Review by Ben Bussey In an arena typically dominated by filmmakers who often seem to be making no effort at all, we certainly can’t fault writer-director MJ Dixon for ambition. Following on from 2012’s Slasher House, Legacy of Thorn sets out to build a rich mythology around the earlier film’s most formidable figure: a masked […]
Review by Karolina Gruschka From Dusk Till Dawn, as a series – who would have envisaged this to happen back in 1996? I remember recording it on VHS while my parents were asleep, and then watching it every single day for a couple of weeks. George Clooney, then mainly known from TV Drama, surprised (and […]
Review by Ben Bussey When it comes to Hollywood outsiders, Joe Dante’s in a class of his own. Not unlike John Landis, he seems generally accepted as directorial royalty in horror circles, despite the fact that comparatively few of the films in his back catalogue can really be classed as horror. The vast majority of […]
By Svetlana Fedotov Magicians are pretty freaking sweet. With their billowing capes and sultry assistants, you know the next hour of your life is going to be filled with illusory brain teasers and child-like wonder as cascades of doves flutter from every corner of the stage. From children’s birthday parties to Vegas stage shows to […]
Review by Karolina Gruschka The Shout; what an odd little film. Watching it felt like listening to Pink Floyd: chilled, mystical, heavy, deep, dreamy, trippy, intricate, surreal, sophisticated, powerful, sensual. It is a story about the intimacy of marriage, about adultery, about power struggles, about subjective realities, about isolation, about madness, about mysticism, about sound. […]
By Keri O’Shea When you get press releases that proudly proclaim the presence of a soap star in a film’s cast, it gets you thinking about how ubiquitous soap operas are, still – especially if you don’t watch any of the soaps, ever. For instance, total strangers, when unsure how to make conversation, will usually […]
Review by Ben Bussey If you’re hoping for a concise, unbiased, even-handed appraisal of the conclusion of Hammer’s Karnstein trilogy, you may as well stop reading now. Twins of Evil is far too big a deal to me. For various reasons – some screamingly obvious, others somewhat less so – this 1971 vampire movie proved […]
Review by Stephanie Scaife Heli may seem like an unusual choice of film for us to cover here at Brutal as Hell, but although it may not be a genre film, it’s certainly brutal and it falls firmly into the extremely bleak camp of films-I-never-want-to-see-again, along with the likes of Requiem for a Dream and […]
Review by Tristan Bishop Even as a fan of director Jim Jarmusch – his 90s efforts Dead Man (1995) and Ghost Dog (1999) are among my favourite films – I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down in my seat at the prospect of Only Lovers Left Alive. The undoubtedly top-notch cast didn’t gloss over the […]
Review by Matt Harries In 2014 it is fitting that we focus on Catacombs – a supernatural thriller made way back in 1965, originally released in the States as The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die – for it was earlier this year in January that saw the sad passing of director Gordon Hessler, aged 83. Those […]
By Karolina Gruschka Cinema “Pionier”, ulica Krakowska in Strzelce Opolskie, Poland; built in the 1960s, it suffered a crisis it could never recover from, when home entertainment arrived in the East. Slowly, the building would decay to become the derelict and atmospheric cinema I so much loved in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It […]