When I was growing up I loved the Nanny State Public Information Films. They were akin to state produced horror shorts extolling the dangers of everything from playing near rivers to mixing different types of tyres on the same vehicle. Beware The Rapist is an American PIF (called Public Service Announcements or PSA's over there) …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 21- Beware The Rapist (1979)
Martin is by filmmaker George A Romero and was his favourite film from his oeuvre. Martin is a young man who we see travelling by train to Braddock in Pittsburgh to live with his elderly cousin, Tata Cuda who seems convinced that Martin is the latest in a long line of vampires ('the family curse'). …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 13- Martin (1978)
A family rent a huge house for the summer from it's brother and sister owners who have one condition for the rental- that their elderly mother stays in the house and they provide her with meals. Things then start to go crazy for the new inhabitants and it's almost as if the house is alive …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 4- Burnt Offerings (1976)
I was umm-ing and ahh-ing about going to see this at my local cinema. It was a one-off showing of the 4K Blu ray print and the chance of seeing this on the big screen was too much of a rare occurrence to knock back. The reason for my reticence was that when I had …
Harry is on his way to a country holiday home with his new ex-model girlfriend, Diane when they cross paths with a rowdy car-full of drunken yahoos who try to intimidate them. After the couple run them off the road and ruin the suspension on their car, they are tracked to their country lair with …
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
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)
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)
Meathook Cinema 