What if characters in a slasher film actually make smart decisions? Better yet, what if they are also a trained paintball/airsoft team armed with submachine guns? Writer/director Nico Mastorakis and his co-writers Robert Gilliam and Fred Perry use this as the premise for The Zero Boys, their mashup of mid-1980’s slasher and action films. In […]
For many people, the film The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave (La Notte Che Evelyn Uscì dalla Tomba) (1971) conjures up images of disjointed, confusing, non-sensical cinema. This is likely because their primary exposure is through one of the multiple English-language versions of the film often shown by local late night horror hosts. […]
At first glance, 1976’s The Witch Who Came from the Sea looks to be a standard low-budget exploitation film of the era, replete with bloody violence, genital mutilations, and gratuitous nudity, but do not dismiss it so quickly. Screenwriter Scott Thom and director Matt Cimber have put together a film that deals with the lingering […]
Not all science fiction films need to be big budget affairs to be successful. Often, science fiction is used as a framework to tell smaller stories. At its heart, writer/director Glenn Payne’s Earthrise (2014) is a “desert island” style mystery/suspense film set in space. In it, tensions rise amongst a small group of space travelers […]
From the title Malatesta’s Carnival of Blood, one might expect a Herschell Gordon Lewis style B-movie gore fest. Instead, one gets a creepy, atmospheric, low-budget cross between art and exploitation. A young woman and her parents discover strange goings-on at the run down carnival at which they recently began working, and they find themselves having […]
It is 1978 and writer/director John De Bello, along with his co-writers Costa Dillon and J. Stephen Peace, release Attack of the Killer Tomatoes!, a spoof of 1950’s low-budget monster movies. The movie bombs, but that is not the end of the Killer Tomatoes. In the subsequent years, the film develops a cult following with […]
There are some film genres that are simply best enjoyed by viewing their trailers and not the movies themselves. “Nazisploitation” is one such genre, at least for me. There are some terms one does not want forever linked with one’s name in Google search results. Once again, “nazisploitation” fits the bill. As such, watching and […]
I have never been a fan of so-bad-it-is-good cinema, in spite of what my wife thinks. I am generally bored by truly bad films. Sure, there are the few terrible gems, but it is rare that they are awful enough to be entertaining without imbibing mood enhancers. The Ed Woods of this world are few […]
The Death Walks Twice Limited Edition DVD/Blu Ray set from Arrow Films collects two of Italian director Luciano Ercoli early 1970’s giallo films (Italian thrillers), Death Walks on High Heels (La Morte Cammina con i Tacchi Alti) (1971) and Death Walks at Midnight (La Morte Accarezza a Mezzanotte) (1972). Along with his fellow producer Alberto […]
Indie/microbudget features can sometimes have a rough, do-it-yourself quality. For his feature film debut Sheep Skin, writer/director Kurtis Spieler expands on his 2007 short of the same name and embraces the rough edges to produce an atmospheric thriller with a Punk aesthetic. Based on the cover art and description, one would think that Sheep Skin […]
Note: The Bride of Re-Animator is 27 years old. There will be some minor spoilers in this review. Bride of Re-Animator is the 1989 follow up to the 1985 gonzo horror comedy classic Re-Animator. This time around, Brian Yuzna, producer of the first film, takes over directorial duties from Stuart Gordon. He is joined by […]
In The Haunting of Alice D, the modern descendant of a 19th century brothel owner celebrates the renovation of the building by throwing a wild party, complete with prostitutes and drugs. This does not sit well with the ghost of Alice D, a young woman previously sold into sex slavery and whose life ended tragically […]
A review of a 13 Cameras screened at the 17th Annual Nevermore Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina. Do you sometimes feel like you are being watched? Are you ever worried that someone may have surreptitiously hidden a camera in whatever changing room, bathroom, or other supposed “private space” that you are using? In 13 […]
In recent years, an interesting variation on the found footage horror film has been the use of video chat footage. Writer/director Matthew Solomon, along with his co-writers Joshua Carl Allen and Jeremy Fox, take this fresh variation and add even more interest to it by wrapping it in a traditionally shot framing story in their […]