Night Of The Ghouls (1959)

The seance scene. When the camera focuses on Dr. Acula (Kenne Duncan) – a granite-face middle-aged guy wearing a suit and a “swami” turban – sitting at a table, and the camera moves back so that we can see three people sitting on one side, and three rinky-dink skeletons sitting on the other, I was […]

The Eternal Daughter (2022)

The Eternal Daughter (2022) is not a horror movie, but a ghost story. It’s useful to make that distinction since it’s about eeriness and suggestion, using ghosts as a way of dealing with memory, uncertainty and unresolvable emotions. Joanna Hogg (Unrelated) reunites with Tilda Swinton (after her first short film, Caprice, and The Souvenir Part […]

Chime (2024)

After I watched Chime (2024) at home, I started washing up dishes in the kitchen and felt a rising pressure in my head. At 45 minutes length and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Chime builds tension with no release. Obviously its short length might preclude a fuller narrative experience, more time given to understand what’s going […]

The City Of The Dead (1960)

It’s a simple but effective trick. Works for rock shows, and it certainly works for old, black-and-white horror movies. If you don’t have the budget for set design, just pump in the smoke machine! The City Of The Dead (1960; aka Horror Hotel) gets a lot of atmospheric effect through its one major street set […]

Sweet Home (1989)

As a Japanese horror movie, Sweet Home (1989) has a cult following because it was released with a tie-in horror computer game from Capcom, which became the inspiration for the original Resident Evil video game. As an entry in director Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s filmography, it’s different to the disturbing, eerie horror movies that would make his […]