By Keri O’Shea Naming films is a tricky matter. Of course, you want your title to appeal to its right audience, of course you want to generate anticipation, but by the same token, you run the risk of false advertising if you put too much in there. It’s like the perils of advertising a film […]
By Keri O’Shea Once upon a time, back before the BBC discovered the joys of lowest-common-denominator, Coliseum for Cowards television which allows members of the great unwashed to feel like their opinions matter (dross like Strictly Come Dancing, for instance) it was much more willing to take chances on unusual original series, and Dead Head […]
Review by Comix Death is the dark mistress who awaits every living creature at the end of their time on Earth. When that final bell strikes, we will find ourselves existing beyond our pitiful lives; lives that were once immersed in pain, hate, sorrow, and, if we’re lucky, love and happiness. But for some poor […]
By Oliver Longden The Crazies is 40, but should anyone care? It is usually considered one of George A. Romero’s lesser works, partly because it has had less of a solid legacy than his iconic zombie films, and partly because everyone always forgets about the real rubbish like Survival of the Dead, alongside which The […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]