REVIEWS

  Roger Corman is a cinematic genius in many ways. To some he’s produced absolute celluloid drivel, and to others the best hammy camp cult classics a movie goer ever hopes to see. Without him there would be no Tarantino or Rodriguez, let alone Kevin Smith or Rob Zombie. These directors grew up on a diet of his films in the salad days, where they shone at midnight shows or drive-ins. The movies he produces are brash, trashy and flashy – like great big pair of heaving breasts covered in glitter. 

This is a rollercoaster of pure nastiness. It’s horrific, uncomfortable, but not devoid of… Hope. From the tense, claustrophobic opening scene, we know what this is going to be. A woman wakes up trapped in a box. Upon freeing herself, she is rewarded by a blow to the face with a rifle-butt. 

A gaggle of chattering schoolgirls are making their way to the edge of a train platform. They join hands, and as the train pulls into the station, all 54 of the uniformed waifs jump in unison onto the tracks. What follows is pure carnage. Heads are flattened, blood sprays and within a few seconds it hits you: this is going to bit a sick, twisted blood-fest. Yay! Suicide Club spirals into one gory and confusing death-scene after another, as a string of apparently unrelated suicides baffle the police. At each crime scene, they find a bag, in which rolls of human skin have been stitched together. As the story unfolds, detectives begin to suspect that the skin was removed...

In the 1970s, the devil and satanic cults got a bad rap, and proved attractive forbidden fodder for movie goers. The Exorcist had people fainting in the aisles. The Manson Family terrorised a nation. Rosemary’s Baby was a hit, and made you question your neighbours. Race With the Devil belongs to a genre that’s often overlooked. This holiday from hell/car chase/popcorn flick is a great movie for different reasons. Directed by Jack Starrett (sometimes credited elsewhere as Claude Ennis Starrett Jr), it stars Peter Fonda and Warren Oates, two further reasons to see the film. It all starts when a pair of Texan best buds decide to take their wives on a skiing trip. So on to Aspen in...

Last year, I was diagnosed with swine flu. Upon being quarantined in my flat, with much time on my hands, I scanned my movie archive. My first appropriate choice to keep my feeble mind busy was , the Spanish sleeper-hit that took many by surprise in 2007. I love that movie for many reasons. The claustrophobic intensity. The manic frustration of the residents trying to figure out what’s going on. And now, I shared their plight. I was ushered out of my Doctor’s office faster than a whore in church, once it was verified I was infected. Luckily for my sick butt, I was given a copy of 2 by a buddy (thanks Ishi!). So I was, as...

Or, Don’t Watch This Film Sober! Don’t Go In The Woods was the first ever video nasty to jump out of the pages of The Dark Side magazine and into my crazed mind! The cover art fascinated me beyond belief. The hand-drawn image of the severely beaten (and presumed dead) woman, the backdrop of an eerie campfire, topped with a tagline of “Everyone has nightmares about the ugliest way to die!” gave me a glimpse of hope that greats like Friday The 13th and The Burning had a new camp-slasher flick to challenge them. How wrong I was. By the time I finally got hold of the Uncut 25th Anniversary edition many years later, I’d trawled through hundreds of...

A former summer camp caretaker, horribly burned from a prank gone wrong, lurks around an upstate New York summer camp bent on killing the teenagers responsible for his disfigurement… The Burning kicks horror-movie ass! It has all the ingredients to make a perfect slasher movie. Creepy camp setting? Check. Annoying teenagers? Check. Dodgy 80’s synth music? Check. Prank that went horribly wrong a few years before? Check. You get the idea. It’s also notable for helping “launch” the careers of Holly Hunter (The Piano), Jason Alexander (TV’s Seinfeld) and Fisher Stephens (Short Circuit). While Hunter’s role is a “blink and you’ll miss it”, Alexander and Stephens are well fleshed out and extremely likeable. The best aspect of this slasher...