The Devil Rides Out (1968)

Exploring the world of Hammer Horror, which I only know through the doco compilation series that was on SBS growing up, I haven’t seen many of the British studio’s horror films. The Devil Rides Out (1968) was a good place to start (and shout out to Joe Kapiteyn’s band whose name I presume is taken […]

Lifeforce (1985)

I owned the BluRay for a year before finally having a player to watch it on. After hearing about it for so long, I finally watched Lifeforce (1985), director Tobe Hooper’s infamous flop for Cannon Pictures about nude space vampires plunging London into zombie apocalypse, a sci-fi throwback to Hammer Horror movies. This has quite […]

Stormy Monday (1988)

Acquired this from Arrow Video on Blu-Ray a whim and I really dug it. Stormy Monday (1988) is only 95 minutes long but it moves slow, luxuriating in the neo-noir atmosphere it creates in Newcastle, England. Wet streets, neon signs and dime-store archetypes. Oh, and the quartet of lead actors are all looking incredibly foxy, […]

The Hit (1984)

The Hit (1984) is an existential road movie directed by Stephen Frears and set in Spain. Starring John Hurt and a young Tim Roth as a pair of hitmen tasked with taking back a “grasser” played by the benevolent Terence Stamp. This is beautifully shot and continually tense yet imbued with a thoughtful tone. Recommended.

Performance (1970)

Continuing to backtrack through the work of director Nicolas Roeg, and I didn’t realise he co-directed Performance (1970) with its writer Donald Cammell. First, I was surprised to see the typically urbane and upper crust James Fox convincingly play a cockney gangster, a real sadistic rotter who gets into a bit of sticky bother with […]