When it comes to New Zealand films undoubtedly the person who has the made the biggest impact in recent years is Peter Jackson. Long before he was on his Tolkien trip and breathing life into books about precious rings and Hobbitses it was gory over the top splatastic horror comedy movies such as Bad Taste (1987) and Braindead (1992) that he was cutting his teeth with.  Neither serious, nor even comedy-horror features have prospered since then in New Zealand a point one of the few active filmmake

Back to 80’s America when hair was big, rock music was bigger and comets were hitting town turning everyone into piles of dust or rapidly mutating zombies. Times were great in 1984 and never better than on the video shelves when films like this were literally flying off them into chunky top loading players (to be rewound as nobody ever did that with the bloody tapes) and eagerly viewed by those of us going through that awkward thing called puberty, hoping to see some blood and breasts. Night Of

It’s not so common that I have the pleasure of watching a film of this kind from this era for the very first time but be assured The Visitor is anything but a common experience. I had been eyeing this cult obscurity up for some time under the alternative title of Stridulum via Code Red in the USA when I heard the fantastic news that Arrow were releasing it on Region 2 DVD and Blu-Ray over here for the first time. The trailer had been doing the rounds and had left people saying how they simply ha

Following Immoral Tales Borowczyk delivered a fairy tale like no other that had ever been imagined. He somewhat contemptuously mentions Disney quite a bit in some of the features seen accompanying Blanche but this was a version that old Walt could never have conceived nor for that matter Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve who first penned La Belle et la Bête back in 1740. Reading about The Beast back in old fanzines it was a must see and it sounded like one of the most crazy debauched films

Of all the lurid titles vying with each other for attention in the golden days of exploitation film none had quite the compelling call of Bloodsucking Freaks. Just one mention of the film was enough to have gore fans literally giving their right arm for the chance to see it. If that title didn’t quite have the desired effect then the fact it was also known as ‘The Incredible Torture Show’ among others should have done. Unfortunately this was not at all possible for those of us hearing about it i

If you know all about adjusting tracking then you lived through the video age, congratulations on surviving the frustration of fizzy screens and blurry images with lots of buzzing noise. Long before taking DVD for granted the video cassette and the clunky old top loading bulky players started a revolution by bringing movies into the home on demand (well once you had picked them up from the local video stores that sprung up all over the country). It was a fascinating age of discovery for many, es

“The drug which gives the clown power Means the circus can never be stopped And his dream can go on unhindered ‘Til the last human being has dropped” Any excuse to use lyrics to the classic Human League track Circus Of Death 1979 and it fits here perfectly Seriously though if you suffer from coulrophobia (dat’s a fear of clowns) you best not read or look beyond this point. Personally I love clowns especially when they scare the crap out of people, they are after all the punks of the showbiz wor

It’s high time t hat Polish auteur Walerian Borowczyk (1923-2006) was due a thorough reappraisal and Arrow Films have gone all out in breathing new life into the director of over 40 short films and a dozen features. They are re-releasing, naturally with high definition transfers and a raft of extra features both as a limited edition Cinema Obscura boxed set and stand alone discs, a selection of short films entitled Theatre Of Mr And Mrs Kabal, Goto Island Of Love (1968), Blanche (1971), Immoral

Witches have long fascinated the arts and cinema is no exception. We can trace their lineage right back to the Great Grandmother of them all ‘Haxan – Witchcraft Through The Ages’ a Swedish/Danish film directed by Benjamin Christiansen way back in 1922. It is fair to say that cinema is not quite so bogged down with films about idolatrous spell casters as it is the more fantastical zombies, vampires and werewolves which kind of makes new features appeal more. If you cast you eye back in time there

“Baise Moi” were indeed the words uttered from my lips on hearing a couple of weeks ago that this film had been recently passed completely uncut by the BBFC for the first time in the UK. This really had me pondering the implications of how it could affect other titles in the future? The problem with the film was not that it contained graphic violence or that it contained graphic sex but that it mixes them both together. Not only that but it contains sexual violence which is still very much a no

Horror and comedy strange bedfellows when you think about it. After all the two genres are at extreme ends of the spectrum, well away from each other and they should not really work well when mixed. Of course they do but the problem with putting them together is that sometimes you can get the worst aspects of both types of films. Occasionally though things are bang on, you have horror films that truly gross you out and make you piss yourself laughing. It’s not often that you get genuinely scared

At last! This is a film that I have been waiting for a long time to get a decent release and finally Synapse have gone and delivered the goods so I was able to get my nth generation and pretty much unwatchable video transfer of this and throw it in the bin. That was the good news, the bad news is that this is only available on Region 1 US DVD and Blu Ray (in a nice combo package) so if you are in the UK you are going to have to get an import unless some nice enterprising company over here releas

Most readers of this site will be well versed that musically the French are held in high regard as far as extremism is concerned. The likes of Blut Aus Nord, Deathspell Omega and Arkhon Infaustus have been flying that flag proudly and labels such as Seasons Of Mist and Osmose Productions are almost household names. As far as movies are concerned perhaps France would not be the first place you would think of for celluloid atrocities. Japan and The Far East could well be your first stop and of cou