Regular Columns

After a brief absence (dja miss me?), here we go with The Wishlist, Part 2. This time around: The Reflecting Skin. This 1990 British film, directed by Philip Ridley, did get a DVD release in Japan in 2005, but has yet to show up on these shores, and more’s the pity.

The film takes place in the American Midwest in the 1950s, and has the supersaturated colours and creepy beauty one would associated with Terrence Malick, and, as with Malick, all sorts of nastiness lurks under the beauty. The protagonist…
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The Wishlist, Part 1. Wherein I pine over films that are overdue for a DVD re-release, or have yet to see the light in that format at all. Today’s subject: the 1980 sci-fi fiasco Saturn 3.

The film is a joy for a number of reasons. First, there’s the absurd plot: on a research base orbiting Saturn, passions flare as the idyll of the couple living there is disrupted by an unstable new arrival and his killer robot, who both wind up lusting after the woman on board. If the storyline were all that was ri…
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A couple of months back, Shriek Show released its Evil Animals box set, presenting a triple feature treat for fans of 70’s horror that has more than a touch of cheese to it. There are two theatrical flicks here, and one made-for-TV opus, and the titles should ring nostalgic bells for anyone who was a kid in that decade.

Two of the films – Grizzly and Day of the Animals – are the work of director William Girdler, and man whose output was never what one might actually call “good,” but was always…
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On May 21, Bruno Mattei died. He was the director of uncounted low-end Italian exploitation films, occupying a niche of horror and sex (frequently both) not unlike that owned by Joe D’Amato. It would be stretching the truth rather too far to say that he left us some good films, but he did leave us some entertaining ones. Viewers wanting a taste of his work should steer clear of Hell of the Living Dead, a zombie film that unfortunately is as dull as it is ludicrous. But Rats: Night of Terror (1983…
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It has been a commonplace for quite some time now to take for granted that the B-movie, as we used to know it, has died. The types of stories we used to get in those films, from, for the sake of argument, the 30s to the late 70s, have been taken over by the blockbusters. So we get the same narratives, but with budgets in excess of 100 million dollars. So not only has the B-pic lost its turf, but it has also lost its natural habitat. The drive-in is almost extinct, and anyway, it is almost impossible for such films to…
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I’m going to run the horrible risk of coming across as the worst sort of “in my day” fuddy duddy this week. Oh well, he said, with a philosophical shrug of the shoulders.

So we’re a mere matter of weeks away from the release of Hostel: Part II, and no doubt another round of handwringing and analysis in the mainstream media about the popularity of the torture film (if the movie does well) or a celebration and analysis of its demise (if the flick bombs). Now, let’s be clear, I had a hoot at the first f…
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Personal confession time, though I doubt I am entirely alone in experiencing the following. One of the odd side-effects of the fact that, sooner or later, EVERYTHING is making its way to DVD, is that some of that some of the more deliciously sordid mysteries of one’s youth are fading in the harsh light of day. Nowhere is this more the case than in the realm of the exploitation film.

As I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m of an age that places me between two stools. I’m old enough to remember the grindhouses her…
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Complaining about remakes is a lazy, fish-in-the-barrel sport. Any scribe can and has done it, especially, one suspects, when ideas are otherwise running low. But remakes are on my mind thanks to a recent encounter with a particularly bad one, so screw it, I’m ruminating.

Received wisdom posits that remakes are inherently a bad thing, on a par with sequels (but even more morally suspect, depending on the quality of the original film), and a sign of creative stagnation in the film industry. This is true as f…
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