| Title |
Rating |
Capsule Comment |
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| 10/05 |
| The Hair of the Beast (2010) |
 ½
|
Quebecois (French-speaking Canadian) historical werewolf film somewhat reminiscent of Brotherhood of the Wolf ... The plot proves rather entertaining in its whisplash reversals and complications, although the film’s eventual provision of its werewolf falls down amid some ratty CGI effects |
| 09/05 |
| Life and Death of Porno Gang (2009) |
|
Overshadowed by the much more controversial A Serbian Film, this is a very similar Serbian film about the world of snuff movie-making ... While A Serbian Film went for taboo-breaking controversy, this is much more of a character-driven slow burner although is no less shocking in its own way |
| 08/05 |
| Vampire Bride (1960) |
|
Rather drab and cheap Japanese horror film about a disfigured actress who returns to life as a hairy vampire creature to exact vengeance ... Not without its schlocky appeals, the hairy vampire bride looks more funny than threatening |
| 07/05 |
| Citadel (2012) |
|
Irish-British production that depicts the desolate social housing estates of Glasgow as a netherworld inhabited by mutant children ... Undeniably effective but also a film that in its outlook of the children of urban ghettos as worthy of extermination requires you to tune out any liberal instincts in order to appreciate it |
| 06/05 |
| Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Part II (2013) |
½
|
The second of the two-part animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s all-time classic graphic novel ... The film is staged as a series of epic confrontations between iconic DC characters and written with a satisfyingly dark bite to emerge much more satisfying than the first film |
| 05/05 |
| Eddie the Sleepwalking Cannibal (2012) |
½
|
Rather peculiar film about a man who becomes a cannibal whenever he sleepwalks and an artist who finds inspiration at the sight of the dead bodies ... Taps a rich vein of black comedy, although in the end is not much more than a one-joke film |
| 04/05 |
| Thale (2012) |
|
Fascinating Norwegian film about the discovery of a mysterious girl who it gradually becomes apparent is not human ... The first 20 minutes are a superb piece of scene-setting but the rest of the film consists of not much more than people sitting around a cellar waiting for something to happen |
| 03/05 |
| Iron Man Three (2013) |
|
A major disappointment ... Firstly, stripping the superhero of the show of his suit is dull, makes for no more than a regular action hero, while the film’s treatment of comic-book canon and reduction of Iron Man’s No 1 villain to a cardboard threat ranks somewhere down alongside a Batsuit with nipples |
| 02/05 |
| Fritz the Cat (1972) |
|
The first animated film to receive an X-rating ... Ralph Bakshi’s first film, an adaptation of Robert Crumb’s cartoons, this is hilarious, frequently raunchy and with an appealingly nonsensical absurdism as the titular talking cat takes a strung-out but often sharply politicised picaresque through 1960s counter-culture |
| 01/05 |
| The Ghost Cat of Otama Pond (1960) |
|
Another effort from the Golden Age of kaidan eiga (Japanese ghost story films) during the 1950s-60s ... While this assembles the essentials of the genre, it is only delivered in terms of a series of strident and unsubtle pop-up effects |
| 30/04 |
| Teorema (1968) |
|
Controversial Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini makes a film in which a Christ-like visitor appears, seduces all the members of an upper-class family and afterwards leaves their lives changed ... A fascinating study in the effects of religion on ordinary lives, if in the end an oblique one with no easily found meanings |
| 29/04 |
| The Millennium Bug (2011) |
|
The Y2K Problem was a now largely forgotten social apocalypse that never came about so why someone is making a film about it now is a scratch of the head ... This is a confusing effort that starts out as a cartoonishly silly Backwoods Brutality film before abruptly jumping tracks to become a monster movie |
| 28/04 |
| Mass Effect: Paragon Lost (2012) |
½
|
Another instance of a computer game or film franchise turning to anime to conduct a spinoff ... While Mass Effect has an impressive reputation on the console screen, the film here is a dull piece that only comes in around the level of a production line animated tv episode |
| 27/04 |
| Wicked City (1993) |
|
Live-action version of a manga that was previously made as an anime ... This Hong Kong-made version is the lesser, lacking the perverse sexual imagery of the anime ... Features the wildly fantastical action scenes typical to HK fantasy of this era but this has been conducted on a low-budget and looks rubbery |
| 26/04 |
| Vampire Dog (2012) |
|
This may quite possibly be the worst vampire film ever made – a children’s film about a boy and a cute vampire dog ... Being a children’s film, the vampire dog is not allowed to drink blood so has to have a ravenous hunger for red jelly! ... The slapstick is excruciating and the film painful on every level |
| 25/04 |
| Wraiths of Roanoke (2007) |
|
B-budget Sci-Fi Channel outing that attempts to answer the true-life Unsolved Mystery of the lost colony at Roanoke ... Unfortunately, the film’s answers are no more interesting than a bunch of Viking spirits, while the film generates little atmosphere or anything beyond rudimentary historical conviction |
| 24/04 |
| Project: Metalbeast (1994) |
|
Typical 1990s video-released effort that stands out by dint of a far-out idea – a cyborg werewolf – even if in the end the film does nothing with it and everything only boils down to a standard monster movie that takes everything from the Alien playbook |
| 23/04 |
| Scary MoVie (2013) |
|
Just when you thought that this witless and unfunny series has died off, it drags itself out of mothballs for another outing ... If you’ve seen any of the other entries, it is exactly the same humour – a bunch of recent movie qoutings overrun with crude, moronic gags |
| 22/04 |
| Salvage (1979) |
|
Pilot for a forgotten short-lived tv series starring Andy Griffith as a junk collector who decides to mount his own expedition to The Moon ... Snappily written and pulls its premise off with a reasonable degree of plausibility |
| 21/04 |
| Attack of the 60 Foot Centerfolds (1995) |
|
Prolific B movie director Fred Olen Ray offers up his own bimbo movie take on Attack of the 50 Foot Woman ... Where the original was an early feminist parable, Olen Ray sets women’s rights back 40 years offering up a giant woman whose only motivation is wanting a bigger set of breasts |
| 20/04 |
| Alfie the Little Werewolf (2011) |
½
|
Film version of a popular series of Dutch children’s books ... The lonely bespectacled werewolf boy is the most adorable sight in the world, while the film is a sweetly gentle delight, not making a single wrong misstep or falling into any children’s movie cliches |
| 19/04 |
| Oblivion (2013) |
|
Falls short of being a great science-fiction film by a hairs breadth ... Not the big space opera/action film it is being sold as, more a Philip K. Dickian identity-bending conceptual breakthrough film, although here the film disappointingly seems to have borrowed large chunks of its set-up from Moon |
| 18/04 |
| Moon Man (2012) |
½
|
Beautifully made children’s film that is a refreshing change from most of the formulaic product released in the US mainstream ... Comes with a sweet simplicity and an enormous freshness, while the animation is rendered with a considerable beauty that makes it just as much a film for adults |
| 17/04 |
| Ghost Story of Yotsuya (1959) |
|
Japanese ghost story based on a kabuki play that has been filmed numerous times ... Much more character and story driven than modern kaidan eiga, this nevertheless builds to a grim and spooky climax with undeniable effect |
| 16/04 |
| Spiders (2013) |
½
|
When you approach this in terms of exactly what it promises to be – a revival of the good old B movie standard of the giant spider film – this proves absurdly entertaining and with some surprisingly good CGI spider effects |
| 15/04 |
Castle of Blood
(aka Danza Macabra) (1964) |
|
Classic work of 1960s Italian Gothic cinema ... Hack director Antonio Margheriti rises above himself to create a vividly spooky atmosphere, while the centre of the show is inhabited by the haunted otherworldly looks of Barbara Steele, the undisputed star of this mini-genre |
| 14/04 |
| Ghost Machine (2009) |
|
A Virtual Reality/horror film about a malevolent spirit incarnated inside a videogame ... Cheaply made and unimaginatively churns all the Virtual Reality cliches as though nothing had changed since 1995 and a tide of shabby Lawnmower Man copies |
| 13/04 |
Asterix and Obelix: God Save Britannia
(Asterix and Obelix in Britain; Asterix and Obelix: On Her Majesty’s Secret Service) (2012) |
|
Fourth of the live-action films adapted from the popular Asterix comic-books and starring Gerard Depardieu as Obelix ... Adapting two of the books, this successfully replicates the absurdist historical wit of the comic-books up on screen while gently poking fun at the foibles of the British |
| 12/04 |
| Camille Rewinds (2012) |
|
This French film, a directing-starring vehicle for Noemie Lvovsky, is a fairly blatant uncredited copy of Francis Ford Coppola’s Peggy Sue Got Married wherein a dissatisfied divorcee is propelled back to her high school graduating year and gets to unmake her life choices |
| 11/04 |
| The Colony (2013) |
|
Creates a fascinatingly different future – a world of grim survivalism amid a new Ice Age in the aftermath of Global Warming ... the look of the film is fantastic, only to go and blow it on an uninspired action focus and tired Mad Max cliches about fighting off crazed cannibals |
| 10/04 |
| Vamp U (2013) |
|
The entirely unappealing notion of a vampire frat rat comedy ... The film is agonisingly unfunny on almost every level, while Adam Johnson’s hipster professor may count as possibly the wimpiest and most non-threatening vampire in the history of cinema |
| 09/04 |
| Atlas Shrugged II: The Strike (2012) |
|
The second film from Ayn Rand’s libertarian fantasy ... This gets more into the meat of Rand’s ideas (wherein the wealthy decide to ignore an undeserving world) and consequently is even more ridiculous than the first film ... Characters talk in speeches and display absurd motivations that seem completely divorced from the way people operate in the real world |
| 08/04 |
| Dracula (2012) |
|
Hard to describe what an utter disappointment Dario Argento’s take on the oft-filmed Bram Stoker work is ... Argento seems to have entirely lost the mojo and visual flair that made him a cult name 25 years ago, delivering no more than a better budgeted version of the Jack Palance tv movie ... Thomas Kretschmann makes for the screen’s mellowest Dracula |
| 07/04 |
| The Miracle (1959) |
|
A ridiculously melodramatic Catholic historical drama wherein a statue of the Virgin Mary comes to life to take the place of a nun so she can run off and woo a young Roger Moore ... A lushly made canvas but otherwise absurdly overwrought piety |
| 06/04 |
| Evil Dead (2013) |
½
|
One of the few remakes of the 00s/10s that delivers the goods ... While messing around with the plot set-up with mixed results, new director Fede Alvarez quickly does what the original did and goes for broke with all ferocity bared to create a rather satisfying show on most accounts |
| 05/04 |
Dellamorte Dellamore
(aka Cemetery Man) (1994) |
½
|
Cult Italian film with Rupert Everett as a cemetery keeper facing the resurrected dead ... Has such a wackily off-the-wall mix of black, deadpan humour and artiness, not to mention Everett at his laconic best, that you can never tell where it is going from one minute to the next |
| 04/04 |
| Berserk (1967) |
½
|
Film about a series of sensationalistic murders at a circus ... Producer Herman Cohen is clearly trying to replicate the success of his earlier Horrors of the Black Museum but produces a much tamer work ... On the plus side, the film does have Joan Crawford chewing the scenery in grand style |
| 03/04 |
| Beast of Blood (1971) |
|
Third of the Filipino-shot Blood Island films ... Has a slow and uneventful first half before getting to the overacting mad scientist, cheesy monster (a severed head in a laboratory), schlocky gore effects and gratuitous toplessness we expect of a Filipino monster movie but eventually delivers the goods |
| 02/04 |
| Tamara (2005) |
|
Feels like an early 80s copy of Carrie about a bullied teenage girl taking supernatural revenge – that and the plot of I Know What You Did Last Summer ... A slick but largely superficial effort with little legs beyond its teen audience, although Jenna Dewan injects some sizzle into the role of the nerd girl turned bad girl |
| 01/04 |
| The Unearthly (1957) |
|
One of the very last gasps of the great era of mad scientist films from the 1940s ... Despite assembling a great cast of genre regulars, this never does much to stir its pot – the mad scientist’s scheme is vague and the film almost never ventures outside of a single house |
| 31/03 |
| The Croods (2013) |
|
A film I had zero enthusiasm before going in proves a gentle surprise ... What gives the expectation of being an exceedingly forumalic work of animation about a prehistoric cave family instead comes with a fresh and naturalistic sense of humour that proves oddly appealing |
| 30/03 |
| The Pyx (1973) |
|
Difficult to find 1970s Canadian-made occult film that doesn’t quite live up to expectation ... Mostly it is a police procedural and the devil worship cult angle only emerges as a left field ending in the last ten minutes ... Not tight enough as a detective story to fully work |
| 29/03 |
| The Host (2013) |
|
This adaptation of a Stephenie Meyer novel seems to offer mismatched talents – a teen romance writer vs Andrew Niccol, a director of smart conceptual sf – but the two work with surprising congruence ... Niccol tones down Meyer’s overripe teen romance and focuses on the conceptual angle to deliver a smart new take on the alien body snatchers genre |
| 28/03 |
| Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006) |
|
What starts out as a seeming mockumentary about a serial killer turns into an hilarious deconstruction of the tropes and cliches of the slasher film – imagine a film like Man Bites Dog crossbred with Scream ... Exceedingly witty, even cleverer than the subsequent, similarly minded The Cabin in the Woods |
| 27/03 |
| G.I. Joe: Retaliation (2013) |
|
You can’t complain that this is not exactly what you expect it to be – two hours of cartoonish action during which the brain singularly fails to engage ... Less unapologetic about being a military fantasy than the first film, the biggest downer is the writing out of Channing Tatum’s hero soon into the show |
| 26/03 |
| Bangkok Haunted (2001) |
|
Early effort from one of the Pang Brothers Oxide, although he only directs one of the episodes in this trio of Thai ghost stories ... The other director’s grasp of horror effect is often crude and amateurish, while the episodes feel overlong and in need of trimming |
| 25/03 |
| The Man in Half Moon Street (1945) |
½
|
Effort from the heyday of mad science cinema about a scientist who has perfected an immortality treatment ... Better budgeted than most of the other cheapies of the era and better written, although suffers from a slow talkiness |
| 24/03 |
| The Gruesome Death of Tommy Pistol (2011) |
|
Aramis Sartorio aka porn actor Tommy Pistol directs and stars in this trio of Hollywood horror tales where everything is aimed at the farcical bad taste/gross out level of a Troma film ... Nothing particularly witty or sophisticated here |
| 23/03 |
| Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012) |
|
Sixth entry in the series throws out all the limited themes the previous sequels operated by and feels like a Universal Soldier film written by Philip K. Dick with utterly fascinating results ... John Hyams hits in with a brutal intensivity that shows he is one of the most exciting up and coming action directors |
| 22/03 |
| Shadowland (2010) |
|
A low-budget vampire film that at least tries to be original ... Has a worthwhile leading lady and a chase plot that keeps it going past some of its amateurishness, but in the end it never quite goes far enough |
| 21/03 |
| First on the Moon (2005) |
½
|
A Russian mockumentary in the vein of Peter Jackson’s Forgotten Silver that purports to tell the story of a Soviet expedition to The Moon in 1938 ... The film conducts an exceptional mimicry of the style of the Soviet propaganda film, although becomes less interesting when it drops this in the second half |
| 20/03 |
| The Collection (2012) |
|
Heavily disappointing sequel to the 2009 Torture Porn film The Collector even though from the same creative team ... The fascinating premise of an ordinary house turned into a series of deadly traps is gone, while the sadistic, gore-drenched set-pieces are tame and unimaginative |
| 19/03 |
| Children Who Chase Lost Voices from the Deep (2011) |
|
Makoto Shinkai has been called a successor to Hayao Miyazaki and a flawless capturing of the Miyazaki style – the clean simplicity of the animation, reverence for nature, the tender intimacy of the characters – is certainly evident in this beautifully animated work about the discovery of an underground realm |
| 18/03 |
| Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) |
½
|
An Old Dark House film from the silent era ... Haxan director Benjamin Christensen turns the mansion into a fantastical netherworld and creates a compulsive atmosphere of weird and fascinating happenings that is is only marred only by a contrived mundane ending |
| 17/03 |
Per Aspera Ad Astra
(aka To the Stars By Hard Ways) (1981) |
|
Soviet-made science-fiction film about a mysterious female alien visitor ... The set-up intrigues for a time but the directorial delivery is dull and prosaic, while the mystery about who the alien woman is sidetracked by a long-winded interplanetary adventure in the second half |
| 16/03 |
| The Call (2013) |
|
A frustratingly formulaic and processed psycho-thriller from the usually worthwhile Brad Anderson ... The script’s twists hold you for a time but Anderson’s fidgety visual style and two unengaging lead actresses leave this feeling like a cable psycho-thriller that has ended up on the big screen |
| 15/03 |
| Stereo (1969) |
½ |
The very first film from David Cronenberg ... An incredibly experimental work even today, which consists solely of people wandering the halls of a university and the soundtrack of voices discussing psychic powers experiments in a dryly funny parody of an academic paper ... Fascinatingly oblique |
| 14/03 |
| Chariots of the Gods (1970) |
|
Documentary based on the first book of the fringe science crank Erich von Daniken who gained quite a following in the 1970s with his theories (ridiculed by historians and archaeologists) that aliens visited Earth in the past and evidence of this can be found in ancient texts, inscriptions and monuments |
| 13/03 |
| Stoker (2013) |
½ |
The English-language debut from South Korea’s Park Chan-wook is a supremely controlled film, more like a period arthouse film than drenched in the buckets of gore we expect of Park ... Essentially a reworking of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, a film that takes place all in smouldering tensions |
| 12/03 |
Slave Girls
(aka Prehistoric Women) (1967) |
½ |
One of a handful of prehistoric adventure films made by Hammer Studios ... This eschews the stop-motion animated dinosaurs of their earlier One Million Years B.C. but does give the stage to Martine Beswick who injects a sizzling dose of sexuality and camps a silly plot up by playing to the hilt |
| 11/03 |
| The Flesh and Blood Show (1972) |
|
One of the earlier films from the underrated British director Pete Walker, a whodunnit with a psycho stalking the cast of a theatrical rehearsal ... Not as sophisticated as some of Walker’s later films ... Walker doesn’t stint on the flesh but proves tamer than usual when it comes to the blood |
| 10/03 |
| The Suicide Shop (2012) |
|
French animated film that is about as far from children’s entertainment as it is possible to get – a mordantly dark comedy that operates in similar territory to The Addams Family in its tale of a family that operates a shop selling items of despatch to the suicidally minded |
| 09/03 |
| The Last Exorcism Part II (2013) |
|
Sequel to the sleeper 2010 Found Footage hit ... Alas, this is a sequel that understands almost nothing about what made the first film so original ... In abandoning the Found Footage look and unique central character, this is just a possession film that comes utterly by the numbers |
| 08/03 |
| Oz: The Great and Powerful (2013) |
½ |
Sam Raimi’s prequel to The Wizard of Oz is a very different film – the story of how a conman fools an entire land rather than of an innocent girl just trying to find her way home – but the reconceptualisation of Oz comes with a colourful sweep, while the story works well in stitching the familiar elements together |
| 07/03 |
| Killer Bees (1974) |
|
TV movie that does nothing to dispel the dictum that there has never been any such thing as a good killer bee film ... as always, the effects let the show down – even then, there are few attacks and the rest of the piece is slow going and talky, making for one of the dullest of the 1970s Nature’s Revenge films |
| 06/03 |
| George’s Intervention (2009) |
|
A zombie comedy that comes with a mildly amusing premise – people stage an intervention to stop their friend eating people – that might have extended to a cute short film but feels a drawn-out single gag as a full length film |
| 05/03 |
| Crescendo (1970) |
½
|
Another of Hammer Films’ psycho-thrillers ... Unlike most of the other Hammer psycho-thrillers, this is in colour where it seems to sacrifice much of the edgy tension the others had from shooting in b/w ... The plot seems slow to kick in the usual contorted twists but does eventually produce some worthwhile shocks |
| 04/03 |
| Escape from Planet Earth (2013) |
|
This is fake science-fiction – a film that has no interest in its concept, one that exists solely as a series of pop culture jokes, cutsie supporting characters, thrills and feelgood epiphanies, all processed to the formula of the modern animated children’s film |
| 03/03 |
| Sleep Tight (2011) |
½
|
Spanish director Jaume Balaguero delivers this dark psycho-thriller about a likeable building manager who enjoys secretly playing cruel games and making life miserable for his tenants ... The film oddly makes us have sympathy for his malevolence and Balaguero generates some gripping tension |
| 02/03 |
| Strippers vs. Werewolves (2012) |
|
Probably the next logical move after Zombie Strippers! ... Alas, where this should have been a fast, funny and sarcastic genre entry, the humour in this British entry becomes painfully belaboured in its constant unfunny efforts to get laughs |
| 01/03 |
| Exit Humanity (2011) |
|
Modestly effective zombie film set during the US Civil War ... Not the usual gore-drenched zombie attacks, instead eschews this in favour of a nicely achieved story about one man’s internal journey through the apocalypse |
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