Fatal Pulse (2018)

FINAL STAGE – GLASS BRICK PORTALFEBRUARY 1991Fatal Pulse (2018) announces itself as operating within the Yuppie Fear thriller mode, using clips and trailers of The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, Pacific Heights, Deceived, etc. The actual experience of Fatal Pulse itself is comparable to Tim and Eric, Inland Empire, and Southland Tales. An evisceration of a cultural era – the early 1990s in […]

Hollywood 90028 (1973)

I only watched Jaques Demy’s Model Shop when Quentin Tarantino programmed it as part of a retrospective that was shown on SBS, as it was a clear influence on Once Upon A Time In Hollywood as a ‘Driving around LA’ movie. In Once Upon A Time, it’s about a cool guy driving around L.A. while […]

Pale Blood (1990)

Somewhere between TV shows like Silk Stalkings and Forever Knight, there’s the direct-to-video horror thriller, Pale Blood (1990). A hang over of Miami Vice aesthetics employed in the service of arty genre trash. And yet, there’s a certain elegance here, thanks to the stoic presence of George Chakiris (from the original West Side Story) as […]

Mike’s Murder (1984)

We don’t see the murder. Director and writer James Bridges apparently filmed one, and it was part of the negative test screenings that forced him to re-edit and structurally rearrange Mike’s Murder (1984) before its release. The original intention with Mike’s Murder was a film that was subjective with dream sequences and flashbacks; what was […]

The Prowler (1951)

When I was in my adolescent phase of loving James Ellroy novels (not so much a fan anymore), I remember the crime author mentioning The Prowler (1951) as one of his favourite classic film noirs. Considering Ellroy’s past as a degenerate substance-addicted peeper before he became a writer (which he talks about in the documentary […]