Absurd opens with lead character, Nikos Tanoupoulos, being pursued by a priest. Nikos tries to climb over a wrought iron fence but accidentally impales himself on the spikes on top of the fence and is rushed to hospital. As he seems to get over his surgery and injuries in record time, it is established that, …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2024- Day 4- Absurd (1981)
The House By The Cemetery is the finale of Lucio Fulci's Gates of Hell trilogy after City of the Living Dead and The Beyond. The film concerns a house in New England that is synonymous with a series of murders that continue to happen in it. A new family have just moved in, not knowing …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween 2024- Day 2- The House By The Cemetery (1981)
I had first heard about the film Burial Ground aka Nights of Terror (1981) years before I actually got to see it for myself. When it was finally released in Britain, it was released in 1987 on Apex Video and was missing a massive 13 minutes. Thankfully I didn't get to see this truncated version …
Continue reading Meathook Cinema Hall of Fame- Burial Ground (1981)
The opening scene of this opus shows us what could almost be a kind of commercial of a windsurfer doing his thing on the water. However, suddenly he is attacked and killed by a shark. Following this, successful horror novelist Peter Benton teams up with wizened shark hunter Ron Hamer to try and find and …
Continue reading 31 Days of Halloween- Day 21- The Last Shark (1981)
I love any film that is so notorious it generates it's own urban legend regarding it's controversial release, whether this account is true or not. One such film is Lucio Fulci's 1982 sleazy slasher gorefest, The New York Ripper. Rumour has it that when the UK distributor submitted it to the British Board of Film …
Continue reading Meathook Cinema Hall of Fame- The New York Ripper (1982)
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)
There is so much to love about Beyond The Door, the 1974 Exorcist rip-off made in Italy. Yes, it had a budget that was a tiny fraction of that of the William Friedkin classic but thats part of it's charm. It also copies similar scenes from it's parent movie with varying degrees of success. The …
Continue reading Soundtrack of the Week- Chi Sei aka Beyond The Door (1974)
Poster of the week goes to this gorgeous Italian artwork for the Steve McQueen film Nevada Smith from 1966. This is rugged, masculine and just a tad homoerotic.
I loved it when big name stars decided to degrade themselves by starring in Italian exploitation pics in the 70's solely for a big paycheck. This Italian Jaws rip-off stars Henry Fonda, John Huston and Shelley Winters. A seaside resort (a long way from Amity though) has become the feeding supply of a giant octopus. …
Continue reading Day 31- 31 Days of Halloween- Tentacles (1977)
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)
Meathook Cinema 