Film Reviews

In 1977 – nearly 3 1/2 years after the release of The Exorcist (1973) and just a few months before its impossibly awful sequel – came Audrey Rose. Based on Frank De Felitta’s pulpy best-seller (“The novel of reincarnation”), it had a great cast and ...

Investing a police procedural film with elements grounded in the real world and hints of the supernatural is not an easy balancing act because viewers who are not interested in the latter element may find themselves unwilling to suspend disbelief ...

The Magic of Lassie is the first Lassie film in almost three decades, and although it doesn’t have the tender charm and elegance of the original masterpiece Lassie Come Home (1943) or later fare such as The Courage of Lassie ...

Canadian director Bruce McDonald serves up a beautifully imagined and gorgeously realized offering with his latest film, the genre-blending Dreamland. With its story of two very different men who look hauntingly alike and an act of violence that causes them ...

“There are all sorts of things that scare us. The dead scare us, for one day we will be dead like them. The dark scares us, for we don’t know what is waiting in the dark.” – Alvin Schwartz, “Boo ...

Fearless Fagan tells the story of a young lion working steadily at a travelling circus that suddenly has his life turned around when he has to join the army with his master and best friend Floyd Hilstown (Carleton Carpenter). This ...

Filmed around the same time as Plague of the Zombies, Hammer’s The Witches is a colourful but slightly tedious occult thriller / folk horror film. The print on this Scream Factory disc opens with a British Board of Film Censors ...

I can’t be certain that Katt Shea’s sexploitation flick Stripped to Kill (1987) holds the record for most gratuitous butt shots, but it features so many of them in the first five minutes alone that I’m confident in declaring it ...

February is drawing to a close. The calendar is racing towards spring and the days are growing milder. In a hail of red crepe paper and discarded heart-shaped trinkets, we have left Valentine’s Day behind. Chocolates have been eaten, hearts ...

Badlands (1973) was a film that had an ominous reputation for me growing up. As a fan of post punk artists such as Nick Cave and The Scientists, they often referenced Badlands as a brutally violent masterpiece that inspired their ...