[Demoncrat]

Originally Posted by Frankie Teardrop

ALUCARDA - Weird horror from seventies Mexico has a strange fairy tale atmosphere and is a sort of mix of nunsploitation and post-Exorcist horror but with its eye on a far more surreal horizon (I think the director had something to do with Jodorowsky at some point). It features nuns in odd menstrual gowns, girls dallying with the devil and some really harsh screaming. Really is worth a look for those who haven't already checked it out, very intense in places although gets a little baggy around the middle and can't quite sustain itself.

WAXWORK - The sixteen year old Frankie used to turn his nose up at this back in the mid-nineties when a tenth generation copy of 'In A Glass Cage' was all that was dreamed of. I've since learned the error of my ways and can now enjoy this trashy weirdness for what it is ie. a fairly novel mash up involving high school teen angst and campy monsterdom, but with a surprisingly crazed feel to it in places and some nice gore and toe dipping transgression for the overly cutesy nineties. I liked the 'portmanteau' aspect and the full on monster onslaught at the end. I say, go for it!

DEEP IN THE WOODS - I think this was part of that 'New French Splatter' wave of the early noughties. First time with it for me, and I have to say I really liked. It's essentially a slasher flick which riffs on 'Little Red Riding Hood' and features a bitchy young acting troupe being progressively whittled down by a dude in a wolf outfit in a house. The film's style (with multiple nods to the baroque orchestrations of Argento ) and dark quirks (an omnipresent autistic kid with an eerie stare) provide the focus, and a claustrophobic ambience takes centre stage. Very good.

BUNDY - The Matthew Bright film from 2002. Starts off looking like it might do a slightly twisted tongue in cheek number on the man and his crimes, and to an extent it does, but it ends up being utterly disturbing, particularly in the last half hour, with its barbaric state execution preparation. In fact, out of pretty much all the films I've seen recently, it left me with that slightly hollow, numb feeling that a really hard hitting piece of dark cinema can sometimes impart. Definitely worth checking out.

STOKER - I was actually really impressed by this mainstream effort, which manages to be a bit twisted, or at least as twisted as a film starring Nicole Kidman has any right to be. There are sickly undertones lurking beneath the crisply elegant semi-art house veneer erected by Oldboy director Chan-Wook Park and the whole thing seems a stylish excursion into incest weirdness which I'm looking forward to watching again soon if I can if only for fairness's sake as unfortunately I was half cut when I saw it.

Love me that Mexican minx. Bundy I hated and would rather watch CP than sit through that shit again. Am champing at the bit for Stoker.