By Ben Bussey The passions that capture us in our youth invariably impact the person we grow to be in adulthood. This almost always seems to be true of horror fans: those who come to be lifelong devotees very often first develop that affinity for the genre whilst young (as we explored early this year […]
By Keri O’Shea The question ‘what would you do if you only had hours to live?’ is one that we’ve probably all considered at some point; of course, the world ends for individuals all the time, but in terms of some grand event, whether it’s the four-minute warning (alright, that’s shorter still), the biblical apocalypse […]
By Keri O’Shea Over the years, the festival of Halloween and the horror movie industry have become almost symbiotic, extensions of one another, with one feeding the other. Take Scream, for instance: I remember the exact model of mask used in the film being around way before the franchise came into being; it was another […]
By Ben Bussey Expectations are a tricky beast indeed. As I remarked in my earlier Celluloid Screams 2015 review of the wonderful He Never Died, very often the joy of the festival experience is going in with little to no prior knowledge or expectation and encountering something brilliant, and knowing you’re among the first to […]
By Keri O’Shea At its best, horror has a great deal of power to question and probe aspects of modern life. By turning a uniquely distorting eye on social and cultural norms, it can make us reconsider them – or see them in such grotesque and new ways that we can’t thereafter see them as […]
By Quin Exactly the way I discovered All Hallow’s Eve in 2013, the sequel All Hallow’s Eve 2 appeared on the iTunes horror page just like the unmarked video tapes find their way to unsuspecting viewers in the two films; I seriously hope this is going to become a regular thing. The list of sequels […]
By Ben Bussey Perhaps the greatest pleasure of the film festival experience is sitting down to watch a movie of which you have little to no advance knowledge, and wind up being taken totally unawares. Going into Sheffield’s Showroom Cinema for the Celluloid Screams screening of He Never Died, I basically knew nothing other than […]
By Keri O’Shea The first thing we find out about James (Patrick McFadden) is that he’s a guy who wears a cheap work suit like it’s doing horrible violence to him. He’s stressed, miserable, and what’s more, he’s not in good health either: suffering from double vision, numbness in his hands, and other symptoms which […]
Review by Quin There is certainly no shortage of film titles consisting of puns. These films tend to either be porn films or comedies; but more accurately, parodies. Edward Penis Hands. Shaun of the Dead. Womb Raider. Poultrygeist: Night of the Chicken Dead. You get the idea. Well, now you can add Night of the […]
By Ben Bussey The sainted Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy in cinema is curious. Whilst his writings have long been hugely influential resulting in numerous screen adaptations, very few Poe movies adhere that closely to the text. This has been never more true (pun intended) than of the various movie versions of The Black Cat. Universal […]
By Ben Bussey My fellow horror fans, we have a firm contender for the best worst film of 2015. Just in case we need to make the distinction, I don’t mean to say Some Kind of Hate is a flat-out bad movie; those are the ones that tend to just leave you utterly cold and […]