Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

    The ‘60s were a great time to be an older actress — at least if you were an older actress amenable to having your image roughed up a bit by appearing in a horror film in a “psycho-biddy” role popularized by 1962’s WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE?….

I’m not about to get on a soapbox and claim that 1982’s SUPERSTITION (a.k.a THE WITCH) is a good film. It is sloppily plotted with an unnecessarily complicated backstory set three hundred years in the past and a subplot that eventually just fizzles out. But I am going to claim that it is…

    TO THE NIGHT is a deeply, unpleasantly frustrating film.   It sometimes feels as though that maybe director Peter Brunner maybe views that as a feature and not a bug, and if so, then he’s succeeded wildly, creating a film that almost dares you to not keep it…

On the commentary track for BLOOD LAKE, director Tim Boggs points out just one of several shots that last for a beat or two too long, resulting in awkward pacing and seemingly random editorial choices. The source of these bizarre moments, he reveals, was to get the film to a feature-length…

      The rise of the boutique home video label has led to popular rediscovery of a number of cult auteurs, mostly from the ’60s and ’70s. One of the more surprising directors whose work has made its way onto a number of Blu-ray reissues is Nico Mastorakis, maybe…

Here’s to the middle of the road.   With so many films out there, and so many new films being made every single day, not everything is going to be a game changer. Films that shake the firmament of filmmaking, whether due to financial success or high quality or some…

DEPRAVED had its world premiere at New York City’s What the Fest!? on March 20, 2019.   The modern indie horror scene would be nowhere without Larry Fessenden. The actor and filmmaker has become something of a mascot and godfather of the scene, whether through his innumerable cameos and supporting turns, or through…

THE BODY SNATCHER is a testament to a great use of star power. Without Boris Karloff’s layered, flat-out creepy as hell performance, the film would be simply another of Val Lewton’s better-than-average, low budget horror films for RKO—handsomely done, but a little stodgy. With Karloff’s smiling psycho performance, it turns…

Long a blind spot in my ever-growing love affair with exploitation movies, the new Shout Factory Blu-ray collection of THE STREET FIGHTER trilogy came along at a perfect time. What I found was a series of films that did not quite live up to their reputation for brutality (though the violence is…

  The number of cinematic portrayals of the Whitechapel serial killer known as “Jack the Ripper” is easily in the dozens, dating back to the silent era of THE LODGER (1927) and PANDORA’S BOX (1929) to BLACK THE RIPPER (1975) to the recent animated film BATMAN: GOTHAM BY GASLIGHT (2018)….

Mary Lambert’s 1989 adaptation of Stephen King’s PET SEMATARY has never been a favorite film of mine. That’s not to say I think that the film is poorly made, it’s simply too effective. It’s one of King’s bleakest (the author considered shelving it, calling it dark and unenjoyable) tales and…

I love giant monster movies. The first “scary” movie I watched as a kid was the 1976 version of KING KONG, and it made a major impression on me then. I know KING KONG isn’t actually considered a “scary” film by most, but to six-year-old me, the very thought of…

These days, there seem to be two ways to approach ambitious sci-fi on a small indie film budget. The first is to fully embrace the lack of budget and make the film look as cheap and shoddy as possible via terrible effects work and hammy acting that plays like a…

I remember way back in the day, when I was a child, I would spend my weekends camped out in front of the television, watching regional networks like WPIX-11 out of New York, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever horrors I could find in between arguments over control of…

It would have been very easy for THE CLOVEHITCH KILLER to focus too much on an idea that basically boils down to “the mundanity of evil.” Far too many movies about serial killers in recent years have fallen into that trap and they often turn into boring, nihilistic affairs. Fortunately,…

    Robert G. Putka’s directorial feature film debut MAD was a huge surprise when it hit the festival circuit in 2016. (Full disclosure: This writer loved MAD so much that he enlisted Putka to do a voiceover cameo in his own film.) A cutting comedy/drama about a troubled woman…

For me, there’s nothing more relaxing on a lazy Sunday afternoon than kicking back and watching some old Sci-Fi. Good…Bad…It doesn’t really matter, as time has given each their charm. There’s just something about watching some drive-in classic that tells my brain I am at leisure. It doesn’t get to…

Over twenty years since its release, I think we can all agree that SCREAM is a classic. But for me, its success has always been slightly tainted by the sardonic, “hip” slasher flicks that came out in its wake. Films like I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER, URBAN LEGEND, and even the first…

Is softcore on the verge of a popular rediscovery? In the last year, Kino Lorber has released COLOR OF NIGHT on Blu-ray, and they’re set to release the first three in the official EMMANUELLE series on Blu in April. Australia’s Umbrella Entertainment just released a Blu-ray of softcore Ozploitation oddity CENTRESPREAD…

Children are terrifying. At least historically, in cinema, with titles like THE OMEN, THE BAD SEED, THE GOOD SON, VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED, THE CHILDREN, CATHY’S CURSE, WHO CAN KILL A CHILD?, BLOODY BIRTHDAY, ORPHAN, CHILDREN OF THE CORN, and many more, there is a fount of examples of terrifying…

For me, there is a comfort food feel to watching low to moderately budgeted indie genre movies from the mid-’90s. Sure, many of them do not hold up these twenty odd years later, but they invariably take me back to a time when I would stay up all night, watching…

This review contains spoilers for 10 TO MIDNIGHT.   For an ’80s Charles Bronson flick that includes some slasher movie tropes by featuring an oft-nude killer who stabs women to death, 10 TO MIDNIGHT has a surprisingly good script courtesy of William Roberts. Even better is that director J. Lee…

Given what a huge fan I am of both Brian De Palma and Paul Schrader, OBSESSION has long been a massive blind spot in my appreciation of both filmmakers’ careers. The fear when putting off seeing a long-anticipated film is that it will not live up to the expectations that…

Part mad scientist flick, part Gothic romantic horror, and part muddled message movie metaphor about psychologically abusive relationships, ELIZABETH HARVEST is an absolute mess. But the resulting mess is highly entertaining in a goofy, over-the-top soap opera kind of way.   The movie opens with a shot of a luxury…