Rivelazioni di un maniaco sessuale al capo della squadra mobile.
Camera Obscura.

Roberto Bianchi Montero, father to the infamous Mario Bianchi, has gone somewhat unsung in the digital age. Whereas his spawn has gone on to achieve some notoriety, Bianchi senior has still yet to find his place in Euro-cult history. Born in Rome on the 7th December 1907, Montero made his directorial debut; as Roberto Bianchi, in 1943 with comedy Gli assi della risata. A jack of all trades, Montero...

My review of the recent Belgian shocker, Left Bank, is now up over at Lovelock&load!

Go get reading and tell us what you thought of the movie!

Thirst (Bakjwi - 2009)
Focus Features

The vampire genre, as we all know, has arisen from its coffin once again – thanks, some may say, to a Mormon. Though I don’t see Twilight as the saviour of the genre, I like to think Alan Ball and his excellent adaptation of Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire series, True Blood, is the saving grace behind the re-birth. It’s the anti-Twilight in everyway, and everything vampirism should be; dark, brooding, dangerous and sexual – not sparkly...

Terror Express (La Regazza del Vagone Letto - 1979)
Camera Obscura

Terror Express is a late-comer to the rape/revenge genre that was launched by Wes Craven’s sadistic Last House on the Left, but it’s also one of the sleaziest, scrap that, possibly the sleaziest; though that really isn’t that shocking when you realise it’s from the same mind that conjured up such classy titles as Porno Holocaust and Erotic Nights of the Living Dead - Luigi Montefiori (A.K.A George Eastman)....

Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984)
Arrow Video

The Slasher genre is no stranger to controversy, but there was one film that went a little too far with its seasonal slaughter – 1984s Silent Night, Deadly Night. Halloween had been done, Valentine’s Day had been done, Birthdays had been done, hell Christmas had already been done, repeatedly, but people didn’t seem to pay much mind to Black Christmas or Christmas Evil. Silent Night, Deadly Night however, struck a chord with its...

Let the Right One In (2008)
Momentum

Stockholm, 1982. Oskar, a bullied twelve-year-old, dreams of getting revenge on the classmates who terrorise him. One night he meets his new neighbour, Eli, outside their apartment block. She’s his age, more or less, and a friendship blossoms as they continue to meet up on the jungle gym at night. With the arrival of Eli and her guardian, Håkan, comes news of a death in a near-by suburb, the boy was found hanging upside down from a tree,...

To Be Twenty is a cautionary tale of two young, liberated, free-spirited women who spend their days looking for somewhere to crash, someone to **** and to generally act like spoilt little brats, until a run-in with a group of thugs turns this apparent light hearted tale into a nasty slice of Euro-slime – if you watch the Italian cut of the movie, that is. If you watch the American cut it’s a fun, care-free sex comedy! How can one film vary so dramatically?

The Italian cut is the...

Why do the media (and the public) love tragedy? Nothing gets the papers selling, or the viewing figures soaring, like a good ol’ siege! How about a healthy dose of genocide? Or maybe a mother who decided to murder her own children? Or the disgruntled employee who decided that enough was enough and takes his friend, AK-47, to the office one day? Each story is guaranteed to sell, sell, sell. Whatever happened to the good old days of covering cat shows and water skiing squirrels?

Johnnie...

American Indie cinema has enjoyed something of a resurgence recently. Films like The Hamiltons, Girl Next Door and, more recently, Grace have proven that there is no shortage of talent in the states. Daring filmmakers, who are willing to lead their audience down unexpected and often perverse paths; willing to push the envelope of decency, in the name of originality. Be it stillborn zombie babies or pre-pubescent rapists, there’s no denying that this new breed of horror creators are willing to offend...

Korean cinema has a plethora of unsung masterpieces that deserve a wider release. Films like Friend (Chingu), Oasis and Peppermint Candy seemed to have lingered in distribution purgatory until recently, with few films like Memories of Murder and Save the Green Planet being able to find the audience they rightly deserve. One movie that more than deserves its title as one of Korean new-waves greatest achievements is Happy End.

It’s the rarest of art-house feats, a film that doesn’t...

Nina (Jamie Winstone) has issues, lots and lots of issues. Ever since witnessing her father overdose on skag, resulting in her having to remain alone with the corpse for a weekend, she has developed a severe case of Reinfield Syndrome. Psychologist Steven (Richard Harrington) has issues, lots and lots of issues. Having suffered the lose of his model wife, who took her own life, he see’s a shot of cleaning away his inner demons by helping Nina get over her little blood lust.

Things...

80’s Hong Kong cinema holds a very special place in my heart. If it weren’t for this little Island my love for Asian cinema would likely be non-existent today. Back in ‘the day’ of my sweet, sweet childhood (early 90’s, which probably isn’t most peoples ‘day’ to be fair), discovering the joys of Way of the Dragon and Dragons Forever are truly some of the highlights of my younger days. Then came John Woo and the heroic bloodshed scene, I remember being blown away by Bullet in the Head, A Better Tomorrow...

Based on the Japanese novel by Yûsuke Kishi, the film stars Hwang Jeong-min (A Bittersweet Life) as Jeon Jun-oh; a former banker who has just started work as an insurance investigator. He receives a call, on his first day, from a woman asking if it’s possible to claim on her life insurance policy if suicide is the cause of death. He breaks the company’s golden rule of exposing personal details to a client and informs her of a tragic moment from his past that involved suicide; she thanks him and...

Hey all, Wildside have the skinny on the latest releases from Masters of Giallo... What're you waiting for? Get reading!

Lucio Fulci's House by the Cemetary:

Home is where the entrails are! Lucio Fulci’s intestine splattered homage to the works of H. P. Lovecraft is as intriguing, and as shocking, now as it was nearly 30 years ago. Norman Boyle (Malco) has been assigned the task of finding out what led the titular home’s previous inhabitant, Dr. Fruedstein, to murder...

The Sinful Dwarf. Quiet the title isn’t it? The Sinful Dwarf. It’s a title you can repeat over an over again, your brain bombarding you with images of what you could possibly bare witness to during the movie. With each mention of the title, the more graphic and perverse the image. With such self-hype, can the finished product ever compete with your perverted little minds? Highly doubtful, but to the creators credit, they certainly went all out in trying!

Those who thought Danish cinema...

The most common term used by fans to describe their feelings towards the majority of independent horror is “IT HAD POTENTIAL”. That’s not exactly a statement that makes you want to run out and rent/buy the product is it? Adam Mason is a man who knows a lot about ‘potential’. After making two shockingly substandard horror movies, The 13th Sign and Dust respectively, he was stuck in music video purgatory for his assault on horror fans senses. During this time he clearly learnt a great deal about how...

How can I describe my love for Kong Sang-ho? The poster I have of him in my living room doesn’t do it justice. He is, for me, one of the greatest actors working in the world - period. He comes from the same theatre troupe that gave us the equally talented Choi Min-Shik (Old Boy), who’s finally finished protesting for the treatment theatre actors receive from the big boys in the Korean film industry: He stopped acting for some time, so it’s great to actually have him start acting again – even if...

Oh boy, oh boy! Nothing gets the old Johnson up faster than a great Korean flick. Sad, I know! But what ya’ gonna do? I’m sure I’m not the only poor bastard with this affliction: It’s the power of Cinema I tells ya’!

There is no other country on the planet that has such an amazing output of QUALITY movies that South Korea has – fact!

When Ji-woon Kim made the horror community collectively jizz itself with his 2003 frightener A Tale of Two Sisters, few could argue that...

My review of Lucio Fulci's gore-opus is up over at Wildside.

Veteran filmmaker, Lucio Fulci, is haunted by the crimes he’s committed – on celluloid! Visions of graphic murder are consuming him and driving him to the brink of insanity; murders that he shot for his movies and for his audience. When reports of a real-life serial killer hit the news, Fulci seeks the help of psychiatrist, Egon Schwarz, but the professor has other designs for poor old Lucio… Deadly designs, in which Il...

My review of Shameless Screen Entertainment's latest DVD is up at Wildside.

Valentina Rosselli (Isabella de Funés), narrowly escapes getting mowed down by a swank limousine while returning from a party. The owner of the limo is Baba Yaga (Carroll Barker), an older woman who is instantly smitten by the young Valentina. It turns out that Baba is actually an ancient witch, who digs women – and she wants Valentina. When she is rejected by the young fashion photographer, the hag places...

Aaah, the United Kingdom. Home of football hooligans, happy slapping and indeed daisy chaining! If you are yet to hear of the latter then you should be chuffed to be living in a society that has some sort of control over its youth. Few British films in recent times have had the giblets to portray Britain as it is: preferring to revel in a cinematic bubble of Richard Curtis productions or Guy Richie clones. The Great Ecstasy of Robert Carmichael is about to change that… Welcome to the jungle....

Before Non Ho Sonno (A.K.A Sleepless A.K.A I Can’t Sleep), Dario Argento was suffering some serious verbal abuse from both fans and critics after the catastrophe that was Phantom of the Opera (1998). Few people will disagree with me when I say that it truly was the lowest point of his career. Some have said that since Opera Dario has been in an ever declining spiral, with failure after failure that began with his collaboration with George A. Romero on Two Evil Eyes. Argento-lite effort Trauma, which...

“Macho, macho man! I want to be a macho man!”

The ‘poliziottesco’ genre couldn’t have asked for a more fitting song. With big tough men, often sporting gloriously oversized moustache’s and even bigger guns, strut around most major Italian cities making up their own laws and following their own rules. It’s a genre that contains more immorality than a whore house in Mexico, and that’s just the Police force!

Tough guys like Franco Nero, Maurizio Merli and Fabio Testi made...

Ruggero Deodato, along with Sergio Martino, are both anomalies in the Italian exploitation stable of directors. They stick to genre films and follow the rules as gospel: Gore, T&A and cheese are requirements that are not to be omitted from any of their movies. Where they differ from the likes of Umberto Lenzi or Bruno Mattei (R.I.P) is that they bring a level of intelligence that you would expect to find in Argento’s, Soavi’s of even Fulci’s best works. Anyone who has seen Deodato’s Cannibal...

Umberto Lenzi could be the man responsible for both the creation and the destruction of the Italian cannibal cycle. If it wasn’t for his 1972 effort Deep River Savages (A.K.A Man from Deep River) it’s likely we wouldn’t have had the genre’s crown jewel, Ruggero Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust. Lenzi would go on to make the infamous Cannibal Ferox in 1981, that takes all the extreme elements of Deodato’s classic, but leaves the intelligence of that film behind, resulting in a truly offensive watch....

The story of libertine filmmaker, Pier Paolo Pasolini, is almost as fascinating as his final work. He was considered one of the most dangerous men in Italy and his work was feared by the powers that be. His films were headache enough, but he was also a renowned poet, journalist, script writer and author. When you add all that up, he proved to be a major pain in their backside. The fact he was gay didn’t increase his popularity with the right-wing government either, and his anti-fascism and communist...

God bless George A. Romero and Dario Argento!

You may be asking yourself “Phill, what the **** are you talking about? You’re reviewing a Lucio Fulci movie!” – And you’d be right? What the **** am I talking about? When Romero and Argento teamed up to create the legendary Dawn of the Dead, not many industry people could foresee the onslaught of imitators that would follow in its wake: due to the fact that most of them believed it would flop! The short sighted, dick-faces!

...

Can you imagine being mistaken as a corpse? I don’t mean in a Saturday morning hangover/comedown stylee. I mean being found fully dressed in some shrubs, eyes wide open with your heart beat so faint that any beat would not register on the best heart monitoring apparatus the 70’s had to offer? You can hear fully what people are saying around your lifeless body, but you’re unable to communicate, you’re trapped alone in your thoughts and unable to prevent a thing.

Doesn’t sound very...

So, how do you review a film as controversial as Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper? A film that was infamously ordered out of the British Isles by the (at the time) head of the BBFC (British equivalent of the MPAA), James Ferman. He was worried that the content of this movie would push the unstable (read: poor and uneducated) into committing acts of hideous violence, of course it’s all a pile of shit, he just didn’t like the film. Much like he didn’t like The Exorcist and Texas Chainsaw Massacre,...

NoShame Films, I believe, are the company responsible for the recent acceptance of Sergio Martino as a major talent in Italian exploitation: He’s now being mentioned in the same breath as Argento, Fulci and Bava. It’s quiet an achievement for a small label, dedicated to not just exploitation but Italian art-house pictures like Marco Bellochio’s Devil in the Flesh all the way back to Victorio De Sica classics. To think a company held the Giallo up with such esteemed classics is a touching thought....