In this 1971 pseudo-documentary by British filmmaker Peter Watkins, new prisoners are given a choice when all US prisons are full. They can either choose prison time or three days in punishment park where they must trek 50 miles in that time in punishing heat whilst the relevant authorities try to hunt them. Water and …
Continue reading Shocking Cinema- Day 23- Punishment Park (1971)
In 1950s rural Idaho, eight-year-old Seth Dove lives at a lonely gas station with his brittle mother and withdrawn father. After a vile prank on the English widow next door, Dolphin Blue, he decides she is a vampire. Children start to vanish. Then his brother Cameron comes home from the Pacific, where he worked on …
Continue reading Shocking Cinema- Day 18- The Reflecting Skin (1990)
I remember the first time I ever saw any scenes from The Brood was in the excellent documentary, Terror in the Aisles. I then went on to see the film from start to finish in a Film Studies lecture at university. There's a sinister institution within The Brood that's called The Somafree Institute of Psychoplasmatics. …
John and Laura Baxter travel to Venice following the death of their daughter in a pond outside their home. John has taken a job there restoring a church. Whilst in a restaurant, Laura meets two sisters, one of whom is blind but has the gift of second sight and can speak with the dead. She …
Continue reading Shocking Cinema- Day 16- Don’t Look Now (1973)
A scientist invents a teleportation machine. It needs some tweaks before it’s ready (we saw what happened to a poor baboon earlier in the film) but when a second baboon isn’t turned into dog food, Brundle is convinced his device is ready. He decides to prove it the ultimate way- with himself. Unfortunately, a fly …
Mark Lewis is a focus puller at a film studio who tops up his wages taking glamour photographs in a room above a newsagent. By night he films women as he kills them, chasing a look of pure fear. The habit comes from a childhood spent as his scientist father’s subject. Downstairs live Helen and …
Continue reading Shocking Cinema- Day 12- Peeping Tom (1960)
The blurb- ‘A brilliant yet tortured plastic surgeon creates a type of synthetic skin which is resistant to any damage. But his guinea pig is a mysterious woman who holds the key to his past and obsessions.’ For this movie, director Pedro Almodóvar said he wanted to create a ‘horror story without screams or frights’. …
Continue reading Shocking Cinema- Day 10- The Skin I Live In (2011)
An all-female group of scientists investigate a ‘shimmer’, a zone created when a meteor hits the earth which has a mutating effect on vegetation and animals within. This is an interesting plot which, unfortunately, feels like it’s been completely wasted. Unlikeable characters (all different but not one who I could empathise with), bad CGI which …
Continue reading Shocking Cinema- Day 9- Annihilation (2018)
A very religious policeman (Edward ‘Equalizer’ Woodward) arrives at the Scottish island of Summerisle to investigate the disappearance of a child, Rowan Morrison. Whilst he makes enquiries regarding the missing child he witnesses first-hand the pagan lifestyles of the inhabitants which shock him and clash severely with his staunchly Christian and somewhat puritanical beliefs. I …
Continue reading Shocking Cinema- Day 7- The Wicker Man (1973)
An unstable children’s author finds the hallucinations that engulf her life are becoming out of control as she stays in her vacation home. What is fact and what is fiction? I had never heard of Images before and was surprised to discover that it was directed by Robert Altman. An impressive cast is led by …
