Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

  Charlie Steeds is the director of the new horror film WINTERSKIN.         Tell us a bit about yourself, Charlie. Where do you hail from? I’m a writer/director/producer of horror films, based in London, UK, and I’m about to begin production on my sixth horror movie. My…

      Video Violence is a weekly column digging deep into the lesser-known genre films recently released to home video.  This week’s column takes a look at pinky violence precursor THE HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN.       The movie: HORRORS OF MALFORMED MEN — now that’s a title. Just…

    Joseph Heller’s novel CATCH-22 holds up as one of the funniest pieces of 20th century black humor, capturing the grotesque tragicomedy of the military. Mike Nichols made it into a 1970 movie (a highly anticipated film, which was overshadowed by Robert Altman’s surprise hit, M*A*S*H). Now the story returns…

            Since their release of their video for Deutschland, Rammstein has been stealthily uploading small under one minute clips of the riffs for every song on their upcoming album. One in particular was for a song called Radio, whose excellent, aggressive riff made me immediately…

                   Tommy Stovall, director of AARON’S BLOOD, is back with an equally unsettling and effective movie. In ROOM FOR RENT, the legendary Lin Shaye plays a lonely woman who grows unhealthily attached to her housemate. Stovall talks about working with Shaye (INSIDIOUS, THE…

    [This article contains minor spoilers for each title.]   The concept of a haunted house and slasher hybrid, which sees your typical masked slasher villain take a backseat to a murderous house filled with ghosts and/or demons and/or witches doling out the bloody comeuppance, wasn’t exploited nearly enough….

    It’s time to just come right out and say it: Love And Rockets is the greatest series in comics history. It’s so consistently good, in fact, that it’s often taken for granted, a part of our lives that we just assume will always be there — because, for many…

        Drugsploitation movies aren’t as common as they used to be. I would have to think that this is because the opioid epidemic in this country is no longer something reserved for the inner city to deal with.   Now that hard drugs have made their way…

The good folks at Grindhouse Releasing continue to do the Exploitation Lord’s work with their announced special edition three-disc Blu-ray release of Umberto Lenzi’s notorious, violent “polizieschi” flick THE TOUGH ONES (ROMA A MANO ARMATA).     The film—released in 1976—has been given a new 4K transfer with a boatload…

It’s interesting to be on the outside of a fandom and peer in without much frame of reference. Pokémon blew up right around middle school for me, so it was already on the cusp of young adult and not exactly my demographic. Though lord knows that didn’t stop me from…

Tribeca Film Festival was a twelve day extravaganza of 103 features, talks with filmmakers, and gala events. I made the pilgrimage this year to catch a few independent film premieres, take in the latest VR experiences, and eat enough slices at Joe’s Pizza to make John Candy blush.   Here…

Last summer, I visited Chicago, Illinois to attend my first Cinepocalypse, a wild and woolly film festival dedicated to the weirdest, wackiest and gnarliest genre cinema out there. It was there I got to meet Ernest Dickerson and Lana Wachowski, see films like TALES FROM THE HOOD: DEMON KNIGHT, HOWARD…

The 1982 thriller THE SEDUCTION hits Blu-ray from Scream Factory on May 21st. The film is notable as the feature film debut of glam goddess Morgan Fairchild (as TV news reporter Jamie Douglas) and one of the many films Andrew Stevens co-starred in between his breakthrough role in THE FURY…

      The connective tissue linking music and memory is very strong indeed — most of us can remember fairly clearly where we were and/or what we were doing the first time we heard a favorite song; hearing one we haven’t heard in years often takes us right back…

  Video Violence is a weekly column digging deep into the lesser-known genre films recently released to home video. This week’s column takes a look at PARTY LINE (1988), now on DVD & Blu-ray from Vinegar Syndrome.     The movie: By 1988, the American slasher movie was on the…

Scream Factory goes for the creepy crawly in their Blu-ray release of the 1955 Universal-International big bug movie TARANTULA.     We get off to an atmospheric start with an unidentified man in the desert dropping dead. He’s not exactly a brown eyed handsome man either. Small town doctor Matt…

THE GASOLINE THIEVES is an arrhythmia inducing narrative film inspired by the people of Irapauto, directed by Edgar Nito, a native of the city that will leave your emotions drained. I had the pleasure of speaking with Edgar about his debut feature that has captured the hearts of many at…

In its short existence, the Overlook Film Festival has become a force in the horror film world. With today’s announcement of its full 2019 lineup, it cements its reputation as a must-visit festival for genre fans.     This year’s heavy hitters include the U.S. premiere of Jim Jarmusch’s zombie…

THE VELOCIPASTOR is not a bad movie. It’s not even an “it’s so bad it’s good” movie. Is it cheaply made? Yes. Is it amateurish and unpolished? Sure. But is it entertaining enough to warrant spending an hour and fifteen minutes? Will it inspire more than a handful of teenage…

I TRAPPED THE DEVIL is a slightly misleading title. One of the characters in the film does indeed trap someone (or something) that he believes to be a physical manifestation of evil, but the pulpy fun of a horror-comedy implied by that title is not present. In its place is a…

Scandinavian horror movies are commonly two things: they’re a slow burn, and they’re weird. BLOOD PARADISE is definitely both.     It follows crime fiction writer Robin Richards at a strange and awkward point in her career. Once a very successful author, she has since been disgraced by her newest book,…

      The line between horror and procedural thriller is fine and strange, the best investigative horror movies (like SE7EN) have to walk that line almost flawlessly for them to work. Too far on one end, you get slasher at best and unintentional camp at worst. Too far on…

          The evil kid sub-genre has been kicking it at least since 1956’s THE BAD SEED, but was certainly most popularized following the release of THE OMEN in 1976. Richard Donner’s anti-Christ fable is still considered one of the all-time greats released during film’s pinnacle of…

  There is absolutely no item of clothing that is more iconic than a black motorcycle jacket. Every badass rebel in cinema has worn one. From Marlon Brando in THE WILD ONE and Mel Gibson in MAD MAX to Mark Venturi in RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD or Bunty Bailey…