Film, Horror and Paul Dale

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…

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…

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.

Watcher In The Attic

12 Aug 2009

Noboru Tanaka’s bizarre and perverse 1974 adaptation of one of Edgowa Rampo’s celebrated horror stories (the Japanese Edgar Allan Poe) has long been unavailable on any format in the west so this release is great news for fans of the Japanese Nikkatsu…

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…

Let The Right One In (Lat Den Ratte Komma In)

2 Apr 2009

DRAMA/HORROR Let the Right One In is a chilling Swedish coming-of-age story that breathes new life into a tired vampire genre marred by American high school teenagers and Christian lobbyist novelists (Stephanie Meyer, Anne Rice). It’s the early…

The Brøken

22 Jan 2009

HORROR/THRILLER Edgar Allen Poe’s short story William Wilson meets Hitchcock’s Marnie in Cashback writer and director Sean Ellis’ second feature. When beautiful and seemingly stable radiologist Gina McVey (Lena Headey) wakes in a London hospital…

Outpost

8 May 2008

HORROR (18) 89min Beefy mercenary DC (Ray Stevenson) has just made a bad decision. He’s taken a job from shadowy businessman Hunt (Julian Wadham). DC and his band of professional soldiers have to get Hunt into an abandoned bunker in an Eastern…

DVD Roundup

15 Nov 2007

‘No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees/No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds!’ That’s how English poet and humourist Thomas Hood chose to describe the month of November. There is some of Hood’s cheeky sense of observation in John Waters: This…

Shutter

19 Jun 2007

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 Jane…

Requiem

(12A) 92min

13 Nov 2006

DRAMA/HORROR One year on from the release of The Exorcism of Emily Rose - the risible US exploitation horror which expropriated the real life story of German girl Anneliese Michel, comes German film Requiem, an infinitely more interesting look at the…