When I saw that Pet Sematary was being remade, I had a strange sense of deja-vu. Just like IT, another late-80s/early 90s Stephen King adaptation which has recently received an overhaul, the original version of Pet Sematary is bound up with late childhood memories for me, with scenes which have stuck in my head long […]
Mads Mikkelsen has turned his hand to all manner of different films during his career, from priests to cannibals, and he has certainly shown that he can handle, shall we say, the more challenging roles – and physically-demanding roles too. It seems that he went through more than a few hard knocks during the making […]
By Matt Harries Roky Erickson’s passing on May 31st rightly saw a wave of recognition from those touched by his life and works. Musicians especially have been quick to acknowledge the influence of his band, The 13th Floor Elevators, as progenitors of psychedelic and garage rock, as well as Erickson himself as a shining example […]
By Guest Contributor Matt Harries ‘The stories aren’t about horror, they’re about challenging ideas, confronting our darkest natures, and facing universal fears.’ Part 1: Absentia to Gerald’s Game Mike Flanagan is a name you could reasonably describe as ‘hot’ among fans of screen horror. The self-confessed Stephen King nut recently declared a wrap on shooting […]
By Guest Contributor Helen Creighton Game of Thrones has finally ended, and not in a way everyone found entirely satisfactory. This is nothing new in television; there’s a history of beloved, long-running shows dropping final seasons or finales that leave their audiences feeling cheated. Take the long-running 80s hospital drama St. Elsewhere, concluded with the […]
They’ve been regularly made since the very first film of the kind in the 1920s, but perhaps the 1970s were particularly unusual for the sheer volume of vampire horror films which emerged. Many different varieties of vampire horror appeared, too: Hammer Studios toyed with classic stories and folklore to create their own lurid, luxuriant spin, […]
By Guest Contributor Marc Lissenburg The biggest accolade I can give the Dead By Dawn International Film Festival is the fact my continued attendance ensures I devour every delectable morsel projected onto the silver screen. Annually, without fail, darkly feverish cinematic delicacies are chosen with unbridled passion and scheduled with logical precision. If you can […]
When Drag Me to Hell was made, an unbelievable decade ago, it did one thing straight away: it delivered director and writer Sam Raimi back into the eager grasp of a multitude of genre film fans. An Evil Dead remake may have been floating around at the rumour stage by roughly this point in time, […]
There’s hardly any need at this stage to say that the late Jess Franco was one of the most prolific low-brow filmmakers we’ve ever known, but the terrific plus side to his frenetic pace of work during a nearly sixty-year career is that, for most of us, there’s still a wealth of film titles out […]
By Guest Contributor Matt Harries In an era where a phrase such as ‘world building’ has entered the lexicon of the expectant cinema-goer, it is all too easy for the brightest lights, most groundbreaking camera work and most stupendous action sequences to steal the hearts and minds of the viewer. Conversely, it seems that all […]
Actor Michael Sabbaton has some impressive form portraying tortured male protagonists; his work to date enacting stories from HP Lovecraft more than prove this, and it’s something of a theme he has explored further in his newest one-man theatre show, The Turk. However, quite unlike Lovecraft, in this original piece of work Sabbaton has allowed […]