Cruising first published by Little White Lies, as the 86th entry in my Cinema Psychotronicum column Police patrolmen DiSimone (Joe Spinell) and Desher (Mike Starr) cruise in their radio car through Brooklyn’s Meatpacking district, notorious for its nocturnal nightclubs and BDSM scene. “They’re all scumbags,” says Desher as he surveys the streets filled with leather-clad…
The Last Horror Film first published by Little White Lies, as the fifth part of my Cinema Psychotronicum column “I’d like to point out that for the first time in the entire history of the Cannes Film Festival, this prize is awarded to an actress playing in a horror movie.” It is 1981, but these words…
Maniac first published in Sight & Sound, April 2013 Review: “You are totally not what I imagined,” says Lucie (Megan Duffy), the young date whom Frank has picked up on a website called ‘Cupid’s Rejects’. She had been expecting somebody “fat, with long dark hair and greasy skin full of acne” – in other words, somebody just…
Franck Khalfoun’s s(l)ickly stylised remake of William Lustig’s Maniac (1980) hits cinemas today, and it is everything a remake should be (contrast Evil Dead, also out this week). For it stays true to the spirit of the original while turning it inside out, bringing it up to date, and self-consciously, even melancholically ringing the changes….