Edge of the Axe (1988)

Slasher movies, we might theorise, are like the pizza of horror. In other words, even when they’re not much good, they’re still kinda good, so long as those same basic ingredients are being used in the right quantities: masked killer, witless sinful victims, creative or at least gory death scenes. Think of those as the […]

The Basket Case sequels…

If you freeze-frame in the opening reels of Basket Case 2, a curious thing happens. You can almost – almost – sense the utter surprise on Frank Henenlotter’s part that he’s making a sequel to his surprise grindhouse hit at all. At the end of Basket Case, see, it seems that both Duane and Belial […]

“When he gets hungry, someone gets killed”: a loving tribute to Brain Damage (1988)

If you didn’t already know from your experience of watching Basket Case that bad things are almost certainly around the corner, then you could be forgiven for thinking that the beginning of Brain Damage (1988) features a perfectly respectable elderly couple, in a well-decorated New York apartment, doing something perfectly reasonable. Sure they’re feeding…something, but […]

Cannibal Ferox (1981)

Umberto Lenzi turned his hand to many different kinds of genre film during his career, so it’s perhaps little surprise that he looked to the kind of cannibalism movies being made by his peers (such Ruggero Deodato), making two of them in very rapid succession, after almost a ten-year break between these and the first […]

Revisiting Waxwork (1988)

There has long been a relationship between horror cinema and the humble waxwork museum. Though now sadly fallen out of favour, waxworks were a de rigeur form of entertainment before cinema existed; the world-famous Madame Tussauds opened its first ‘chamber of horrors’ in 1802 after the successes of the French ‘Caverne des Grands Voleurs’, which […]

30 Years of Stage Fright

Note: this feature contains spoilers! In a small US theatre, the cast of avant-garde performance The Night Owl are readying themselves for their big opening night. In true Stanislavsky style, the director wants everyone locked in, so that they can really get into their roles. This is a health and safety disaster waiting to happen […]

Advance Review – Screaming in High Heels: The Rise & Fall of the Scream Queen Era

Ben Bussey with a fairly exclusive early look at Jason Paul Collum’s documentary on the three female superstars of straight to video B-movies. The 1980s: arguably the era of film history that is closest to the heart of contemporary horror fandom. The genre enjoyed unprecedented mainstream success with all the great slasher franchises reigning supreme at the box […]

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 […]

Thrill Me! 25 Years of ‘Night of the Creeps’

by Ben Bussey READER ADVISORY: spoilers ahead (though perhaps that’s a given on a retrospective…) 22nd August 1986; a day that will live in… well, I can’t honestly say I have any conscious memory of that particular day. I was six years old and living in North-East England. As such, I certainly wasn’t aware that it was the […]