Film and Horror

GFF 2012 - Day planner

Our highlights for each day of the Glasgow Film Festival

6 Feb 2012

It can be difficult, when any festival rolls around, to decide which events to skip in favour of others. Searching rigorously through the programme, referring back to the calendar, trying to fit in as much as possible - it's a painstaking piece of work…

The Woman In Black

Daniel Radcliffe's first post-Potter film lacks the requisite scares for a classic ghost story

23 Jan 2012

(12A) 95mins Susan Hill’s Victorian ghost story has been terrifying theatre audiences for the best part of twenty-five years, second only to The Mousetrap as the longest running show in the history of London’s West End. It has already been…

Big Tit Zombies 3D

22 Oct 2010

(15) 73min (Terracotta) Where a film like The Horde takes its zombies seriously, this isn't is something you could ever accuse Takao Nakano’s Big Tit Zombies of doing. BTZ goes for simple pleasures as a troupe of strippers fight off a plague of the…

The Uninvited

16 Apr 2009

(15) 87min Kim Ji-woon’s Korean horror A Tale of Two Sisters undergoes the Hollywood treatment in this plush-but-empty DreamWorks remake, with Emily Browning and Arielle Kebbel cast as disturbed siblings Anna and Alex Ivers. The two sisters are…

Lesbian Vampire Killers

19 Mar 2009

HORROR/COMEDY Overexposure can shoot down even the most promising career. And while Mathew Horne and James Corden aren’t quite there yet, they need to be careful. A double act since their award-winning Gavin & Stacey, for their first big screen…

Shutter

19 Jun 2007

HORROR In lieu of a forthcoming US remake, this half arsed 2004 Thai ghost story is getting an overdue and limited release. Driving home after getting drunk with a few of his old friends, photographer Tun (Ananda Everingham) and his girlfriend…

GFF 2012 - Italo-horror artist Umberto

The soundtrack specialist fits comfortably into the Glasgow Music and Film Festival strand

1 Feb 2012

Horror-score revivalist Matt Hill channels the creepyass compositions of Goblin, John Carpenter and Fabio Frizzi in his eerie synthjams, conjuring up a sonic witches brew. A member of drone-merchants Expo 70, Hill has, in his Umberto guise, explored the…

Steven Severin: Vampyr - Cameo Cinema, Edinburgh, Thu 12 Jan

Ex-Banshees bassist delivers brooding live score to 1930s horror classic

1 Feb 2012

The man with the flowing white hair walks towards a small table and chair to one side of the Cameo’s big screen. Sporting a long black winter coat and carrying a glass of red wine, the man looks as if he’s stepped in from another, altogether darker age…

GFF 2012 - Frightfest highlights

A round up of the best films showing as part of the Glasgow Film Festival's horror strand

2 Feb 2012

FrightFest is back once again to terrorise the Glasgow Film Festival. Now taking over the GFT for two full days, this year (as with every year) it’s a vibrant snap shot of the state of horror cinema. It’s been so successful the organisers have launched…

A Lonely Place To Die

Tense and riveting Brit-thriller set in Scottish Highlands

24 Aug 2011

How far would you go to save a stranger? Would you risk your life? And your friends’ lives? It’s a question Alison (Melissa George) and her fellow climbers must answer after they stumble across a young girl (Holly Boyd) buried in a wooden box while…

Mother's Day

Rebecca De Mornay stars in rare example of a horror remake done well

23 May 2011

(18) 112min Following on the heels of bloodless remakes of cherished 1980s slasher flicks like The Stepfather and Prom Night, Mother’s Day is a nastier but more accomplished beast. This home invasion drama is a reboot of the 1980 Troma original, and…

Profile: Simon Hynd, director of horror thriller Senseless

Jason Behr plays US businessman who is kidnapped

24 Mar 2011

Born 20 January, 1974, Edinburgh Background Hynd studied Film & Television at Napier, making a few shorts that got him noticed by the Scottish film industry, going on to win a Scottish BAFTA for his short Tumshie Mcfadgen’s Bid for Ultimate…

The Stepfather

4 Dec 2009

Reprising the unfortunate wine-into-water routine of his Prom Night remake, director Nelson McCormick performs a similarly unwelcome trick by blandly rehashing Joseph Ruben’s solid 1987 sleeper hit. TV staple Dylan Walsh steps into the role previously…

Saw VI

23 Oct 2009

(18) 90 min. The Saw series is as fixed in the calendar as Halloween itself (they have had a movie out every October since the series started back in 2004), and surprisingly Saw VI is the best instalment for a good while (certainly trumping the last…

Hitlist: Films

17 Sep 2009

Army of Crime, The Beaches of Agnes, White Lightnin', The Godfather, Nagisa Oshima, Fish Tank, Adventureland, Three Miles North of Molkom, Inglourious Basterds, The Big Knife, The Stranger

Antichrist

23 Jul 2009

Danish Dogme pack leader Lars Von Trier conjures up a slice of unbridled and unpleasant pantheistic horror that’s underlined by themes of grief and guilt. When middle class couple Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe’s son dies in a freak accident…

The Awakening

Superior British period ghost story sets a tone of creepy unease

15 Nov 2011

There’s been a glut of cinematic ghost stories this year. The likes of Paranormal Activity 3 and Insidious often relied on jump scares and cheap parlour tricks, whereas The Awakening goes in the opposite direction letting the story unfold to reveal the…

The Skin I Live In (La Piel Que Habito)

Almodovar's adaptation is measured, playful and spellbinding

19 Aug 2011

(15) 120min The Skin I Live In has all the elements of a campy Vincent Price B-movie. There is a meddlesome scientist driven mad by grief, a grisly revenge plot and a hapless victim, not to mention multiple murder, kidnap and rape. In the hands of…

DVD reviews: The Kingdom, Giallo, The Pack, Bloodrayne 3, Evil Rising and Lake Mungo

Summer horror DVD round-up

18 Jul 2011

Forget Hollywood – this month we embark on a European horror odyssey. First up, Lars von Trier's superlative haunted hospital drama The Kingdom (Second Sight ●●●●). Collecting both of his four-part Danish TV series into one boxed set for the first time…

The Last Circus

Spanish black comedy/horror takes in clowns, circus life, love and madness

20 Jun 2011

The latest film from writer/director Alex de la Iglesia is almost unclassifiable, a love story, a black comedy and horror all apply and as fans of his Accion Mutante (1992) will know it’s this glorious mess of ideas and themes that makes for such a…

Wake Wood

Supernatural horror from Hammer Studios captures relentless claustrophobia

30 Mar 2011

The resurrected Hammer Studios really are upping the pace, swiftly following The Resident with British supernatural shocker Wake Wood. Very much a riff on Stephen King’s Pet Sematary (which also got an excellent big screen adaptation from overlooked…

Horror Channel announces TV premieres of UK horror films for April 2011

Includes Mum & Dad, Tony: London Serial Killer and Salvage

30 Mar 2011

‘Essentially through the month of April every Friday night we’re going to have the UK TV premiere of brilliant British cutting edge horror films,’ explains Programmes & Acquisitions Coordinator Paul McEvoy (also founder and co-director of horror film…

Buried, Puppet Master: Axis of Evil and Shock Labyrinth released on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

2 Mar 2011

Over the years some of the greatest horror films have found love and longevity amongst the classics of the genre despite their direct-to-video origins. Unfortunately that’s not always the case as The Open Door (Second Sight) ● proves. Taking the vague…

Tower of London

17 Feb 2010

(15) 92min (Optimum) This long unavailable (on DVD), deliciously nasty historical horror made in 1939 is all dungeons, manacles, torture and beheadings. But it’s also fairly classy stuff, boasting a fine cast headed by Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff…

Orphan

26 Aug 2009

This unfortunately overlooked recent horror offers plenty of dark thrills and genuinely creepy moments making a nice addition to the ‘evil child’ subgenre. Perfectly paired with the ultimate diabolical kiddie movie The Omen (the classic 1976 Richard…

The Children

27 Nov 2008

HORROR The current fad for evil kiddie chillers – see Ils (Them) from France, Eden Lake from the UK and While She Was Out from the US – continues with another British horror flick in which children do diabolical things to disbelieving adults. As the…

Intruders

Derivative, moderately engaging paranormal horror starring Clive Owen

5 Jan 2012

(15) 110min Spanish director Juan Carlos Fresnadillo has never quite delivered on the promise of his clever debut feature Intacto. Retro chiller Intruders is cleverly constructed and suspenseful but fades when pitted against superior genre fare like…

Paranormal Activity 3

Surprisingly effective third instalment of found footage suburban ghost story

21 Oct 2011

(15) 84min Now Saw has relinquished it’s stranglehold on the multiplex each and every Halloween, Paranormal Activity has stepped up to fill the void. And it’s impressive that they’ve managed to mine this much back-story from the simplicity of the…

Shark Night 3D

Dumb fun as big fish chow down on stereotypical college kids

6 Oct 2011

(15) 91 min The avalanche of 3D releases may be slowing down but there’s still a few chuckles to be had with the format. Shark Night 3D has the flimsiest of plots as seven college kids head out for a weekend at a luxurious lake house in Louisiana…

Red State survey reveals loss of morals in UK

A questionnaire promoting Kevin Smith's Republican-skewering horror flick has interesting results

29 Sep 2011

Kevin Smith is well-known for baiting controversy - his apocalyptic comedy Dogma drew massive complaints for its depiction of a shallow Catholic church, while latest release Red State focuses on a group of serial-killing Christian fundamentalists.

The Woman

Challenging horror from the minds of Lucky McKee and Jack Ketchum

28 Sep 2011

(18) 98 min There has been a spate of interesting indie horror recently, films like Dead Girl, The Loved Ones and Red, White & Blue have brought a real intelligence to the genre. A challenging leftfield take on the idea of what is horror. The Woman…

Red State

Uneven political horror-thriller from Kevin Smith

14 Sep 2011

(18) 88min Outspoken filmmaker Kevin Smith hit a creative and commercial low with his last studio-backed production, the Bruce Willis-starring flop Cop Out, but before that film was even released Smith had shifted focus to this long-gestating…

Don't be Afraid of the Dark

Unimaginitive reboot of 70s cult horror film

13 Sep 2011

(15) 99min Looming large in the childhood memories of many US pop culture aficionados, the original Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was a minor but effective 1973 TV movie in which Jim Hutton and Kim Darby played a couple menaced by demonic creatures in…

Profile: Melissa George

Aussie actress Melissa George tells us all about her new film A Lonely Place to Die

1 Sep 2011

Born 6 August, 1976, Perth, Australia. Background Yet another Aussie soap alumni done good, after starring as Angel in over 300 episodes of Home & Away. ‘I’m a very good quitter, I always quit a job at the right time,’ explains George. ‘I was…

Final Destination 5

Horror franchise gets back on track with some suitably gory bloodshed

24 Aug 2011

(15) 92 min In many ways the Final Destination series is the ultimate streamlined horror franchise, they have dispensed with a villain and it is death itself that stalks our victims. And FD 5 returns the glorious gory yucks to the screen after the…

Kill List

Genre-schizophrenic crime spree lacks clarity

19 Aug 2011

(18) 95min Down Terrace director Ben Wheatley second feature is another tale of crime, skullduggery and mystery. Kill List is one of those movies that starts off in one genre (kitchen sink drama) and turns into another (horror). Robert Rodriguez…

Julia's Eyes

A very well made chiller in the stalk ‘n’ slash tradition

1 Jul 2011

(15) 112min In addition to directing visionary adult horror-fantasies (The Devil’s Backbone, Pan’s Labyrinth) and outstanding Hollywood blockbusters (Hellboy and its sequel), Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro is also carving a second career for…

DVD reviews: Amer, My Soul to Take, Season of the Witch, The Resident and more on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

24 Jun 2011

Time for another dastardly delve into the horror DVD pile. We’ll start on a highnote. Amer (Anchor Bay) is actually French but is a studied homage to Italian 70s gialo filmmaking, more concerned with sound, colour, style and mood than coherent…

Rabies (Kalevat)

An interesting twist on slasher movie conventions from Israel

17 Jun 2011

The problem with slasher films is that they perhaps have the most rigid rules in cinema. It’s so easy to fall into the standard clichés as set out by Halloween and Friday the 13th. Not that it means you can’t make a fun, entertaining film within these…

Profile: Jim Mickle, director of vampire horror Stake Land

Director turnes hometown into a post-apocalyptic wasteland

23 May 2011

Name Jim Mickle Born Pottstown, Pennsylvania, 1977 Background After graduating from New York University’s filmmaking programme, Mickle worked in the camera department for features Transamerica, Shortbus and Pride and Glory. The experience gave him…

Kaboom

Cult director Gregg Araki returns to his B-movie roots with comedy-sci-fi-horror

23 May 2011

(15) 86min Cult director Gregg Araki (The Living End, Mysterious Skin), one of the leading figures in the New Queer Cinema of the 90s, returns to the style of his earlier work for Kaboom, a gloriously trashy, insane ride of a film that wears its…

DVD: I Spit on Your Grave

2010 remake of notorious 'Video Nasty'

17 Feb 2011

Sarah Butler stars in Steven R Monroe's reboot of the 1978 rape-revenge Video Nasty.

DVD: In Their Sleep (Dans Ton Sommeil)

Quietly unsettling psychological thriller

17 Feb 2011

French psychological thriller directed by Caroline and Eric du Potet, and starring Anne Parillaud (Nikita).

Flower of Flesh and Blood, Guinea Pig and August Underground on DVD

The List’s guide to banned horror films, we watched them so you don’t have to

22 Oct 2010

For this Hallowe’en special we step into the outer reaches of horror and examine some of the films that have been refused a certificate by the British Board of Film Classification. Of course it’s impossible to have a discussion on banned movies in the…

Toy Story 3 and The Illusionist among Edinburgh International Film Festival 2010 highlights

5 May 2010

With The Edinburgh Film Festival 2010, which runs between 16-27 June, only a matter of weeks away, the red carpets are getting waterproofed and the popcorn machines are getting serviced. Now in its 64th year, the twelve day festival, packed with…

Film Violence: History, Ideology, Genre - James Kendrick

16 Apr 2010

(Wallflower) James Kendrick’s short volume isn’t at all an ambitious book; and that is perhaps as much down to the nature of the commission as it is to the limitations of the writer. This is one of Wallflower publishing’s Short Cuts. The books are…

Halloween Guide: M - S

Yet more spooky goings-on

16 Oct 2009

M is for Movies Perhaps only rivalled by the upsurge in the plastic horn industry around 31 Oct, the annual economic boost for the horror film industry ensures that, every Halloween, there is a fresh crop of dismembered corpse-filled flicks to satisfy…

The Last House on the Left

11 Jun 2009

Given the repellent nature of Wes Craven’s scuzzy little 1972 rape and revenge shocker, it’s a relief to find this glossy remake straying somewhat from the original’s sleazy path. Craven and original producer Sean S Cunningham steer the hand of Dennis…

Mum & Dad

11 Dec 2008

(18) 85min If you appreciate black humour and have a strong stomach there’s much to be admired in Steven Sheil’s low budget British horror. Exploiting the ongoing trend for torture porn, it transports the sadomasochistic splatter-fest of the Hostel…

Halloween Special - Horror Movies

16 Oct 2008

It’s Halloween, so it must be time for the latest instalment in the most extreme survival horror series out there: Saw V. More than a simple gorefest, there’s a cruel intelligence at play with its villain, Jigsaw, the latest in a long line of horror…

Interview - Steve Barker

8 May 2008

Steve Barker, the 37-year-old, Blackpool born director of new Scottish horror Outpost is in an affable mood. Self-effacing, charming and just a little bit geeky Barker (pictured, right) has succeeded where so many have failed. Outpost is a pared down…

Playlist - free online horror movies

27 Mar 2008

Do you like scary movies? Fancy watching one on the internet? Beware! The shaky camcorder techniques of video pirates can make the latest Hollywood blockbuster look as scrambled as Cloverfield. So, rather than pick a fight with the copyright-lawman, why…

Funny Games US

27 Mar 2008

HORROR/THRILLER (18) 111min The conventional thinking about shot-for-shot remakes is why bother? We only need cast our minds back to the furore surrounding what many thought to be the sacrilegious and pointless remake of Psycho by Gus Van Sant.

Shrooms

15 Nov 2007

(18) 84min Paddy I Went Down Breathnach’s ‘kids in the woods’ horror movie digs the rich genre furrow that runs from Evil Dead through Blair Witch Project to Wrong Turn. But here’s the twist – everyone’s off their faces, tripping on magic…

1408

(15) 105min

23 Aug 2007

Mikael 'Derailed Håfström'’s mild chiller is pretty much a one-man horror vehicle for John Cusack as Mike Enslin, a world-weary writer who makes his living from staying in supposedly haunted locations and describing his experiences. After a mysterious…

Stake Land

Jim Mickle's post-apocalyptic vampire horror shows the monsters still have bite post-Twilight

23 May 2011

(15) 98min Moving on from his impressive 2006 horror debut Mulberry Street, writer/director Jim Mickle scores a breakout hit with Stake Land, which fuses the post-apocalyptic journey scenario familiar from The Road or Zombieland with the current…

Insidious - Leigh Whannell and James Wan interview

Terrifying new ghost story Insidious from horror duo behind Saw

26 Apr 2011

They gave the world Saw, followed it up with Dead Silence and now writer director team Leigh Whannell and James Wan are back with the terrifying ghost story that is Insidious. So what is Insidious about? Leigh Whannell: The film is our version of…

Scream 4

Fun, clever and thrilling revitalisation of Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson's horror franchise

26 Apr 2011

Back in 1996 horror was in the doldrums, the glory days and box-office clout of Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween were a thing of the past. Big budgets and horror were distant relatives. Then along came Scream. From the tense…

Insidious

New horror from the creative team behind Saw, succeeds in getting under your skin

15 Apr 2011

(15) 102 min There’s a real art in making a good scary movie – a film that sends shivers down your spine – and Insidious gets it just right. Well, almost. Perhaps not something you’d expect from the writer director team of Leigh Whanell and James Wan…

Cold Fish

Dark but overlong Japanese serial killer horror from director Sion Sono

15 Apr 2011

Sion Sono has had a varied and intriguing career directing hair extension horror Exte and the award winning four hour Love Exposure. Here he returns with a dark serial killer character study told from the perspective of Shamoto (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) who…

The Resident – Film review

Hilary Swank, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Christopher Lee star in the latest thriller from Hammer studio

16 Mar 2011

It’s certainly fantastic seeing the legend ‘Hammer Film Productions’ on the big screen again (especially when it’s followed by the name ‘Christopher Lee’) however this thriller goes more for the chills of The Nanny or Fear in the Night than the Draculas…

Goblin - The Arches, Glasgow, Friday 25 February 2011

3 Mar 2011

The Glasgow Music and Film Festival has scored a real coup with Goblin, arch-horror instrumentalists usually found supplying the music to Dario Argento’s giallo masterpieces through the 70s and 80s. Alongside Ennio Morricone they have provided some of…

GFF blog: Jason Eisener on Rutger Hauer exploitation flick, Hobo With a Shotgun

The former Grindhouse trailer gets the feature-length treatment

2 Mar 2011

Almost everything you want to know plot-wise about the film Hobo With a Shotgun is right there in the title. There’s a hobo. He has a shotgun. You can probably fill in the blanks yourself. The film’s genesis has a slightly more intricate story…

GFF blog: Bruce Goldstein talks The Tingler

The Vincent Price-starring, William Castle-directed gimmick fest gets a new lease of life at the GFF

22 Feb 2011

Bruce Goldstein is not happy about his official job description at the Glasgow Film Festival. ‘I’m not a film historian – well, I guess I am, of a sort – but primarily, I’m a film distributor, and I run a cinema. Most successful repertory stream in the…

The Rite - The human obsession with possession

Latest in line of films exploring possession of the body, spirit and soul

18 Feb 2011

We know that modern society is obsessed with ownership – fancy electrical goods, high fashion and general clutter. But there’s another form of possession with which people have been obsessed for a very long time. It’s possession of the body, the spirit…

The best of Frightfest at Glasgow Film Festival 2011

Founder and co-director of the horror film festival within GFF

18 Feb 2011

Paul McEvoy, founder and co-director of the horror film festival within a festival, picks the best of the line-up ‘We always have a snapshot of exactly where the genre is at the moment, so we’re only as strong as the films that are being produced. I…

The Rite - Demonic possession thriller bogged down by script

Anthony Hopkins, Rutger Hauer and Colin O'Donoghue fail to escape The Exorcist's shadow

18 Feb 2011

(15) 113min ‘What did you expect, spinning heads and pea-soup?’ asks Vatican-approved exorcist Father Lucas Trevant (Anthony Hopkins) in Mikael Håfström’s demonic possession thriller, which initially offers a sober take on a horror genre that usually…

Shock rocker and horror film director Rob Zombie - full interview transcript

Musician and director's first UK tour for 12 years

15 Feb 2011

HN:This is your first UK tour for 12 years. Why it’s taken so long? RZ: Basically it’s taken me a pretty long time to get back to anywhere, I haven’t been outside of the US for a long time, basically the thing that’s got in the way of my world wide…

A Bay of Blood

Mario Bava’s 1971 film one of the most influential and imitated horror films ever made

30 Nov 2010

(18) 80min (Arrow Video) Out of all Arrow’s lush new DVD and Blu-ray issues of films from the American and Italian masters of horror, this is the one I have been looking forward to most. I was first introduced to Mario Bava’s 1971 film by friend…

Dead Cert

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93min (Momentum) Two of modern cinema’s most over used clichés collide when vampires meet cock-er-ney gangsters in this tired Brit flick as Romanian bloodsuckers try to muscle in on an East End strip club owned by Craig Fairbrass. What could…

Night of the Demons

22 Oct 2010

(18) 96 mins (Kaleidoscope) Hollywood’s unquenchable appetite for remakes means even near-forgotten schlock horror cheapies are getting the remake treatment. Night of the Demons was a lurid, gory, late-night favourite from 1988 and this updated…

Psych 9

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93 mins (indi VISION) Unfortunately, Psych 9 takes itself way too seriously. Roslyn (Sarah Foster) finds temporary employment on the nightshift helping to clear out an abandoned hospital, while a serial killer (dubbed the Night Hawk by local…

The Horde

22 Oct 2010

(18) 93min (Momentum) Surprsingly France is at the forefront of new extreme horror cinema, and while The Horde isn’t as subversive as Frontier(s), Martyrs or Inside it’s a wildly entertaining mix of La Haine and Dawn of the Dead (unfortunately we…

The Last Exorcism

Distinctly underwhelming faux-documentary

22 Aug 2010

(15) 87min From 1999’s The Blair Witch Project to last year’s phenomenon Paranormal Activity, the faux-documentary has become a frequent staple of the horror genre in the last decade. Produced by Hostel’s Eli Roth, Daniel Stamm’s effort is the latest…

The Meat Grinder

New DVD release about Sweeney Todd-esque noodle shack murderer

17 Aug 2010

From Thailand, this aptly named slice of torture porn follows disturbed Buss as she runs her noodle shack while carving up body parts to use as ingredients in her food. There’s the requisite hacked limbs, skewered heads, cannibalism and enough…

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

13 Aug 2010

Body horror has always been one of the queasiest of cinema experiences. Films like Tetsuo, The Thing and the work of David Cronenberg have attacked our fragile human form with viruses, parasites, deformity and medical experimentation. Now Dutch…

Phobia and His Name Was Jason release on DVD

Horror DVD round-up

23 Jul 2010

For this issue’s delve into the world of summer horror we’re taking a trip around the globe. Starting in the US with one for real horror aficionados, His Name Was Jason (Stax) ●●●● is an exhaustive look at the history of everyone’s favourite…

The Collector

21 Jun 2010

(18) 86 min Horror is constantly searching for icons, figureheads and antiheroes. It celebrates its directors (the John Carpenters, Wes Cravens and Tobe Hoopers) like no other genre and worships its villains, with the likes of Freddy, Jason and…

Cannibal Apocalypse

21 Jun 2010

(18) 93min (Optimum) During the late 1970s/early 1980s a handful of Italian directors unleashed a spate of cannibal films (including the infamous Cannibal Holocaust) most of which were promptly banned as ‘Video Nasties’ in 1984. Despite being…

A Nightmare on Elm Street

14 May 2010

(18) 95 min Horror remakes seem to be one of the most reliable money spinners in Hollywood right now. And Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes are specialists in this subgenre already giving us an excellent new Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 2003 and passable…

Dr Jekyll and Sister Hyde

29 Mar 2010

(15) 94min (Optimum) By the turn of the sexploitastic 1970s Hammer Films were upping the erotic content of their already titillating takes on horror classics with this transgender spin on Stevenson’s evil alter-ego tale of terror. Released in 1971…

Storm

18 Mar 2010

(15) 110min Last time out director Hans-Christian Schmid directed the psychological horror Requiem based on the true story of Anneliese Michel, a young Catholic epileptic sufferer who believed that she was possessed by demons. Schmid has a long…

Case 39

2 Mar 2010

The current vogue for demonic children flicks doesn’t excuse the unwarranted release of Christian Antibodies Alvart’s long-shelved horror film, in which Renee Zellweger plays Emily Jenkins, a social worker who adopts a malevolent girl with the ability…

Hipsters, Bad Lieutenant and a Frightfest at GFF

Glasgow Film Festival blog

1 Mar 2010

Friday afternoon. I decide to brave the vertiginous screens at Glasgow’s Cineworld Renfrew Street where some festival films are also showing. I make the perverse choice of Hipsters, a Russian film with no current UK distributor about a group of post…

Shutter Island

25 Feb 2010

Just as he followed his gangland classic Goodfellas with his pulpy remake of Cape Fear, so Martin Scorsese’s first feature film proper since The Departed is thriller Shutter Island. Based on the 1954-set novel by Dennis Lehane, like Cape Fear, it’s…

The Room

18 Feb 2010

Is Tommy Wiseau’s 2003 horror the worst good bad film ever made? Allegedly screening for the first time ever at a Scottish cinema, you can now judge for yourselves. Late night screening. Cameo, Edinburgh on Sat 20 Feb.

Chaw

17 Feb 2010

(15) 117min (Optimum) This blackly comic South Korean horror film arrives on the back of the success of the Asian monster movie The Host. Like that film, Chaw (pronounced ‘chow’, meaning animal trap, but probably intended to invoke Jaws) is at once…

The Wolfman

12 Feb 2010

(15) 125 min This remake of the classic 1941 creature feature was a project close to Benicio del Toro’s heart, not only does he take the lead role but also a producer credit. However a shifting release date is often the sign of a problematic…

Mad Monster Party

15 Jan 2010

(U) 94min (Optimum) You can see how this 1967 stop-motion animated feature (allegedly being remade) has had an enduring influence on Tim Burton, from his most recent foray into old-school-style animation The Corpse Bride, all the way back to his…

Colin

No-budget Welsh zombie horror

22 Oct 2009

(18) 97min Young Welsh horror movie fan Marc Price apparently made this zombie flick for just £45 – the cost of keeping his crewmates in tea and biscuits for the 18 months of weekend filming plus a few buckets of red food dye. If true, that makes…

Interview: Wes Craven

As The Last House on the Left remake hits DVD, we talk to the legendary horror director

16 Oct 2009

The Last House on the Left was your first movie, shot in Super 6 and with a very low budget in 1972. How have you changed since then? I would like to think that I have acquired some wisdom along the way … How did the idea of making a remake come…

Halloween Guide: G - L

The next step in our Halloween runthrough

16 Oct 2009

G is for Ghost Vigil Ghost hunting is a serious business – Derek Acorah has proved that. If you fancy busting some ghosts, then this all night Ghost Vigil aboard the Tall Ship in Glasgow is a good place to hone your skills. Conducted by experienced…

Interview: Greg Dillahunt

Speaking to The Last House on the Left's most vicious villain

16 Oct 2009

Are you a fan of Wes Craven? I have always been a huge fan of Wes Craven! He was on my mental checklist of people I wanted to work with. When did you meet him? I met him just before we started shooting because he had the last word with casting…

Jennifer's Body

Winning horror comedy from Juno writer

16 Oct 2009

When it was released in the US, the heterosexual males who ogled Megan Fox’s superstructure amid the heavy-metal chaos of two Transformers movies stayed away in droves from Jennifer’s Body, and it’s not hard to see why. Karyn Kusama’s visceral horror…

The Horseman

Australian revenge thriller fails to thrill

16 Oct 2009

The template for this Australian murder-revenge drama is clearly Mike Hodges’ classic Get Carter. Writer/director Steven Kastrissios’ film features a tough-as-nails central performance from Peter Marshall as Christian, a revenge-seeking father. The…

Halloween II

Rob Zombie's sequel to his remake

5 Oct 2009

Rob Zombie makes his own sequel to his own remake of the horror classic where he puts putrid flesh on the bones (and gives him a mother. What?) of that ultimate senseless killing machine Michael Myers. A potentially pointless exercise in some ways…

Zombieland

Surviving a world overrun by zombies

5 Oct 2009

Zombieland is pitched somewhere between From Dusk Till Dawn and Anchor Man with a nod of the stetson to George A Romero’s zombie flicks. Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Emma Stone, and Abigail Breslin are four disparate characters hell-bent on…

The Creek

Formulaic no-budget horror

5 Oct 2009

Formulaic no-budget horror in which a group of friends are forced to reunite by their dead friend’s ghost. They return to the scene of his death but strangely start being offed, one by one.

DVD Round-up: Horror

The films that want to make you scream

2 Oct 2009

Sexy Killer, Dr Chopper, Mr Halloween, Staunton Hill, Smash Cut, Death of a Ghost Hunter, The Books of Blood, Wasting Away, I Sell the Dead, Rogue

I Sell the Dead

The horror comedy comes to DVD

2 Oct 2009

First-time writer-director Glenn McQuaid does a pretty good job of invoking the spirit of the camp old Hammer chillers films with this low-budget comedy horror about a pair luckless bodysnatchers. Set in a mist-shrouded backwater of 19th century feckin…