In his 1977 book Exo-Psychology, the notorious Dr Timothy Leary – having a decade earlier told the world to Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out – attempted to coin another enduring catchphrase in SMI²LE, an acronym which equates as follows: “SM (Space Migration) + I² (intelligence increase) + LE (Life extension).” This, Leary proposed, was […]
By Quin David Gregory has very few feature film credits on his resume. Perhaps the most well-known is a segment in the anthology film The Theater Bizarre from 2011. Almost every other title in his long list of credits are documentary shorts. It turns out that he is responsible for so many of those Making […]
By Keri O’Shea It’s always good to be able to share good news here, so finding out that one of my favourite short movie directors is about to bring us an official Stephen King adaptation is definitely something worth sharing. Some years ago, the talented Czech director Robin Kašpařík made a short occult horror film […]
By Ben Bussey All it takes is one memorable moment. I’ve no doubt I would have no recollection of the original 1990 airing of BBC miniseries The Green Man were it not for having inadvertently caught the opening scene of the first episode – and being left profoundly shocked and haunted by it. I would […]
By Ben Bussey Talk about the early days of Hammer Horror, and we all know the usual suspects: 1955’s Quatermass XPeriment paved the way, 1957’s The Curse of Frankenstein blew the doors open, 1958’s Dracula proved they were here to stay. However, one film that is rather less well-remembered – indeed, one film which I […]
By Svetlana Fedotov She is a symbol of unyielding impulse, a gun-toting bad-ass, and one terrible pun after the other. She’s the pro-feminist to your anti-feminist and the anti-feminist to your pro-feminist. She is a sex symbol, a wild child, an icon; women want to be like her and men name their kids after her […]
By Keri O’Shea Although he’s clearly been working hard in his other capacity as a prosthetics specialist, I had been wondering what had happened to Paul Hyett: director since he brought us that mesmerisingly grim movie The Seasoning House back in 2012, which screened at that year’s Frightfest. Well, he’s back in a directorial capacity […]
By Ben Bussey This is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write. On behalf of all of us at Brutal As Hell, I am devastated to announce that Stephanie Scaife, one of our longest-serving writers, committed suicide last Wednesday. Steph began writing for BAH in 2010. The first thing she wrote for us, unless […]
By Keri O’Shea Almost the moment the opening credits roll on Jon ‘Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer’ Knautz’s newest film, Goddess of Love, we can see that our female lead, Venus (Alexis Kendra) is something of a culture vulture. Learning to speak French? Check. Ballet? Check. Piano, yep; drug addiction which makes her look intermittently wasted […]
By Stephanie Scaife Click here to read part one of Steph’s FrightFest 2015 report. Abner Pastoll’s Road Games was a pleasant surprise, an interesting UK/French production that is not (as I’d thought) a remake of the 1981 Jamie Lee Curtis film of the same name. Instead Road Games is about Jack (Andrew Simpson), an English […]
By Tristan Bishop I’ve been a fan of Italian genre cinema for around 25 years – every since I caught a TV showing of Mario Bava’s Black Sunday as an impressionable youth – and as such I tend to believe I’ve seen most of the best that the Italian golden age (around 1960-1986) has to […]