The Tingler (1959)

I grew up with a copy of the Cinemania 97 CD-ROM as a kid, which featured a John Waters commentary all about 1950s filmmaker William Castle who was a great influence on Waters and other filmmakers (including Joe Dante who made a fictional tribute to the guy in the John Goodman comedy, Matinee). A sort […]

Phase IV (1974)

Phase IV (1974) feels like a perfect movie to discover randomly on a grainy public access TV channel. “Hmm, looks like an ordinary movie,” you might think. “Oh, it’s sci-fi. And ants? Ants are the threat? Okay.” And then you walk away and think, “What the hell did I just watch?” This is the only […]

The Iron Rose (1973)

The Iron Rose (1973; La Rose de Fer) is the third film I’ve seen from French director Jean Rollin, and along with Spanish filmmaker Jess Franco, their names represent a quintessential arty Euro-horror milieu. Rollin is known for low-budget genre flicks, usually concerning vampires, where there’s nudity and blood, and actors wandering around castles and […]

Cure (1997)

Most horror films shout at you. Cure (1997), directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, never raises its voice. It maintains a steady whisper and is all the more unnerving for it. A Japanese horror film that was part of the ‘J-horror’ wave of the late 1990s, Cure almost stands outside of it by its ordinary, beige-brown palette […]

Frownland (2007)

I’d always been curious about Frownland (2007) ever since reading Roger Ebert’s review upon its release – it sounded uncompromising and aggravating, a punishing American indie “comedy”, the type of thing that would never get a cinema release (well, in Australia) and you would have to wait until an import DVD might be available at […]