This early Fassbinder film concerns a group of dissatisfied and directionless young people who turn their attentions away from themselves and the relationships within their inner circle when a young Greek man arrives looking for work and lodging. Soon the group rumour mill goes into overdrive as they perceive the young man as an outsider …
A mother and daughter in law (named in the credits as 'older woman' and 'younger woman' respectively) are waiting for their son/husband to return from the war he's fighting in. A soldier named Hachi who fought alongside him comes back to tell them that in fact he saw him killed. He then starts having a …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 31- Onibaba (1964)
A teenage drag race goes dreadfully wrong with one car being forced off a bridge and into a river. From the car a woman, Mary manages to escape and clamber ashore. However, Mary's life after that isn't the same. She seems to see ghostly figures when she seemingly disassociates herself with everyday life that is …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 29- Carnival of Souls (1962)
As soon as I saw that this 1965 Amicus film was directed by Freddie Francis I knew that the direction and photography would be beautiful. And I was right! I was also excited as I knew that this was a horror anthology film and starred two heavyweights of the genre, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 28- Dr Terror’s House of Horrors (1965)
A sequel to Village of the Damned which is less a continuation of the plot and instead like a film containing characters who possess the same powers as the children in the original but under different circumstances. Whereas the original took part in a countryside idyll, the action within this film is based in London. …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 18- Children of the Damned (1964)
The head of a theatre troupe Alan (think of a cross between Charles Manson and Timothy Claypole in lurid and very colourful 60's clothing) takes his fellow thespians (who he refers to as his 'children') to an island which is used as a kind of graveyard for dead criminals. He then assumes the role of …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 17- Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things (1972)
Mysteriously one day everyone in the village of Midwich suddenly lapses into unconsciousness. After a few hours everyone just as mysteriously wakes up. Two months later every woman in the village who is able to become pregnant finds that they are pregnant. Whats more the embryos are found to develop abnormally fast. The children look …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 15- Village of the Damned (1960)
A Tigon film from 1967 regarding Marcus, a doctor (played by Boris Karloff) who practices hypnosis. His wife Estelle is also part of his practice as they search for a suitable subject for their experiments. Step forward swinging 60's hip-cat Mike Roscoe (played by future Saint Ian Ogilvy) who Marcus picks up in a Wimpy …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 11- The Sorcerers (1967)
This Tigon film takes place in Swinging London as we see a bunch of twentysomethings at a party who then decide to liven things up by going to an old out of town mansion that is reported to be haunted. The backstory as to why is that the family who used to lived there twenty …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 7- The Haunted House of Horror (1969)
An iconic soundtrack for an iconic movie, Krzysztof Komeda's score for the 1968 classic Rosemary's Baby broke so many rules just like the film itself did. Firstly, the lead track 'Lullaby' had the audacity to take a piece of music traditionally used to soothe a child to fall asleep, completely subvert it and imbue it with …
Continue reading Soundtrack of the Week- Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Meathook Cinema 