It's amazing what you find when you go trawling through the microfiche archives for your local newspaper. When browsing through the back issues of The Yorkshire Evening Post for 1979, I noticed that The Warriors, Walter Hill's gritty, comic book-style New York action flick, was actually shown at a 'members-only' cinema called The Tatler here …
Continue reading The Warriors (1979)- The Film Leeds Local Authority Tried To Ban
From the director of the quite extraordinarily brilliant How To Survive A Plague comes this film. Marsha P Johnson was a black transvestite/drag queen (there was no 'transgender' then) who hung around Christopher Street in the 60s until her mysterious death when she was pulled out of the Hudson River in the early 90s. As we …
Continue reading Review- The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson (2017)
There was a long standing tradition for Turkish remakes of huge Hollywood blockbusters. These remakes have miniscule budgets and are made quickly so that they can be released soon after the original. The Exorcist was remade in Turkey for a tiny proportion of the original’s budget. This means that we get hilarious special effects, truly …
Continue reading Day 31- 31 Days of Halloween- Seytan (aka Turkish Exorcist)- 1974
Whilst on holiday Virginia bumps into her old friend and one-time lesbian fumble, Bet. Virginia's 'friend' Roger asks Bet to continue with them on their travels but whilst on the train the next day Virginia is angry at the attention Bet is getting from Roger who insists that he and Virginia are actually just travelling …
Continue reading Day 24- 31 Days of Halloween- Tombs of the Blind Dead (1972)
The other half of a double-bill in UK cinemas with the other film being the far better The Incredible Melting Man. This was actually made for television in America. Killer bees have flown into America and are claiming their first casualties disturbingly close to New Orleans when their Mardi Gras is due to kick off. A …
Continue reading Day 23- 31 Days of Halloween- The Savage Bees
I first learnt of this film's existence by walking past a cinema at the tender age of 4 and seeing a poster for the double bill of this and a TV movie that was shown theatrically in the UK called The Savage Bees (to be reviewed tomorrow night). Even the poster for this genius double …
Continue reading Day 22- 31 Days of Halloween- The Incredible Melting Man (1977)
A gorgeous slice of Ozploitation that is extremely well made, acted and written. A young man named Patrick is in a coma after killing his parents three years earlier. A new nurse named Kathie has been assigned to tend to him and they strike up a relationship through a typewriter that Patrick can telekinetically control …
Continue reading Day 21- 31 Days of Halloween- Patrick (1978)
A young family move into a house where a young man killed his entire family. And they wonder why the house price was so low. Cue all manner of haunted house shenanigans- flies, crucifixes being turned upside down, the kids suddenly acquiring imaginary friends, red eyes being seen through the window at night, black ooze overflowing …
Continue reading Day 20- 31 Days of Halloween- The Amityville Horror (1979)
A remake of the 1958 classic gets a 70s update. The premise is the same but the reasons behind it are different. It seems like each incarnation of this film reflects the unrest of each society it was made in. This film depicts the 70s swing towards pop-psychology and psychiatry that was popular at the …
Continue reading Day 19- 31 Days of Halloween- Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)
A boat sails into New York but the only person onboard happens to be a morbidly obese zombie who seems to be pissed off and hungry. The daughter of the boat’s owner decides to venture to where her father had been, a Caribbean island called Matul. She takes along with her a journalist who smells …
Continue reading Day 18- 31 Days of Halloween- Zombie Flesh Eaters (1979)
