Based on a novel by Stephen King, “Needful Things” describes the opening of an antique shop in a small town, called ‘Needful Things’. The proprietor, Leland Gaunt (Max Von Sydow) always seems to have the very item stocked that a person needs, that touches some deep desire or fills some hole in their hearts. The…
“The Devil’s Pass” is a found footage horror film, inspired by the real life Dyatlov Pass incident. This involved a group of nine Russians who went hiking in the Ural mountains in 1959, and died under mysterious circumstances. Over the years possible explanations and conspiracy theories have abounded, ranging from aliens and yeti through to…
A story told from the point of view of an unreliable narrator, with events seen through the veil of an apparently dissociated mind, makes for an interesting narrative, where we wonder how much we can trust what the narrator is telling us. Turns out, we can trust her more than we imagined, as long as…
“The House of Usher” (1960) is one of Roger Corman’s series of films based on Edgar Allen Poe stories. Starring Vincent Price, it centres around the family of Usher, a brother and sister living in a rundown old house over a ‘tarn’ or mountain lake. A visitor comes to the house, who in the film…
The producer/director Roger Corman made eight adaptations of the works of Edgar Allen Poe. This movie is one of the better productions. It stars Vincent Price as Prince Prospero, a devil-worshipping European prince who mistreats the peasants and invites nobility to his castle to indulge in endless partying while the ‘red death’ plague kills off…
Vincent Price. Peter Lorre. Boris Karloff. Basil Rathbone. All in one movie. What’s not to love? “The Comedy of Terrors” is a comedy/horror (not sure there’s that much horror in it, really) that is a great deal of fun. It was directed by Jacques Tourneur (‘Cat People’, ‘I walked with a zombie’) and the screenplay…
I’m not sure what I expected, watching this. Something a bit silly, a bit schlocky, a bit of mindless fun, soon to be forgotten. I was pleasantly surprised. “The Cabin in the Woods” is a horror/comedy, and on a superficial look seems like it ought to be the ultimate in cliché. I mean, five (young)…
Fifty-four years ago a low-budget horror movie called “Night of the Living Dead” was released. The director, George Romero, and everyone involved did not anticipate how this film would become a horror movie classic, inspiring endless imitations and homages through to the present day. “Night of the Living Dead” was by no means the first…
Produced by Val Lewton, and directed by Robert Wise (who would direct “The Sound of Music” twenty years later), “The Body Snatcher” involves a doctor and student in Edinburgh in the nineteenth century, who are involved with a grave robber who sells them cadavers for dissection. The wonderful Boris Karloff stars as the grave robber…
“I walked with a zombie”, in spite of it’s incredibly lurid, B-movie title, is surprisingly decent. The main character Betsy Connell (Frances Dee) is a nurse who is hired to go to a Caribbean island (fictitious, but with similarities to Haiti), to look after a sugar plantation owner’s sick wife. Tom Conway plays Paul Holland,…
Eclectic Assemblage 