In Mandy, our doomed lovers share a pre-tragedy dinner of microwavable meals while taking in a very special piece of cinema. Mandy and Red sit rapt as a snaggle toothed, jumpsuit-clad creature tears open abdomens and uses a laser pistol to blow away anyone crossing its path. I share their
In 1973 a movie was released about a demon living within the body of a young girl. Its arrival was a nuclear explosion in the world of cinema, creating urban legends, upending genre expectations and solidifying its place as the last word on possession horror. Cathy's Curse is
"The World is dead. It raped itself...But I'll purify it with blood!" -George Eastman with Manic Panic highlights, wearing homoerotic Stormtrooper armor. When a youthful Dr. Graves first discovered Max-sploitation existed, I had what amounted to a mini-stroke. A whole slew of movies featuring modified
FACES OF DEATH transcended its physical form. It grew like a starving void, spreading like an eldritch cancer. It bulged against the film reels within the VHS and bloomed violently out of the plastic housing. The metastasis could not be stopped by the barrier of its slipcase with the drawing
If your movie has Ol' Scratch in the title, I better see him make an appearance. Satan's Storybook has an Aldi-brand Lou Cypher with shag carpet legs. The Devil's Rain has Borgnine's titanic eyebrows perfectly channeling the man downstairs. Asylum Of Satan is
It's surreal watching a seventies movie in high definition. I'm sure this has been talked about before, and using far more pretentious language, but it's an unmooring experience. During the wedding scene in The Bride (Or Last House on Massacre Street if yer'
Frank Zito is 1980 New York made flesh. He is the blinding lights of the porno theaters, beaming photons that promise lust across slush-slick sidewalks. He is the steam from a manhole cover obscuring a figure that watches you, as you fumble for your keys in the doorway. He is
Bruno Mattei would have remade all of his movies. I'm paraphrasing, but he said as much in an interview on the Blue Underground DVD for, I think, Hell Of The Living Dead. I respect his honesty. I also respect his callous disregard for the notion of creative licensing.
Dear friends, Hellmaster (AKA Them if yer' nasty) is bad. I want to be up front about that. If you want me to judge the film on its ability to have an understandable plot structure, create meaningful character arcs and give something for David Emge to do, then I
There's a world where your daydreams become nightmares that involve a Kali-coded devil woman and the metal band D.C. Lacroix. This is a place where your girlfriend has a Pentagram badly tattooed on her butt, and a fully stocked bar in her living room. In this world
Ugliness can be a powerful cinematic tool. That should go without saying when it comes to the horror genre, but we are in a world far removed from the phrase "Go without saying." Michael Rooker in a crumbling apartment, stammering slowly through a dark confession in Henry: Portrait
"It was the start of the year in our old Celtic lands, and we'd be waiting in our houses of wattles and clay. The barriers would be down, you see, between the real and the unreal, and the dead might be looking in to sit by our