Really enjoyed The Transfiguration, a movie about a small, bookish, African-American boy obsessed with vampires who’s living his dream. While folk try to buy drugs off him or grill him on snitching to the cops, no one suspects what he really is, no one comes close to linking him to the corpses with their throats torn out. This is a great addition to the genre, two thumbs up.
A zombie flick about a plucky stripper being chased across the desert by a lone zombie. It’s actually pretty good, although it has a clunky add-on ending and an unnecessary rape scene.
Never actually seen Phantasm so thought seeing it for the first time in the cinema at midnight would be nice. I really didn’t know what to expect, except for the image of The Tall Man and the fact it was a second-shelf classic. Watching it, I was just like, “My God.” An early best-worst movie. Total nonsense, silly, almost incoherent plot – you can see why people would find it endearing but I think you’d have to grow up with it for it to find a place in your heart. I especially liked how nonchalant everyone is about the absolute mad shit going on. Guy’s carrying the 3-foot-long hooded corpse of a murdered friend and says, “You didn’t tell me the dwarf was Tommy” in the same voice you’d use for “You didn’t tell me the taxi needed to be a 5-seater”. Points for good title font.
A bingo card of obvious cliches. Another horror film that confuses creepy for loud. That movie felt like it lasted 4 or 5 days. Utterly without merit apart from the 90-second dentistry scene.
The Devil’s Candy is about a metalhead artist who does psychic paintings of the victims of the Satan-inspired serial killer coming for his daughter. Good soundtrack and solid villain, enjoyable.
Baskin is fucking awesome! So beautiful, so horrific. Weird Turkish nightmare, brimming with religious and sexual horror. All the thumbs up!
Pretty to look at if very predictable. The Gatekeeper looks great as a monster.
An overlong martial arts cop thriller about breaking a organ harvesting syndicate. Favourite scene was the guy running through a prison riot trying to get cell reception.
Series of people find themselves on a Twilight Zone highway where they get trapped in a tale of horror. Ace soundtrack really adds to the creep factor.
Just wanna say I thought the Frightfest shorts have been of an even higher standard than the features, really good selection. My favourites were KEEN-wah, about a vegan zombie finding love, and Portal to Hell!, Rowdy Roddy Piper’s last role as a janitor battling Cthulhu.