Habit (1995)

First time I heard about Larry Fessenden’s Habit (1995) was through a glowing Roger Ebert review I remember reading. As a low budget indie with zero stars, it never received an Australian cinema release, or even a video release, or possibly I just missed out since I was in high school. There’s an indie movie […]

A Hero Never Dies (1998)

Wine being poured into a glass while blood drops onto a table; the bartender doing the pouring, having been smashed in the face by demanding triad bosses ordering him around. One lingering image from the very stylish A Hero Never Dies (1998), which uses a bottle of wine as a symbolic bond between two criminal […]

The Hot Spot (1990)

Look, I always knew about The Hot Spot (1990) because of an adolescent crush on Jennifer Connelly. A neo-noir directed by Dennis Hopper was also an alluring proposition, Don Johnson in the lead as an opportunistic drifter in a small Texan town, caught between two archetypical babes, the girl next door (Connelly) and the southern […]

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 […]

Body Melt (1993)

When the younger cop pulled off his shades to reveal it was Andrew Daddo… a powerful surge ran through me. As a local council mayor said recently during a radio interview, “Think global, act local.” And genres can always travel internationally, globally, such as horror with lots of gore and goop. But that local touch, […]