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Symptoms
(1974)
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Chris Alexander
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Larraz specializes in juxtaposing moments of considered calm with bursts of grisly violence, something that also makes VAMPYRES such a memorable work.
Posted Dec 12, 2022
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The Keep
(1983)
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Chris Alexander
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It is a film of many sensory pleasures and the key to truly enjoying it is to overlook its flaws, its lapses in logic, its often-dated visual effects and let it simply wash over you, to sink into it and perceive it like an opium inflicted hallucination.
Posted Dec 08, 2022
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Phenomena
(1985)
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Chris Alexander
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As troublesome as this sentiment may sound, SUSPIRIA and DEEP RED might be Argento’s most important movies, but their formidable powers dim substantially when stacked up against to the berserk and rapturous mutant anomaly that is PHENOMENA.
Posted Dec 08, 2022
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4/4
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Dawn of the Dead
(1978)
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Chris Alexander
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DAWN OF THE DEAD is a movie for all time. A movie for OUR time. Though there are thousands of movies like it…there’s no movie quite like it. Does that make sense?
Posted Dec 02, 2022
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Cabinet of Caligari
(1962)
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Chris Alexander
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The film serves as an ultra-sexualized exercise in pop-psychology and increasingly bizarre, hallucinatory exchanges of dialogue.
Posted Mar 30, 2022
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Invasion of the Body Snatchers
(1978)
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Chris Alexander
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One of the greatest science fiction horror films of all time.
Posted Feb 23, 2022
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Demon Seed
(1977)
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Chris Alexander
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As decadent and out of control as DEMON SEED may appear to be, Cammell knew exactly what he was doing, making a futuristic sex thriller by way of brain melting acid trip.
Posted Nov 15, 2021
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Night Shadows
(1984)
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Chris Alexander
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The movie is an atmospheric, unpretentious down-home horror flick that, more often than not, feels like Meth-fueled remake of Tobe Hooper's 1979 TV movie adaptation of Stephen King's SALEM'S LOT.
Posted Sep 23, 2021
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Crisis
(2021)
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Chris Alexander
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This is a heavy, serious and frightening picture, one that coats its grim, grimy truths in a sort of sugar-shell of slick filmmaking to make them go down easier, but whose ultimate effects kick in hard as you go.
Posted Apr 28, 2021
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The Sentinel
(1977)
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Chris Alexander
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A disturbing, sick, often campy and occasionally unspeakably horrifying theological mystery ripe with cheap, visceral thrills.
Posted Apr 20, 2021
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8MM
(1999)
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Chris Alexander
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I believe 8MM to be (Schumacher's) masterpiece and certainly, it's further evidence that Cage is one of the great dramatic screen presences when used properly and when dialing down his patented eccentricities
Posted Nov 26, 2020
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The Man With the Golden Arm
(1955)
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Chris Alexander
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Sinatra's Frankie is a tragic figure but so are all the broken men and women who shuffle around Preminger's bleak canvas, lost as they are and desperately searching for some way out.
Posted Nov 05, 2020
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The Pit and the Pendulum
(1961)
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Chris Alexander
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A richly realized, full-blooded ode to horror, dead dreams, duplicity, infidelity, mass-murder and cyclical madness.
Posted Jul 13, 2020
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Let Sleeping Corpses Lie
(1974)
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Chris Alexander
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This isn't the quasi- realist American horror of Romero and it isn't the chunky, in your face zombie opera shock of Fulci. This is the zombie film as dark, lyrical, melancholy fairy tale, a film that exists in a class of its own.
Posted Jun 09, 2020
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Bloody Moon
(1981)
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Chris Alexander
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BLOODY MOON has moments of that inimitable, free-form Franconian vision and, despite its budgetary and narrative failings, it's a slop-bucket full of lurid fun.
Posted May 30, 2020
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The Duke of Burgundy
(2014)
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Chris Alexander
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It's about selfishness and selflessness, power and submission and how these dynamics are endlessly reversed. And it's dressed up in so much cinematic finery, both eerie and lush, that it has a sensorial pleasure unlike any other movie before it.
Posted May 30, 2020
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The Company of Wolves
(1985)
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Chris Alexander
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Jordan was not afraid to take a genre that was already rubbing its tired, oozing eyes and spin it like a top, making something disarmingly original, a dark wonder of a picture.
Posted May 24, 2020
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Land of the Minotaur
(1976)
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Chris Alexander
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LAND OF THE MINOTAUR is a movie that demands an open mind and perhaps more importantly, an open ear.
Posted May 24, 2020
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Tales That Witness Madness
(1973)
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Chris Alexander
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A superior British horror film and one of the finest examples of the multi-story shocker.
Posted Apr 27, 2020
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Moon of the Wolf
(1972)
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Chris Alexander
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A tight and eerie Southern Gothic creeper with an ace cast, a fun and engaging central mystery and compact, crackerjack storytelling.
Posted Apr 20, 2020
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Color of Night
(1994)
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Chris Alexander
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A riotous, larger-than-life thriller, one laced with blood, eccentricity, swooning sound design, a rogues gallery of amazing character actors, relentless sex and, for the curious, a prime peek at star Bruce Willis' impressive full-frontal member.
Posted Apr 14, 2020
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Count Dracula's Great Love
(1972)
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Chris Alexander
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This is my favorite Naschy film and a work of unusual, lyrical potency.
Posted Apr 01, 2020
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The Shout
(1978)
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Chris Alexander
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Driven by a powerful score by Genesis alumni Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, this is truly a living, breathing nightmare committed to celluloid.
Posted Apr 01, 2020
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The Last Man on Earth
(1964)
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Chris Alexander
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Manages to exist as an aggressively depressing and lyrical nightmare, taking all that was profound and painful in the source text and re-presenting it as a low-budget but evocative and funereal slice of semi-cerebral pulp.
Posted Mar 24, 2020
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The Return of Count Yorga
(1971)
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Chris Alexander
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THE RETURN OF COUNT YORGA is one the creepiest vampire films I've ever seen.
Posted Mar 19, 2020
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Little Joe
(2019)
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Chris Alexander
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Bereft of any sort of sex, violence or frissons, the almost experimental film goes to work on your head and as such, will likely stick with you and haunt you for days to come.
Posted Mar 09, 2020
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The Invisible Man
(2020)
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Chris Alexander
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There's a very serious message here, and it needs to be delivered in a far more complex, sophisticated way that matches Moss's fearless work. She's real. Her co-stars are devices.
Posted Mar 03, 2020
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Blood & Flesh: The Reel Life & Ghastly Death of Al Adamson
(2019)
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Chris Alexander
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An intimate, riotous, affectionate and ultimately profoundly sad essay that is an essential watch not just for horror history fans, but for anyone remotely interested in the waning days of the anti-establishment, Hollywood fringe maverick.
Posted Feb 11, 2020
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The Turning
(2020)
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Chris Alexander
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This is a sophisticated work of dread, decay, brooding mood and abstract storytelling coated in the sheen of a simplistic spook show.
Posted Jan 28, 2020
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Hitch Hike to Hell
(1977)
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Chris Alexander
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By conventional standards, the shoestring-budgeted HITCH HIKE TO HELL isn't a particularly well produced work. But man, does it pack a disorienting, primal punch.
Posted Jan 07, 2020
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The Omega Man
(1971)
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Chris Alexander
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The film s a pretty terrible direct translation of what is one of the easiest-to-adapt-to-screen books I've ever read. But it doesn't want to be the novel. It has something else on its mind.
Posted Dec 16, 2019
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Man of a Thousand Faces
(1957)
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Chris Alexander
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If you can suspend your disbelief, the lousy make-up doesn't detract from how beautiful, moving and loving a tribute to Chaney's legacy the film is.
Posted Dec 16, 2019
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Sole Survivor
(1984)
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Chris Alexander
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SOLE SURVIVOR is a supremely slow, obscenely eerie exercise in dread, one that manages to reference Rod Serling, Ingmar Bergman and George Romero, sometimes within the same scene.
Posted Nov 12, 2019
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Killer Nun
(1978)
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Chris Alexander
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Anita Ekberg screws the scenery in this wonderfully tasteless shocker.
Posted Oct 14, 2019
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Toys Are Not for Children
(1972)
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Chris Alexander
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TOYS ARE NOT FOR CHILDREN is a kind of masterpiece, I'm just not sure what kind.
Posted Oct 09, 2019
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Satan's Slave
(1976)
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Chris Alexander
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Warren's films offer nothing save 90 minutes (or less) of pure, down and dirty phantasmagorical escapism; well-crafted genre romps made to distract, shock and titillate.
Posted Sep 05, 2019
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Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
(2019)
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Chris Alexander
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You don't walk away from this tale titillated. You don't walk away outraged. You don't walk away shocked. You walk away...empty. And that's exactly how it should be.
Posted May 16, 2019
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The Devil's Own
(1966)
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Chris Alexander
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THE WITCHES is no pandering horror-hagsploitation potboiler. It's something far more evolved and interesting
Posted Apr 08, 2019
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La Novia Ensangrentada (The Blood Spattered Bride) (Blood Castle)
(1972)
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Chris Alexander
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The Blood Spattered Bride is a film that demands attention, discussion and analysis.
Posted Mar 03, 2019
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Invasion of the Blood Farmers
(1972)
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Chris Alexander
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Those of you out there who get-off on the lowliest of inept genre stuff will love the Hell out of it.
Posted Mar 01, 2019
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The Hunger
(1983)
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Chris Alexander
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We know that the hunger of the title isn’t just a hunger for blood, it’s a hunger to hold on to life, to love, to all of those moments that make us what we are, in that brief period of our lives that we shine, when we are at our best.
Posted Feb 19, 2019
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Jack the Ripper
(1959)
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Chris Alexander
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This is an essential piece of Ripperphilia on film and just an all-around killer bit of sordid period-piece horror.
Posted Feb 05, 2019
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The House That Jack Built
(2018)
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Chris Alexander
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By the time the movie literally goes to Hell and stings its Baroque finale with the funniest closing credits music ever, you'll feel very much like the director has smashed you square in the face with cinema itself.
Posted Dec 14, 2018
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Nightwing
(1979)
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Chris Alexander
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NIGHTWING isn't a great horror movie per se, but it's a pretty great movie full stop, one that deserves a much bigger cult fanbase.
Posted Nov 20, 2018
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Mandy
(2018)
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Chris Alexander
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The film just feels alien. It feels evil. It courses with a sort of seething darkness and descends into such brain-swelling madness that you can almost smell it.
Posted Oct 31, 2018
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Godmonster of Indian Flats
(1973)
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Chris Alexander
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An almost experimental, totally unpredictable and fever-pitched horror-western that seems beamed-in from another dimension.
Posted Oct 23, 2018
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Psychomania
(1971)
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Chris Alexander
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From its first dreamy frames, with its gang of leather clad, skull faced bikers poured into black leather, cinema history has never seen the likes of a picture quite as unapologetically mental as PSYCHOMANIA.
Posted Oct 11, 2018
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The Velvet Vampire
(1971)
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Chris Alexander
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It's Yarnall who draws all eyes to her like bugs to bright lights...
Posted Oct 11, 2018
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Mary, Mary, Bloody Mary
(1975)
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Chris Alexander
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Ferrare makes for an unforgettable villain/victim; when she kills, she's savage and yet we empathize with her plight.
Posted Oct 08, 2018
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Circus of Horrors
(1960)
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Chris Alexander
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The movie really works primarily because of Diffring's truly magnetic performance, a complicated turn that sees his Rossiter/Schuler veer between sympathetic and sociopathic.
Posted Sep 22, 2018
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