School In The Crosshairs (1981)

I remember seeing Hausu a long time ago (presented by Kenta McGrath at the UWA Film Society) and my memory of it has always been an all-encompassing, wild, super-visual horror dream. Keen to see further films from Hausu’s director Nobuhiko Obayashi, particularly since a few of them are available in HD on the Rarefilmm website. […]

The Heroic Trio (1993)

I always understood that The Heroic Trio (1993) was one to see, ever since seeing clips of it in Olivier Assayas’ Irma Vep (it’s featured as one of the films that convinces the director character played by Jean-Pierre Leaud to cast Maggie Cheung in his remake of Les Vampires). A Hong Kong action adventure thriller, […]

The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982)

Was it a dream or was it a memory? I have this vague recall of being a child and seeing the video cover art for The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982), one of those beautiful painted medieval fantasy posters that carry over the lurid charge of thick paperback novels and comic-books, muscular men with gleaming […]

The Lair Of The White Worm (1988)

Ever since I read about a scout’s unfortunate end – his own ‘end’ separated in a bathtub by the fangs of Lady Sylvia Marsh (Amanda Donohoe) – in a copy of Empire magazine as a wee slip of lad (I think as part of a weird section on unfortunate ends to male genitalia in the […]

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser is obviously a horror classic, and it was something I only experienced for the first time during last year’s Halloween. With a horror icon in Pinhead (Doug Bradley), whatever dated effects are to be found in there are made up for by the film’s perverse, sadomasochistic fervour; this wasn’t just a slasher, […]