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Showing posts from March 5, 2023

Review: Blood Money

Three college-age, long-time friends (Ellar Coltrane, Willa Fitzgerald, Jacob Artist) have their bonds – and morality – tested on a camping trip. Fitzgerald finds several duffle bags full of money by a riverbank. She and Artist (whom she’s been sleeping with) want to keep the money, whilst Coltrane (who still harbours feelings for Fitzgerald after a one-time hook-up ages ago) thinks they should turn it in. Then along comes John Cusack, who is looking for the $8 million himself. He’s the one who put the money in the bags and parachuted it out of a plane in the first place. He doesn’t have any time for anyone’s whiny bullshit, he wants his damn money back. Let the bickering and mind games begin.   After the offbeat and amusing “May” , I assumed a great new genre talent had been found in director Lucky McKee. He hasn’t really delivered on that promise since ( “The Woman” seemed to get wildly mixed reviews), let alone raised his stock in the industry all that much since the 2002 horro

Review: From Beyond the Grave

Peter Cushing plays an antique store proprietor, with this horror anthology revolving around a few of his customers who might just deserve to be taught a bit of a lesson through the cursed items they take home with them. David Warner buys a mirror, holds a séance, and becomes possessed by the ghostly figure housed inside the mirror. The ghost urges Warner to murder pretty young things to quench its thirst. In the second story, Ian Bannen plays a hen-pecked husband to shrill Diana Dors (having a high ‘ol time being a total cow). He meets an oddball street peddler (Donald Pleasence) and his peculiar daughter (Angela Pleasence), the latter of whom introduces Bannen to the notion of voodoo dolls. Thirdly we have Ian Carmichael plagued by an apparently disturbed spirit that takes over him and tries to force him into strangling his wife (Nyree Dawn Porter). Enter dotty spiritualist Margaret Leighton for answers. Finally, Ian Ogilvy buys an antique hand-carved door that contains an ancient ev