Category: Mystery
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Creepy (2016)
There’s a masterclass sequence in Creepy (2016) that shows off Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s command with visually increasing uneasiness. A retired detective now a college professor Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima from Drive My Car) is working with his former partner Nogami (Masahiro Higashide) on a cold case, a missing family who disappeared five years ago. Within the university… Read.
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The Whip And The Body (1963)
When a film communicates two emotions happening across a character’s face, all in the one shot, the magic trick of that. In the Mario Bava directed film, The Whip and The Body (1963), there’s a tremendous close-up of the character of Nevenka (Dahlia Lavi), walking down a darkened castle hallway, approaching a door where she… Read.
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The Oracle (1985)
After seeing the repulsive yet effective thriller, Tenement, I was interested to see more of director Roberta Findlay’s mainstream 1980s genre work, after a previous decade of working in exploitation and pornography. The Oracle (1985) is a low-budget supernatural horror movie that uses the planchette as its hook – a silver artificial hand in a… Read.
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Night Of The Skull (1974)
Creaky mansions. Dark and stormy nights. People investigating by candle light. Someone jumping out of the shadows wearing a skull mask. Basic pleasures from the Spanish horror movie, Night Of The Skull (1974), just one of the hundred movies directed by Jess Franco, a gothic murder mystery with light giallo vibes. A family of aristocrats… Read.
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Eileen (2023)
Eileen (2023) is a character study. It’s also about stretching out the tension. The question keeps occurring: where is all this going? It’s the mid-1960s, it’s wintery and grey Massachusetts. Eileen works as a secretary in a prison. She looks after an alcoholic ex-cop father. She has daydreams about sex, or about killing her father. As… Read.
