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, […]

Bloody Moon (1981)

Must a film be coherent? Eurohorror has so much to teach us. The American slasher genre filtered through Spanish director Jess Franco in gun-for-hire mode. Accentuated by watching the English dub where the voiceover artists are rushing through dialogue at a speedy clip, another layer to what is already alien onscreen behaviour. A group of […]

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 […]

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 […]

Christmas Evil (1980)

Christmas Evil (1980) is John Waters’ favourite Christmas movie. It’s easy to see why, as the film’s New Jersey suburban setting is not far away from the Baltimore depicted in Waters’ films: there’s something miserable mixed within the campiness. Christmas Evil is less of a slasher than Silent Night Deadly Night, more of a cross […]