“Never take for granted when someone remembers you.” Beryl Hsu’s maternal grandmother suffers from mild dementia, diagnosed ten years previously. To keep her engaged and active, her family often pulls together to create and perform various skits in which the still formidable nonagenarian plays a starring role. Their latest project is something of a step […]
There has inevitably been a surge in ‘lockdown horrors’ over the past couple of years. It’s a fairly broad church, with some of these films simply being made under lockdown conditions, whilst others directly address the threat of novel viruses – but nearly every one of these films has directly or indirectly addressed the things […]
Funny how it’s turned out, but zombie horror has been with us so long and appeared so often now, that it all feels oddly comforting. For the most part, tropes which are maddening from other genres seem more than acceptable when there are zombies in tow: it doesn’t even really seem to matter that much […]
You could be forgiven for thinking that whatever could be done with the zombie genre has been done by this point, but a viewing of The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale (or Zombie For Sale, as it was titled at the screening I attended) proves this wrong. A deeply funny and ingenious spin on the […]
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 […]
Anthology films – often three short tales with a common framework – are nothing new, even if the format isn’t used all that often today. We have, however, seen some interesting variations on the anthology film in recent years, perhaps most notably with The ABCs of Death in 2012, which made a minor stir and […]
By Keri O’Shea That director and purveyor of horror and sleaze, Joe D’Amato was born on this day in 1936, and had he not died so suddenly back in 1999, would have been near to eighty years of age at this point in time. And yet, somehow, something tells me he’d still have been making […]
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 […]
Eaters: Rise of the Dead (2010) Distributor: Chelsea Films DVD Release Date (UK): 13th June 2011 Directed by: Luca Boni & Marco Risto Starring: Alex Lucchesi, Guglielmo Favilla, Claudio Marmugi, Rosella Elmi Review by: Keri O’Shea There must be a masochistic impulse lurking within me somewhere because a) I am very, very, very burned out on […]
Harold’s Going Stiff (2010) Directed by: Keith Wright Starring: Stan Rowe, Sarah Spencer, Andy Pandini, Lee Thompson Review by: Keri O’Shea Zombies have been used as a metaphor for a range of things over the years: they’ve represented mindless labour, consumerism, contagion, but never, to my knowledge, has zombieism been used as a metaphor for […]
Siege of the Dead (AKA Rammbock) (2010) DVD Release Date: 25th October 2010 Distributor: Revolver Directed by: Marvin Kren Starring: Michael Fuith, Theo Trebs, Anna Graczyk, Emily Cox Review by: Ben Bussey When Michael (Fuith) arrives unannounced at the Berlin apartment which until recently he shared with his now ex-girlfriend, his primary concern is whether she will want to reconcile […]