Saturday 24 February 2018

Mother's Day


In which a trio of girls, exposed to a most unfortunate level of demented brutality, exact revenge with a giant, transparent pair of inflatable tits.

The Incredible Melting Man



A spectacularly sloppy man runs about the place whilst absolutely everybody else struggles to give a fuck about what's going on, myself included.

Friday 23 February 2018

The Evil Within


A lot of great ideas and some genuinely creepy moments that all steadfastedly refuse to gel in to a coherent whole.

The Face Of Another


A particularly serious look at humanity's confused conflation of appearance and the self.

Seoul Station [Seoulyeok]


Animated running zombies who, even in cartoon form, were effective enough of a threat that they made me painfully aware how shit everybody in the movie was at closing doors.

Thursday 22 February 2018

Santo y Blue Demon contra los monstruous [Santo And The Blue Demon vs. The Monsters]


DIRECTOR: ... then Blue Demon and all the monsters will run in.
SANTOS: Ok, then what?
DIRECTOR: Then you go absolutley fucking loco on them. Pure loco.
SANTOS: Right. And then?
DIRECTOR: We do it again. And again. And again.
SANTOS: For 90 minutes?
DIRECTOR: No. For 70 minutes. Then we have 20 minutes of lovely cabaret.
SANTOS: What?
DIRECTOR: YOU HEARD! Now pick up that chair and hit somebody with it.

House Of Madness [The Mansion Of Madness/ The System Of Dr. Tarr And Professor Feather/ Dr. Tarr's Torture Dungeon/ Dr. Tarr's Pit Of Horrors]


As a doctor visting an insane asylum was greeted by guards who were clearly insane, I quickly surmised that the inmates had taken over the asylum and promptly nodded off, awakening intermittently to snatches of dialogue confirming my surmise and ever growing scenes of lunacy culminating in a man threatening to throw a turtle at somebody.

El libro de piedra [The Book Of Stone]


Quaint, quiet, competent ghost story told very much in the manner of M.R. James, and very much at his plodding pace too. Wait, didn't I already watch this once today?

Hasta el Viento Tiene Miedo [Even The Wind Is Afraid]



Quaint, quiet, competent ghost story told very much in the manner of M.R. James, and very much at his plodding pace too.

Wednesday 21 February 2018

Blood Freak


A hopeless atrocity, the very nadir of film making, yet had me crying tears of laughter, actual fucking tears. What a film.

Altered States


As well as proposing flaky existential answers to our very origins as primordial life this also features both a neanderthal punching an elephant and a goat with a shit ton of eyes. Superb.

The Tripper


Tries its very best to fall on the right side of the line that divides smart, witty, allegorical slasher movies from turgid, heavy handed, kill frenzy bollocks, but doesn't manage it.

Blue Sunshine


Dominated by comical overacting that desperately tries to mask the protagonist's total lack of motivation to actually be this intense about everything as he insistently gets involved with a murderous group of people that all took LSD ten years ago.

Tuesday 20 February 2018

Bloody Birthday


A gleeful parade of murders at the hands of nasty children who were fucked over by a poor combination of an eclipse, the planet Saturn and a ton of horoscope bullshit.

It's Alive


Given the fanged, killer baby premise, the film adopts a surprisingly serious tone which also has the unfortunate side effect of killing the whole affair stone dead, a further irony given the title.

Kill, Baby... Kill! [Operazione paura/ Curse Of The Dead/ Don't Walk In The Park]


Bava squeezes some wonderful hallucinatory sequences out of some awful hackneyed script about a staring ghost child.

Village Of The Damned


Staring kids that still have enough chill to overide the British quaintness of sixty years ago.

Monday 19 February 2018

Microwave Massacre


Never got to see the Microwave in use and there was no massacre. Both disappointing and utterly shit.

Blow Out


A serial killer on the loose with an unusual M.O., a protagonist desperately trying to understand something unusual that he heard, lashings of J & B, confused female characters who are little more than lambs for the slaughter. Everything that would characterise a film as a Giallo if it were Italian, but this is De Palma so it's not Giallo. It's just very stylish Hitchcock rip off.

Sunday 18 February 2018

The Black Gestapo


Brutal fistfights, drugs, exploding cars, prostitutes, pipe bombs and a man having his balls cut off and flushed down a toilet. The best beginning to Joefest 2018. King.

Saturday 17 February 2018

The Black Panther


Well done to Marvel for finally trying a different route with their origin stories. Not well done for the lashings of awkward CGI sprayed all over the shop, or for characters who explain away incredible levels of resources and knowledge by repeatedly intoning 'we have the technology', or for Martin Freeman's shitty American accent.

Sunday 11 February 2018

Phantom Thread


Exquisite tedium.

Saturday 3 February 2018

Mom And Dad


Unthinkable parental wishful thinking given an edge of crass obnoxiousness by half of the team behind Crank.