Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser is obviously a horror classic, and it was something I only experienced for the first time during last year’s Halloween. With a horror icon in Pinhead (Doug Bradley), whatever dated effects are to be found in there are made up for by the film’s perverse, sadomasochistic fervour; this wasn’t just a slasher, […]

Lone Wolf And Cub: Baby Cart To Hades (1972)

There’s something about Tomisaburo Wakayama’s portly stature and sullen demeanour as Ogami Itto, the wandering ronin, at the centre of the Lone Wolf And Cub series. A highly skilled and almost invincible assassin, Wakayama grounds everything with his grumpy stoicism and physicality, particularly in the face of enemy hordes and gushing blood sprays. Or in […]

Psycho II (1983)

Now this is a legacy sequel! Psycho II (1983) was actually a box office hit, from what I’ve read, and exists nicely at this cross-section of eras and influences: obviously 1960s Hitchcock, but also 1970s Network TV Mystery Of The Week and 1980s Slasher Sequels. While an unnecessary sequel to a genre-defining classic twenty years […]

Scanners III: The Takeover (1991)

When they came to the third entry in the Scanners franchise – based on David Croenenberg’s original film where a strain of people in Canada are born with psychic powers due to government experimentation in drugs given to expectant mothers – they were really having fun with the possibilities here: What if a pigeon annoyed […]

Scanners II: The New Order (1991)

A new acting category in the Oscars should be the Best Scanners Acting Award, actors undertaking the challenge to either be the one who is scanning (using their mind to express psychic power) or who is being scanned (getting your mind overpowered by an invisible force). Both offer the chance for an actor to give […]