Films That Matter
Unwelcome Caller
Ah, Death, sometimes known as the Grim Reaper, has been depicted in so very many unique ways, with the most traditional being of the lineage of Victor Sjöström – who made the silent horror film The Phantom Carriage (1921)... which then inspired his protégée Ingmar Bergman (who watched the feature every year – usually on New Year’s Eve) with making his classic Black Death plague set film The Seventh Seal (1957). Having a laugh at that always winning Reaper, the 2011 horror comedy short The Coldest Caller, written and directed by Joe Tucker, is a four minute humour-filled foray into one such harrowing scenario. Exhuming some fun in a Monty Python-like sketch (specifically Monty Python’s Meaning of Life), when the ominous list-carrying Grim Reaper (Noel Byrne) – your typically towering, hidden gaunt figure dressed in all black, arrives on the cozey doorstep of one Mrs. Evans (Sheila Reid), the punctual old lady almost seems like she has already been waiting for him all day.
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Not That Hitchcock
The Horrible Dr. HichcockOctober 19, 2024Using a slight variation on the Master of Suspense’s oh-so-famous name, The Horrible Dr. Hichcock (1962), a horror film out of Italy written and directed by Ernesto Gastaldi, does not hide its love of the great Alfred Hitchcock’s oeuvre. Set in 1885, the titular Dr. Hichcock is a much lauded surgeon for his early mastery of anesthesia... saving lives no one ever thought remotely possible. With a veneer of respectability both in public and at home, his wife, Margaretha (Maria Teresa Vianello), happily entertains the Italian elite with her elegant piano playing in her extravagant estate home. But it is after hours when his hidden vices are released.
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Off Pat
PatrickPatrick Still LivesOctober 15, 2024Though only coming out some seven years into the growing number of low budget Australian exploitation pictures being made – now known as Ozploitation, Patrick (1978) was one of the first to bring outside attention onto these Down Under flicks. A bomb in its homeland but gaining traction in thirty foreign markets (including its all important success in the United States), this Richard Franklin (Psycho II) venture helped put Ozploitation on the map... something fully achieved the next year when Mad Max burst onto the scene.
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Masquerade Charade
The Kiss of the VampireOctober 11, 2024It’s just never a good sign when you’re honeymooning in the early 20th century Bavarian countryside and your brand new automobile runs out of petrol. The opening of a rather lesser known Hammer horror film (following a little bit of early staking action), The Kiss of the Vampire (1963), directed by Don Sharp, is shockingly without stalwarts Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing. The couple: Gerald (Edward de Souza) and Marianne (Jennifer Daniel), are left with little option. With the former walking ahead hoping for some aid, the latter is soon scared by a storm, bumping into the rather inimical Professor Zimmer (Clifford Evans)... coming across more like a morose vagabond than a learned man. All the while, a man from a hilltop manor, Dr. Ravna (Noel Willman), looks on with intrigue with the use of his telescope.
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Missed the Bloody Cut: 2024 (Part 2)
October 6, 2024The second Missed the Bloody Cut horror selection of this 2024, here are some more horror movies that did not meet my strict criteria (a rating of 7.0 or higher). . . but are still entertaining films (horror fanatics may enjoy) that do not deserve to be ignored like an ever growing group of peckish birds – and that are definitely worth a watch (just maybe not several re-watches).
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Missed the Bloody Cut: 2024 (Part 1)
October 1, 2024The first Missed the Bloody Cut horror selection of this 2024, here are some more horror movies that did not meet my strict criteria (a rating of 7.0 or higher). . . but are still entertaining films (horror fanatics may enjoy) that do not deserve to be fled from like a creature walking more slowly than a senior with a walker – and that are definitely worth a watch (just maybe not several re-watches).
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Regula as a Clock
The Torture Chamber of Dr. SadismSeptember 26, 2024Loosely based upon Edgar Allan Poe’s 1842 short story, “The Pit and the Pendulum”, the violently titled West German film The Torture Chamber of Dr. Sadism (1967), directed by Harald Reinl, is a meandering 18th century set gothic horror mood piece starring the legendary Christopher Lee. For those of you who revel in the wild extravagance of how some of these European horror pictures have a list of different titles around the world, here we go – The Blood Demon, The Snake Pit and the Pendulum (perhaps an abandoned Indiana Jones title as well), Blood of the Virgins, and lastly, Castle of the Walking Dead. Now, reading that primary title, the first question might be... just who is this Dr. Sadism? And, of course, the answer that only makes sense is that it is clearly no one.
