Reviews, thoughts and ideas on music, movies and more
Following on from last year’s production of Frankenstein and One Flew Over The Cuckoos Nest a few months ago, Music Theatre Guernsey (aka MTG) returned to another underground, World War Two era, tunnel for their take on Swedish horror tale Let The Right One In - in this case adapted for the stage by Jack... Continue Reading →
By coincidence I have finally come to Mike Flanagan's film of Stephen King's Doctor Sleep on the 40th anniversary of the US release of its forebear, and one of my favourite films, The Shining. Given the reverence I have for Kubrick's take on King's tale of a psychic child and his abusive father who was,... Continue Reading →
For as long as there have been myths of the supernatural, there have been myths of the vampire. Over time the creature has taken various forms but, over the last 130 years, in the west the most enduring has been Bram Stoker's Dracula - from his 1897 novel to the countless film and TV adaptations... Continue Reading →
Two years ago, with IT (now I guess Chapter One), Andy Muschietti created a tight adventure movie that married elements of nostalgic 80s kids’ romps like The Goonies with a genuine sense of disquieting threat and fear laced throughout. Now with IT Chapter Two the focus has shifted to the same characters, twenty-seven years later,... Continue Reading →
When the first trailer for Crispian Mills' (yes, him from Kula Shaker to those of us of a certain vintage) teen comedy horror, Slaughterhouse Rulez, appeared my interest was certainly piqued. Not only do I enjoy the genre generally but the inclusion of Simon Pegg and Nick Frost looked like Mills and co were aiming... Continue Reading →
Another in the ongoing list of horror remakes and reboots has hit the screens in the form of a modern take on the 1980s possessed doll crossover hit Child's Play. While a constant presence, for better or worse reasons, throughout my youth, I hadn't actually seen any of Chucky's previous screen outings so came to... Continue Reading →
Forty years ago (well 41 as I write this, but it was forty years when the film was released) John Carpenter helped define a genre with a film that has become an all time favourite of mine, Halloween. Since then the series has had its ups and downs (largely in accordance with the law of... Continue Reading →
Throughout his filmography, from Halloween to The Thing to Escape From New York and more John Carpenter has expressed at least hints of an opposition or the prevailing politics of the era, but more than anywhere this is expressed in his 1987 dystopian thriller, They Live. While it's iconography has become a part of the... Continue Reading →
By the late 1970s the horror movie had reached one of its natural tipping points as the so-called 'grindhouse' style of earlier in the decade, the likes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, I Spit On Your Grave and Last House On The Left, had broken new, and extreme ground in the American branch of the... Continue Reading →
The portmanteau horror film was something of a mainstay back in the days of Hammer horror in the 1960s and 70s where several shorter tales were combined to make one feature-length movie, generally linked by some kind of thematic device, be it a simple presenter/storyteller or something more inventive. Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman's Ghost... Continue Reading →
Tommy Girard 