By Ben Bussey I’ve reviewed more than my fair share of no-budget horror movies over the years, and it often proves a challenging business. The same complaints come up time and again; horrendous production values frequently render the action almost impossible to follow, and more often than not the subpar writing and acting mean that […]
By Keri O’Shea Imagine a sequence of films, emanating from Japan over forty years ago, which melded – literally – riotously strong female characters with insurrection, violence, sexuality and even the odd dash of social commentary. ‘Women in prison’ films (for the most part) like no other, the Female Convict movies (or ‘Female Prisoner’, in […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi For my sins, I’ve not seen nearly as much canonical European ‘art’ cinema as I probably should have, all things considered. I am, however, a big fan of one Ingmar Bergman, and when he’s claimed that Andrei Tarkovsky is “the greatest”, then really it’s a bit of a crime that it’s taken […]
By Ben Bussey As a site primarily focused on horror, BAH has of course noted the resurgence of the anthology format in the genre this past half-decade or so. While it would be a pretty big stretch to declare Matteo Garrone’s Tale of Tales symptomatic of this new wave of portmanteau horror, in its own […]
By Ben Bussey I don’t mean to be a killjoy, honestly I don’t. However, when I see the bulk of online horror fandom losing their shit over something I just can’t get fired up about, I feel like I need to voice the opposing view. If you’re among the excited ones, then good for you, honestly. […]
By Ben Bussey The label of ‘worst horror movie of all time’ is a strangely coveted one within cult fandom. Many self-professed lovers of what would typically be regarded as trash cinema will go out of their way to see that which is proclaimed to be the poorest known example of its craft, and director […]
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 […]