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 […]

Creepy (2016)

There’s a masterclass sequence in Creepy (2016) that shows off Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s command with visually increasing uneasiness. A retired detective now a college professor Takakura (Hidetoshi Nishijima from Drive My Car) is working with his former partner Nogami (Masahiro Higashide) on a cold case, a missing family who disappeared five years ago. Within the university […]

The Oracle (1985)

After seeing the repulsive yet effective thriller, Tenement, I was interested to see more of director Roberta Findlay’s mainstream 1980s genre work, after a previous decade of working in exploitation and pornography. The Oracle (1985) is a low-budget supernatural horror movie that uses the planchette as its hook – a silver artificial hand in a […]

Four Of The Apocalypse (1975)

Four Of The Apocalypse (1975) is a late-period spaghetti western, as the Italian genre was on the decline in the 1970s, directed by Lucio Fulci. Even though this before Fulci’s ‘Gates of Hell’ trilogy, and some of the more gnarlier movies that would make his name as a horror filmmaker (Zombi 2, The New York […]

Night Of The Skull (1974)

Creaky mansions. Dark and stormy nights. People investigating by candle light. Someone jumping out of the shadows wearing a skull mask. Basic pleasures from the Spanish horror movie, Night Of The Skull (1974), just one of the hundred movies directed by Jess Franco, a gothic murder mystery with light giallo vibes. A family of aristocrats […]