Shameless Self Expression

Newlyweds Rossana Podesta and George Riviere move into the latter’s family castle, where poor Podesta learns the dark secrets of Riviere’s family history. She also uncovers a bunch of Medieval torture devices in the castle, including an Iron Maiden (excellent!), and a hooded executioner skulking about the castle’s underbelly. Or is she merely hallucinating? Laura Nucci plays the humourless maid, whilst Christopher Lee turns up as a creepy, scarred manservant.   There’s a reason this 1963 horror film from eclectic Italian filmmaker Antonio Marghereti (the rather good Gothic tale “Castle of Blood” ) isn’t one of the more well-known films among Christopher Lee’s long filmography. The reason isn’t anything to do with the fact that his voice has been dubbed, either. Titled “Horror Castle” in some quarters, the film just isn’t much of anything. It’s good-looking and well-mounted, the array of Medieval-looking torture devices leads to some good, nasty fun. So it’s not worthless. Howe...

Set in 19 th Century Edinburgh (and based somewhat on historical fact), respectable doctor Peter Cushing relies on grave-robbers to supply him with medical specimens. Enter grotesque and opportunistic Burke (George Rose) and Hare (Donald Pleasence), two such grave-robbers eager to make a buck…soon not even bothering with the grave-robbing aspect to their body-finding gig, if you follow my meaning. Dermot Walsh is Cushing’s concerned colleague, June Laverick his niece, and John Cairney a pupil who is dallying around with hooker Billie Whitelaw.   This 1959 John Gilling ( “The Gorgon” , “The Reptile” ) low-budget version of the Burke and Hare tale is sleazy fun, especially in the slightly more explicit ‘Continental Version’ (restoring a couple of brief tit shots, and a bit more graphic violence from an otherwise fairly tame film). It is not a patch on the previous “The Body Snatcher” , but it is definitely a worthwhile film for fans, with only a few minor reservations. On the pl...

A group of college kids (Charlotte Vega, Adain Bradley, and Vardaan Arora among them) venture to the small West Virginian town of Wrenwood, to hike the Appalachian trail. In addition to the surly local rednecks, as our protagonists venture further into the mountains they discover a far more sinister and unwelcoming populace. A violent mistake leads to the group getting into deep trouble with a community of reclusive mountain people (led by Bill Sage) whose brand of justice is harsh and uncompromising. Meanwhile, Matthew Modine turns up as the father of one of the Millennials, looking for his missing daughter Vega. Can he get to her in time?   The 2003 “Wrong Turn” for me was one of the best horror films from a shithouse era from 1997-2004, and a pretty solid backwoods horror film. 2003 is longer ago than you likely think, so I can understand why we got a remake/reboot in 2021. However, having watched all of the sequels, it doesn’t feel long enough to be revisiting the well. Of...

Happily married couple Maggie Q and Luke Hemsworth wake up in their Thai AirBnB room on vacation with zero memory of the night before and a typhoon (and missing passports) preventing them from leaving. Viewing phone camera footage from the previous night yields dark and disturbing results. It shows the couple engaging in romantic interplay before Hemsworth snaps and violently murders his wife. What the hell? Soon, Q finds herself vomiting dirt. A helpful AirBnB woman (Alex Essoe) tries to assist the couple in figuring things out, but it only gets stranger and more disturbing from there.   For someone who started out as kind of an action heroine-type, Maggie Q sure does seem to turn up in horror movies quite a bit. This 2021 Thailand-set horror pic from director   Darren Lynn Bousman (who has the distinction of directing the best and worst films in the “Saw” franchise, “Saw II” and the pitiful “Saw IV” ) is a pretty damn good one. We start out with the lovely Ms. Q in her...

Medical student Daniel Cain is seemingly on the right path, and is even dating the beautiful daughter (Barbara Crampton) of the school Dean (Robert Sampson). Then he accepts a new roommate, the peculiar and arrogant Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs), a fellow student who will drag poor Daniel down into all kinds of icky, bizarro trouble conducting medical experiments in an attempt to re-animate the dead. David Gale plays the sinister, lecherous surgeon Dr. Karl Hill, who lusts after the Dean’s daughter and loathes West (and vice versa, I might add).   Morbidly funny 1985 splatter classic from director Stuart Gordon ( “Dolls” , “From Beyond” , “Space Truckers” ) is a quintessential cult item and perhaps sadly, the high point of Gordon’s career (The futuristic actioner “Fortress” is sorely underrated, however). A good measure of whether you’re gonna like this thing or not, is if you find the idea of Jeffrey Combs and Bruce Abbott wielding baseball bats and chasing a re-animated cat i...