Little liked by the critics on its initial release, John Carpenter’s dark paranoid fantasy has since been re-evaluated as one of the director’s best works. This effects-heavy remake of the 1951 classic The Thing from Another World (1951) returns to the original 1938 John W. Campbell Jr short story Who Goes There? for its inspiration, … Continue reading
Pity the poor zombie. Most movie monsters go through bad patches in their careers, but surely none has been as ill-served as the walking dead. Despite their continued popularity, when you look at it, there are remarkably few that you might call good, let alone great – certainly far less so than, say, vampires or … Continue reading
It was against formidable competition from The Exorcist that Hammer launched Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter (William Friedkin’s film had been released in the UK on 16 March 1974, just weeks before the Hammer film opened), a creditable enough attempt to ring the changes but one which all but vanished in the wake of Friedkin’s headline-hogging behemoth. … Continue reading
Somewhat lost on the shadow of its near contemporary, Ringu (1998), the prolific Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Cure was nevertheless a huge global hit when it began to make the rounds of the international film festivals, leading to a belated Stateside theatrical release in 2001. Though Cure and Ringu share many similarities (leading some to erroneously dismiss … Continue reading
After the roaring success of Zombi 2 (1979), Fulci was bitten by the horror bug and in 1980, he co-scripted this bizarre follow-up (better known to English speaking audiences as either City of the Living Dead or The Gates of Hell), an altogether darker, more gothic and almost entirely incomprehensible film. Its disjointed narrative boasts … Continue reading
This lavish adaptation of Stoker’s immortal (in every sense) novel is perhaps epitomized by its take on the character of Lucy Westenra, played here by Sadie Frost – for, like her, it is achingly beautiful but totally vacuous, easy on the eyes but empty-headed, and irritating almost beyond words.. Burdened with appalling acting, a script … Continue reading
1973 was an extraordinary year for the British horror film which stood at the cusp between the Gothic chills of the Hammer school of film making and the more visceral thrills that had already begun to seep into the American genre with Night of the Living Dead (1968) and would soon be flooding it in … Continue reading
