Jimmie, an Aborigine, feels conflicted between staying true to his ethnic roots and trying to make something of his life which entails suffering vile racism from many of the White people he encounters. This erupts in bloody fashion. Chant shows that the Powers That Be didn’t discriminate when they chose films to brand as Video …
I first heard of the director Jeff Lieberman when I recalled seeing the artwork for one of his films, Squirm on the video shelves in the 80's. The sleeve depicting a shower head dripping with worms instead of water with some of them having crawled under the skin of the scared woman in the picture …
This 1978 Fassbinder movie starts with the film's eponymous hero Maria getting married to her husband Hermann in Germany during World War II just as a bomb being dropped threatens to curtail proceedings. Thankfully the couple's union is officially sealed and Hermann then goes off to fight in the war himself. After learning later that …
Fassbinder's 1971 film concerns a German film crew waiting for a production to start whilst on set in a Spanish hotel lobby. The film starts with the verbal recanting of a Goofy cartoon. This is possibly the most linear and conventional part of the entire film's narrative but that's not an insult. The rest of …
More Fassbinder goodness with this 1974 film as we see the central character start out as a happy go lucky woman who feels pressurised to find a man, settle down and adjust to married life. Her own parents are revealed to be in a loveless marriage until Martha's father collapses and dies when he is …
Emmi, a 60 year old widowed cleaner decides to enter a bar that is playing Arabic music to shield from the rain. She sits at a table on her own far from the regulars who are at the other side of the bar. They dare one of their entourage, Ali to go and ask her …
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)
A young man who can restore frescos (ancient works of art) arrives to restore one such artwork but finds events within the remote town to be far from normal. Indeed, they are downright bizarre. Does the fresco hold any clues? Does it depict what people have been led to believe it shows? Will the events …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 21- The House With Laughing Windows (1976)
A remake of the much loved and revered masterpiece Dawn of the Dead was always going to be sneered at by fans and film scholars alike when the project was announced. I actually saw the film on it's release when I was visiting Glasgow and was expecting to roll my eyes constantly whilst saying 'Psst!' …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2020- Day 19- Dawn of the Dead (2004)
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)
