Blu-Ray Review: 247°F

Review by Stephanie Scaife We are all aware that horror is an immensely popular and profitable genre, hence the number of straight-to-video releases that line the shelves on a weekly basis. This has resulted in the horror genre being viewed as a quick cash-in for many studios and these cheaply made, fast-turnover movies have seen […]

DVD Review: Ray Harryhausen: Special Effects Titan (2013)

Review by Ben Bussey Early on in this documentary, John Landis reiterates something he’s said many times about Ray Harryhausen over the years, explaining why he thinks the stop-motion master occupies a truly unique position in film history: this is the fact that he is the only notable case of technician as auteur. Really, would […]

DVD Review: The Fallow Field

Review by Kit Rathenar I wasn’t sure what to expect from British retro indie horror The Fallow Field, the feature-length debut of director Leigh Dovey, but let me say at once that I ended up being pleasantly surprised by it. Steve Garry stars here as Matt Sadler, a man having a very bad life. When […]

DVD Review: The Bay (2012)

By Keri O’Shea I have to say, I was somewhat blind-sided by the press release for The Bay – enough so that it completely took my mind off the fact that I was about to watch a found footage film, a sub-genre I have ranted about at length in the past. Perhaps this was even […]

DVD Review: Stitches (2012)

Review by Tristan Bishop If you’re a horror fan advancing in years you may remember the dark days of the early-to-mid nineties, where genre product was at its lowest ebb since the late 1940s. The late 80s comedy horror craze had run its course, and before (love it or hate it) Wes Craven’s Scream revitalised […]

Horror in Short: Fist of Jesus (2012)

By Keri O’Shea Some of you may remember, a few weeks back, we featured a nifty and very gory short film by the title of Brutal Relax? Well, wouldn’t you know, but filmmakers Adrián Cardona and David Muñoz have only gone and taken their madcap visions of the walking dead back to the time of […]

Theatre Review: The Woman in Black

By Keri O’Shea Outside of the novella itself, Susan Hill’s quintessentially British ghost story The Woman in Black is perhaps best-known to most Brutal as Hell readers via last year’s film starring Daniel Radcliffe as the unfortunate solicitor Arthur Kipps, or maybe through Nigel Kneale’s (ahem, superior) televised version from 1989, but it has also […]

Review: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)

Review by Ben Bussey Once upon a time a young brother and sister were lost in the woods, happened upon a house made of gingerbread, got lured inside by its luscious goodies and wound up prisoners of an evil witch who wanted to eat them, until the kiddies turned the tables and shoved the old hag into […]

DVD Review: Slasher House (2012)

Review by Ben Bussey Remember that time-honoured and rather fuddy-duddy-ish maxim, ‘red and green should never be seen’? Well, I think it’s safe to assume writer-director MJ Dixon doesn’t, or if he does he’s made a concerted effort to thumb his nose at that particular convention of good taste. This alone demonstrates the debt his first […]