unconventional film, which I’m certain will frustrate some viewers, but for me it’s Crow’s most […]