Death Line (1972)

The concept of this British 1970s horror movie, Death Line (1972) sounds better, more horrifying, than its execution, and is less lurid than some of its posters make it look like (particularly the ones under the alternative title Raw Meat). Set in the London underground rail system, the opening follows a posh English gentleman doing […]

Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning (2012)

Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning (2012) might be a sequel but it’s also a resetting. Jean-Claude Van Damme and Dolph Lundgren are the game pieces but the board has changed (even Andrei Arlovski from the previous sequel is another refashioned game piece). After making an impressively gritty, muscular action film out of a DTV franchise […]

Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971)

I do like the exchange between monthly Criterion Channel programming and people I follow on Letterboxd tending to watch the same stuff, like a slowly crawling communal experience. I’d heard the title Let’s Scare Jessica To Death (1971) but didn’t really have any idea what it was like, assuming it was a tongue in cheek […]

Guilty As Sin (1993)

Next to the 90s erotic thriller is the sexy courtroom thriller, all of which tends to be coated in references to Hitchcock. Guilty As Sin (1993) is scripted by genre stalwart Larry Cohen (The Stuff, Phone Booth) and directed by Sidney Lumet (Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon), and I remember commercials for it at the time, […]

A Return To Salem’s Lot (1987)

This was a wacky one. Part of the wave of Stephen King adaptations that were only tangentially related to their source material and clogged up the video shelves in the late 80s and early 90s, A Return To Salem’s Lot (1987) is a sequel to Stephen King’s novel and the TV miniseries, which is directed […]