Where to start with Lucio Fulci? Where to start with The Beyond? Both have been a massive part of my life for so long I tend to just assume that everyone else has the same level of familiarity with both the director and his masterpiece. Zombi 2 (Better known as Zombie Flesh Eaters) may have [...]
The Ilsa movies have a lot to answer for. Over the coming weeks you will become familiar with the work of Dyanne Thorne and her eponymous dominatrix S.S. Officer, unfortunately, as we’re examining these movies alphabetically; we have to suffer through ‘The Beast in Heat’ beforehand. In all horror and exploitation genres, once a successful [...]
The plot of Axe is a simple one; three hoods on the run take refuge in a house which is occupied by a young girl caring for her invalid grandfather. With the exception of two other scenes, the majority of the movie takes place in and around the house. What was probably a budgetary decision [...]
For those in the know, the name Joe D’Amato will bring to mind certain things. Mostly impure and terrifying things. Some involving horses, cannibals and Tom Selleck look-alikes with genital warts (see Erotic Nights of the Living Dead if you wish to learn more about that reference). The voyeuristic director had an illustrious and evocative [...]
Paul Morrissey was a regular collaborator with Andy Warhol. He worked on some of the movies which helped to cement the enigmatic artist’s vision into cinematic form. With the likes of Flesh (1968), Trash (1970) and Heat (1972) he created highly eroticised, gritty, yet surreal examinations of sexuality and the darker elements of life in [...]
The savage character of Nikos Karamanlis first ‘graced’ our screens in Joe D’Amato’s ‘Antropophagus: The Beast’ in 1980. Never one to pass up the opportunity of making a quick dollar or two (like any sensible person), he set to work almost immediately on the sequel which would become most commonly known as ‘Absurd’. It is [...]
As I venture into the murky, underhand world of the Video Nasty, I feel that it is essential to elaborate a little on the subject. When people refer to Video Nasties, the spectrum can include anything which is gore filled, banned or simply unpleasant. In most cases, however, it will refer to the list of [...]
It was always going to happen. Ever since I was a teenager acquiring contraband horror movies via small ads in the classified sections of regional newspapers, I became slightly obsessed with the notion of banned movies. In my (relatively) short life I have seen the deconstruction of censorship in many forms, yet it is only [...]
Sometimes, it’s the unexpected ones that pack the greatest punch. The last few years have seen a slew of survival flicks appear alongside movies in which people get trapped in precarious or hopeless circumstances (Frozen (2010), 127 Hours (2010), Wrecked (2010)). Reading the synopsis for ‘The Grey’ it would appear that there was nothing too [...]
Cassadaga is a spiritualist community located in northeast Florida which bears the nickname of ‘Psychic Capital of the World‘. It was originally a sacred native American site which became a camp and a haven for mediums across the country in the late 19th Century. It has been alluded to in songs and the occasional reference [...]