Lucio Fulci directs Catriona MacColl, Paolo Malco and Ania Pieroni in this giallo involving a mystery killer and a ghost girl lurking around a spooky new home.
Doesn’t make a lick of sense and visually references The Shining often. Once we go down into the basement the fear factor shoots up. What lurks beneath the home jolts you out of all the woozy, incomprehensible tease.
5
Perfect Double Bill: Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)
Higuchinsky directs Eriko Hatsune, Fhi Fan, Hinako Saeki in the J-horror where the inhabitants of a small Japanese town become increasingly obsessed with and tormented by spirals.
I have enjoyed reading Jiro Ito’s pessimistic body horror mangas of late. Spiral is probably the most famous… starting small scale and seemingly trivial but ultimately becoming apocalyptic. This DV filmed movie adaptation captures the earlier eerie moments well. It feels a little softened at times, just hinting at that oppressive wider picture and the gory fatalism of the source material. It is often filmed in unnerving close-up POV shots giving the whole endeavour the feel of a 90s Tango advert gone rogue. Also the director loves shooting teenage girls legs. Bruv, can’t help himself!
6
Perfect Double Bill: Pulse (2001)
I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin
Henry Hathaway directs John Wayne, Kim Darby and Glen Campbell in this western where a drunken Marshall is hired by a bossy teen to hunt her father’s killer.
“Fill your hand, you son of a bitch!”
Absolute childhood nostalgia. This pacey, funny and smarter-than-it-looks western owes everything to the Duke. Super relaxed, this was the role he worked his life to play. He has always been tough and often been funny but those words from Charles Portis’ novel’s dialogue just tumbles out of his mouth sweetly and with impact. Sure, the Coens remade this classier and more sophisticated but this version is hardwired into my movie loving DNA. Hell, Rooster Cogburn reminds me of my Grandad so much this feels like a Haynes Manual as to how I feel a “real man” should work. I often lead myself within difficult interactions with Rooster’s attitude at the front of my head. Dalton from Road House too. And John McClane. And Jimmy Smit’s Bobby Simone from NYPD Blue. Somewhere between the four is how all men should carry themselves through the world. And age wise, I’m entering the Cogburn phase of my life.
“Come see a fat old man sometime.”
9
Perfect Double Bill: True Grit (2010)
Yorgos Lanthimos directs Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone and Aidan Delbis in this satirical drama where two incels kidnap a young female CEO believing she is an alien in the end stages of colonising Earth.
Not my favourite Lanthimos. Just as it feels anyone could have made it. Where is his beloved fisheye lens, for example? Often this is merely a three hander play. Very talky, often numbingly sad. The fireworks come whenever Stone’s face resets whenever she realises whatever salvo of bullshit she is churning out isn’t helping her cause. And then ultimately it feels that late stage capitalism is let off the hook and we all must reap what we sow. Hmmm… Futile existence. Thanks for that message. The three leads giving Oscar worthy turns aside, the zany and gory Korean original is way more of a lark.
6
Perfect Double Bill: Save The Green Planet! (2003)
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Guillermo del Toro directs Oscar Isaac, Jacob Elordi and Mia Goth in this big budget adaptation of the horror classic.
Solid… if a little underwhelming considering Mary Shelley’s classic text is the keystone in everything Del Toro has ever put up out there on screen. The production design is fully committed but there is a deadening digital flatness. If this was shot solely with cinemas in mind it might be the closest we have got Coppola’s Dracula. Issac is having rare fantastic fun as the mad scientist but positioned to often as a pitiable figure. Just let him be a cunt! Goth and Christopher Waltz are also perfectly cast… which given their lack of screen time in the second half is galling. The movie’s grip slackens after the monster is re-animated. Classy but not very compelling. Is a study in bad parenting the best hook for this iconic tale? And for Del Toro ultimately well trodden ground. This was my birthday night out movie.
6
Perfect Double Bill: Mary Shelley (2017)
Franco Zeffirelli directs Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Michael York in this Shakespeare adaptation.
Sumptuous production design. Bawdy and chaotic. Both Burton and Taylor literally wreck every set they are in. It is hard to follow the dialogue or the narrative but who cares as they kick down doors and smash through windows while glaring at each other? Wrecking ball cinema.
6
Perfect Double Bill: Kiss Me Kate (1953)
I write regular features about live comedy for British Comedy Guide here https://www.comedy.co.uk/people/bobby_carroll/features/ and my own Substack https://substack.com/@edinburghlaughterbulletin
Mario Bava directs Daliah Lavi, Christopher Lee and Jacques Herlin in this gothic chiller from Italy.
A sadistic nobleman’s ghost goes on an BDSM rampage, and possibly kills a few others too, in a big stone castle. Didn’t follow the whodunnit story but it looks lovely. I like the sickly, garish kaleidoscope of primary colours Bava bathes his chesty beauties in. Is that enough for me to fall head first for this auteur? It hasn’t happened yet. Hints of Edgar Allen Poe and too much wandering down the same staircase.
5
Perfect Double Bill: Black Sabbath (1963)
Michelle Garza Cervera directs Maika Monroe, Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Raúl Castillo in this remake of the yuppie in peril / nanny from hell Nineties mainstay.
Monroe Vs Winstead. Take my money. And Winstead just about wins in the diva off. She absolutely falls apart. Two of my 21st century faves take on this childhood relic. Exactly the right sort of material to rehash. The 90s potboiler was no big shakes. It almost made Rebecca DeMornay an A-lister and still fills a Saturday night in an undemanding way for Gen X-ers. This version is probably on a par. It is less transgressive but overtly sexier and mysterious. Though the third act revelations do suggest that we might have been rooting for the wrong bisexual scream queen after all. “That woman deserves her revenge.”- Budd, Kill Bill Ends on a whimper. You can’t help but worry that MEW’s blank of a husband never once take her side. What a dick! Though she did refuse to buy his pasta sauce for him at the farmer’s market so maybe revenge is a healthier dish best served cold? Slick… slicker but not an actual improvement.
5
Perfect Double Bill: The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992)
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Joe Lynch directs Heather Graham, Barbara Crampton and Judah Lewis in this Lovecraftian horror where a psychiatrist becomes obsessed with one of her young patients, who she later discovers is linked to an ancient curse.
Body swap horniness. A strange brew that mixes Stuart Gordon’s Eighties aesthetic (morgues, necronomicons) with a Nineties erotic thriller (staid mental health professionals growing obsessed with their hot young clients). There are even a couple Hitchcockian tumbles from a great height. This doesn’t have the best reputation online due to an indie cheapness but I actually really got into it. Not all the cast are as good as Graham and Crampton but those two legends go all in. And look great while doing it.
7
Perfect Double Bill: Mayhem (2017)
Kevin S. Tenney directs Amelia Kinkade, Cathy Podewell and Linnea Quigley in this horror where teens takeover a deserted mansion for a Halloween party and… eventually… are possessed by hellspawn.
One I was too scared to borrow from my local VHS rental shop. Takes FOREVER for the horror to start and meanwhile you are trapped with some very annoying stereotypes. And when the demonic stuff does kick off it is mainly running up and down the same corridor for twenty minutes. Good FX for the era and the two female demons are giving it everything.,
4
Perfect Double Bill: Night Of The Demons II (1994)
Bobby Carroll's Movie Diary 