When I think about Banshee Chapter, I keep finding myself saying “almost” or “nearly” or “not quite” over and over. It is an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s From Beyond. Well, almost. The original version of the script started life as a first draft of Uwe Boll’s Alone in the Dark, but obviously that didn’t quite […]
Read more "Banshee Chapter (2013)"(aka, Les robots pensants; The Thinking Robots) The Fly: That’s the one story anyone remembers when it comes to George Langelaan. It’s not that it is the only story he ever wrote. Far from it. But a lot of his stories never appeared in English, and, outside of episodes of shows like Night Gallery and […]
Read more "Le collectionneur des cerveaux [The Collector of Brains] (1976)"What is an Elp, you ask? Apparently, it’s some sort of local variant on the bigfoot, notable for its long claws, ferocious disposition and big feet. What’s worse, a recent series of murders in Farcical County looks suspiciously like the work of their local cryptid, and the new mayor calls in a small team of […]
Read more "The Elp; A Creature of Legend (2022)"I’m never sure how these things work out the way they do, but I ended up watching three Children’s Science Fiction films in a row this weekend. Frequent visitors will not be surprised to learn that I’m taking about a Chinese children’s’ film, a Polish children’s film, and a British children’s film. Now A Hitch […]
Read more "A Hitch in Time (1978)"(aka, Out of Thin Air, Thin Air) When you are number 3, you have to try weirder. At least that seems to be the case with this odd little film. Now, when it came to British Horror films of the Fifties, Sixties and early Seventies, Hammer was king, although Amicus wasn’t far behind. And then […]
Read more "Invasion of the Body Stealers [The Body Stealers] (1969)"I suppose you could call this one a scientific vampire story. Or perhaps a women in prison film. Although to be fair the prison is more of a low-security home for wayward girls sort of place, more like one of the old State Hospitals than anything the word “Prison” would conjure up, with several separate […]
Read more "The Man Who Turned to Stone (1957)"I’ll admit it. I have a weakness for one particular type of film — or you might even describe it as a subgenre — one which doesn’t get a lot of attention from many critics. I’m referring to a handful of adventure films with fantastic elements from the Sixties and Seventies which feel like they were ripped […]
Read more "War-Gods of the Deep [City in the Sea] (1965)"Sometimes a film is worth noting not for how good or bad it is but for historical reasons. Take, for example, the curious case of “The Bishop of Battle“, one of the segments of an entertaining, if minor, horror Anthology from 1983, in which a very young looking Emilio Estevez plays J.J. Cooney, a young […]
Read more "Nightmares (1983) — Part two, “The Bishop of Battle”"It’s one of those Eighties things. Here we have a threadbare, low-budget Eighties creature feature, but it has Martin Landau, Jose Ferrer and, of all unimaginable things, Ruth Buzzi. The same film today would probably star such notables as Eric Roberts or Dean Cain, who are best know for making these sorts of films. The […]
Read more "The Being (1983)"(AKA Nezulla) Back in the Fifties, the Japanese film production company Daiei planned to make a movie in which a vast plague of rats attacks Tokyo, ending with one last, Godzilla-sized rat on a rampage. This is not that film. Not even close. Instead we have a low budget, guy-in-a-suit rat monster movie, where the […]
Read more "Saikyôjû tanjô Nezura [Nezulla the Rat Monster] (2002)"
rivets on the poster 