Review by Ben Bussey Jakes West’s Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship and Videotape is my favourite documentary from recent years, not only because it’s entertaining and informative, but also because its subject matter is so very important. As I said in my review following the film’s premiere at FrightFest 2010, “this film isn’t just relevant […]
Review by Quin Doesn’t it feel like there has been a huge influx lately of horror movies about houses? I’ve seen a lot and noticed quite a few titles and DVD covers and posters where the house seems to be the main character – now that I think about it, it’s usually the best actor […]
Interview by Keri O’Shea Though writer, director and producer Peter Dukes is in no ways new to the world of filmmaking, having made his first short film way back in 1999, we here at Brutal as Hell are pretty new to Peter’s work; he contacted us back last year regarding coverage in our recently-resurrected Horror […]
By Ben Bussey The Driver is one of those tricky little movies which it’s almost impossible to speak of without relating it to innumerable other movies. The second directorial effort from Walter Hill, it belongs within his distinct filmography of modern action tales with subtly mythic overtones: The Warriors, Southern Comfort, Streets of Fire. As a stripped-down all-American car chase […]
By Keri O’Shea This feature on the site is all about short horror films, but it begs a question. What’s the shortest film that would still work, still tell a story you’d want to see played out? We could get into Hemingway territory here and consider that he managed to do it on paper in […]
By Nia Edwards-Behi Twenty five years have passed since Shinya Tsukamoto unleashed his hellish vision of society on us, in the form of his techno-body horror masterpiece Tetsuo. Arguably the ur-film of Japanese body horror, Tetsuo rightly stands the test of time to remain eerily relevant and one of the finest abstract horror films ever […]
By Svetlana Fedotov Viruses sure are fun. Ranging from a mild cold to a full blown 28 Days Later zombie invasion, diseases are probably the only thing keeping human beings in check since we learned how to beat things with sticks. It is the great equalizer that branches across all societies, classes, professions, and wealth, […]
By Keri O’Shea Strange Aeons: Celtic Magic and Rational Response (For the first part of this feature, click here). It was not just during Samhain that the Celts believed they could communicate with the forces which lay beyond the fringes of the real. Druidic belief asserted that man could commune with the gods; the underworld […]
By Keri O’Shea Jim Mickle. Joe R. Lansdale. When you hear those two names, chances are you immediately think of the horror genre – so, when both of those names can be mentioned in the same sentence, you’ll definitely expect a certain type of movie. Mickle has, after all, cut his teeth on the horror […]
Review by Ben Bussey Perhaps the greatest challenge of being a horror reviewer is finding fresh and creative ways to say “this film is a piece of shit.” Not the cheeriest opening sentence ever, I know, but the sad reality is that the direct-to-DVD horror market is and always has been strewn with cowpats from the devil’s […]
By Liam Cannon It seems to me that we live in an era of senseless hyperbole, when too many people have lost their sense of proportion. Kanye West terms himself a genius after penning some dull chart-topping dross and terms like “epic” and “awesomeballs” are hurled about with gay abandon in praise of the most […]