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Review: There's Something Wrong With the Children (2023)

Two families go away together on vacation, and soon the kids have become obsessively drawn to a huge pit in an abandoned building. Parents Amanda Crew and Carlos Santos aren’t in a good place in their marriage so the other couple (Alisha Wainwright, Zach Gilford) agree to watch the kids for the night so they can re-connect. Unfortunately, the next morning the kids have vanished. Gilford goes back to the pit and finds the kids there only to watch them jump to their apparent deaths at the bottom of the pit. However, when he goes back to tell of the horrific news, the kids are there and seemingly alive and well. What. The. F. Directed by Roxanne Benjamin (who has directed a few TV episodes here and there), this 2023 Blumhouse horror film has some things going for it, but far too many problems to recommend. The roving camerawork is nice, and Yaron Levy (who lensed 10 episodes of “The Purge” TV series) gives us some colourful cinematography. It looks great, it’s quite atmospheric. I just d...
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Review: The Omen (1976)

American ambassador Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) is in Rome for the birth of his first child with wife Katharine (Lee Remick, perfect casting) when he is told that the child has not survived the birth. It’s 6am on the 6 th day of the 6 th month. Thorn is told that they can be given a replacement, as a woman has just died giving birth, and her baby is now orphaned. In order to save his wife the trauma and grief, Thorn reluctantly takes the offer and they name the child Damien. Several years later and now Thorn is posted to England, where some odd and violent things start happening around the now adolescent Damien (Harvey Stephens). A nanny (Holly Palance) makes a public spectacle of committing suicide at Damien’s fifth birthday party, exclaiming ‘It’s all for you!’. A trip to the zoo sees a pack of baboons violently shake the family car. And just why does Damien so badly freak out when taken to church? Even Katharine starts to have her suspicions/fears about Damien. A ranting priest (P...
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Review: The Alchemist (1983)

Lucinda Dooline picks up a hitch-hiker John Sanderford but this isn’t a cautionary tale about hitch-hiking or picking up strangers. Instead, these two barely acquainted characters have to deal with a man (C-grade action star Robert Ginty) suffering from a curse afflicted upon him by a sorcerer (Robert Glaudini) in the late 1800s. This man (who is somehow still alive) is convinced that Dooline is the spitting image of his wife who was stolen by the sorcerer. Oh, and about that curse…it gives him immortality but occasionally transforms him into some kind of beast. Yeah. I certainly have been known to be a cinematic contrarian from time to time, but it’s relatively rare for my own reaction to a film to be the polar opposite of the majority. This 1983 fantasy/folk horror outing was one of the biggest surprises for me when going through the filmography of producer/director/studio head Charles Band ( “Parasite” , “Puppet Master” ) over the last year or so. In addition to having a troubled pr...
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Review: Messiah of Evil (1974)

Marianna Hill arrives at a seaside town in search of her artist father (Royal Dano), whose communications have become increasingly erratic. She hooks up with Michael Greer and his friends Anitra Ford and Joy Bang as they slowly realise it’s the hundredth anniversary of an incident involving a blood red moon and the dead have risen to feed on the living. Charles Dierkop appears briefly as a gas station attendant, and Elisha Cook Jr. plays a fearful homeless man. 1974 cult item from husband-and-wife team of director Willard Hyuck and co-writer Gloria Katz, George Lucas’ pals who later forced “Howard the Duck” onto the cinematic landscape. This one’s considerably better, but still not a complete success in my book. It’s got a pretty agonising pace and a little too much vagueness for my liking. After 40 minutes, you kinda want the details to start filling in, and they just don’t come until you’ve stopped caring. Character motivation in particular seems lacking, and the character played by...
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Review: The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971)

Set in an 18 th Century English village, local judge Patrick Wymark is shown some disturbing remains with what was meant to be strange tufts of fur. However, when the judge arrives to examine things, the remains have vanished and the judge thinks nothing further of it. However, he’s going to have to face up to the fact that something disturbing is indeed going on in the village, as young Linda Hayden (17 at the time of filming) has taken to trying to seduce the local Reverend (a very serious Anthony Ainley), and leading the village’s youngsters in Satanic activity. Tamara Ustinov and Wendy Padbury play frightened local girls, Michele Dotrice plays one of the young Satanists, Milton Reid appears briefly as a dog handler, and James Hayter adds colour in the role of a pompous Squire. Tigon (or Tigon British) were never quite able to compete with Hammer Films or Amicus Films in the independent horror market. However, they did give us two of the best witch-hunter films in “Witchfinder Gene...
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Review: In the Mouth of Madness (1994)

Psychiatrist David Warner visits a mental patient (Sam Neill) in his padded asylum cell. He’s an insurance investigator named John Trent who was hired by a publishing company to track down a missing horror novelist named Sutter Cane (Jurgen Prochnow), kind of a mixture of H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. Cane believed that his works had a drastic effect on his readers…fiction was starting to turn real! He also came to realise that the fictional town he wrote about had suddenly sprung up in the real world, not featured on any map. Trent says he attempted to travel there with his editor (Julie Carmen) and what they encountered was truly the stuff of nightmares. Charlton Heston plays the publishing company head, John Glover turns up as the asylum administrator, Peter Jason is an insurance cheat, Frances Bay plays a creepy hotelier, Bernie Casey appears briefly as a client of Trent’s (in perhaps the film’s most famous scene), and a young Hayden Christensen can be seen as a paper boy in his...
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Review: The Beast Within (1982)

A honeymooning couple in the 1960s (Ronny Cox and Bibi Besch) are stuck beside the road in a small town in Mississippi after their car gets stuck in swampy undergrowth. Whilst Cox goes in search of help, a prone Besch is raped in the nearby forest in the dark. Seventeen years later Besch and Cox are raising their son (Paul Clemens), who is in truth the product of that awful incident seventeen years ago. He has been stricken by very painful, unexplained illness. So the couple decide to head back to small town Mississippi for answers about Besch’s assailant, to see if the illness is genetic. Unfortunately, the townsfolk are a secretive lot, some even quite surly. Meanwhile, Clemens escapes from the hospital and heads for Mississippi too, whilst his body seems to be undergoing some very painful transformation. Katherine Moffat is a local girl Clemens meets and falls for, with John Dennis Johnston playing her lout of a father. L.Q. Jones and Meshach Taylor play the local sheriff and his de...
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Review: The Men of Sherwood Forest (1954)

King Richard (Patrick Holt) is held prisoner in Germany, Sir Nigel of Saltire (Douglas Wilmer, in an excellent film debut) enlists the help of Robin Hood (Don Taylor) to uncover plans regarding the King’s return. After all, if the plans fall into the wrong hands the King’s life could be in danger. The trail eventually leads to the rotten Sir Guy Belton (David King-Wood), but there is another conspiratorial figure who is tied to Prince John. Eileen Moore plays the lovely Lady Alys, who along with Friar Tuck (Reginald Beckwith), and Robin’s Merry Men fill out the support players. Giant Bernard Bresslaw can briefly be seen as a dopey guard, and Leonard Sachs plays The Sheriff of Nottingham, far less important to the tale here than usual. Moderately enjoyable 1954 Val Guest ( “Yesterday’s Enemy” , “The Full Treatment” , “Hell is a City” ) adventure film was Hammer’s first of several Robin Hood films, but not the best of them (that would be 1967’s underrated “A Challenge for Robin Hood” ). ...
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