For the love of cheap thrills: gonzo auteurism and The Evil Dead first published by Little White Lies Although he had been making amateur Super-8 films for years with childhood friend Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi had only just turned 20 when he started shooting his feature debut The Evil Dead in late 1979, and was, in…
Soft Matter first published by SciFiNow From the opening image of tea being brewed on a bunsen burner, Jim Hickcox’s feature debut openly advertises its DIY status. With its hand-puppet flashbacks to ancient undersea battles, and its basic creature design that, in one notable case, amounts to little more than garbage bags and gaffer tape, Soft Matter offers low-to-no-budget sci-fi…
Blumhouse of Horrors was first published in a very different form by Little White Lies Jason Blum is the sort of producer that other producers want to be. He founded the independent Blumhouse Productions in 2000, and the fourth title that he picked up – a no-budget found footage horror film called Paranormal Activity (2008) –…
The Dead Next Door first published by Little White Lies as part of my Cinema Psychotronicum column Horror may have hit the doldrums in the early Nineties, but its resurrection came in the postmodern movement which was spearheaded by Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994) and Scream (1996) and then run into the ground by a whole…
First published (in a slightly shorter version) by Grolsch FilmWorks The founder and CEO of Blumhouse Productions, in 2005 Jason Blum produced one of the most profitable films of all time, Paranormal Activity, and ever since his name has been synonymous with lucrative low-budget genre titles like Insidious (2010), Sinister (2012) and The Purge (2013),…