Advance Review: Adam Mason’s ‘Luster’

Keri O’Shea reviews Adam Mason’s to-date unreleased next film… These days, film and TV are all about ‘the journey’. Executives love it; in fact, they’ll demand that it’s crowbarred into almost anything, because that emotional process of self-discovery makes for good viewing. To know oneself is to love oneself. Or is it? Luster, directed by […]

DVD Review: Bunraku

Review by Aaron Williams. I’m sure that those of you reading this review have been led here by your taste for the cinematically weird and wonderful and maybe even a good old case of curiosity. When Bunraku first arrived at my doorstep I will admit I was pretty pessimistic. The cover screams ‘Sin City cash […]

DVD Review: The Dead (2010)

  Review by Keri O’Shea. I’m going to start this review with a confession. When Ben, the UK editor, asked me to cover the DVD release of The Dead for this site (Ben’s note: I had already reviewed it at FrightFest 2010, which you can read here), I made a glib joke about not wanting […]

DVD Review: J-sploitation Goes Feminist in ‘Ninja Girl’

 Review by Ben Bussey. I don’t know if I can speak for everyone, but when I hear of a new Japanese DVD release my gut impulse is to expect some or all of the following: cheap DV photography, pretty girls in rubber performing martial arts, and ridiculously excessive gore. When the film in question is […]

DVD Review: Christopher Walken Goes Action Hero in ‘McBain’

DVD Review by Ben Bussey. Yes, I know, on reading this title many will have the same initial reaction I did: “What? That Schwarzenegger piss-take from The Simpsons? It was a real movie?” Well, yes and no. This is indeed a film called McBain, and features the title character firing innumerable bullets, blowing up an inordinate number […]

DVD Review: Territories

DVD Review by Aaron Williams  It’s an ugly term ‘torture porn,’ and it’s thrown around way too often in today’s cinematic climate. For those who pay their admission fees simply to catch sight of faceless victims being systematically disembowelled only to have narrative and characterisation fall to the wayside, it’s the mark of a hell […]

DVD Review: The Man With The Severed Head (1976)

Review by Ben Bussey. Now how’s about this for a premise: during a heist gone wrong, gangster Jack Surnett (Paul Naschy) takes a bullet in the head. Obviously he can’t go to a regular hospital, so his fellow gangsters take him to one of those disgraced doctors who can only find work doing dodgy operations for […]

DVD Review: Arrow Video Presents ‘Pieces’

Review by Stephanie Scaife. Pieces (1982) is a cult classic exploitation slasher flick from Spanish filmmaker Juan Piquer Simon (Slugs, Monster Island) and here it is in a fantastic and lovingly created brand new edition from Arrow Video, sporting a vast array of special features and some rather eye catching newly commissioned art work. The […]

FrightFest 2011 Review: The Divide

Review By Stephanie Scaife. If like me you have a penchant for post-apocalyptic narratives that are unrelentingly bleak and mercilessly grim, then The Divide is definitely the film for you. Xavier Gens made his name as part of the new wave of French horror filmmakers with his flawed but endearingly bonkers Frontier(s) which soon led […]

DVD Review: John A. Russo’s ‘Midnight’ (1982)

Review by Keri O’Shea. If it’s true that ‘the Devil has all the best tunes’, then what does that tell us about unholy forces on our cinema screens? Well, it appears that Satan not only sells, but has found himself a comfortable niche in horror and exploitation movies. The results of this can be great; […]