Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls had its international première at the Glasgow FrightFest 2023. When a film comes with a title like Onyx the Fortuitous and the Talisman of Souls, it is announcing its generic affiliations to the fantasy realm. Yet the title character Onyx the Fortuitous is in fact Marcus J….
The Masque of the Red Death first published by Little White Lies, as entry 120 in my Cinema Psychotronicum column The Masque of the Red Death is the seventh of eight features which Roger Corman adapted in the first half of the 1960s from the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Some of these adaptations were…
Anything For Jackson first published by VODzilla.co Satanists come with their own stereotype. The picture that they present in the popular imagination usually goes something like this: young, male, long hair, black leather, listens to heavy metal, incel. What you probably do not picture – unless your internal iconography is dominated by Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s…
The Deep House screened at Grimmfest 2021 “Everything’s weird underwater,” says Ben (James, son of Mick, Jagger) some way into The Deep House. He is a historian turned YouTuber who likes to film himself and his girlfriend Tina (Camille Rowe) visiting supposedly haunted ruins – but as his videos fail to get enough hits to…
Asmodexia first published by Little White Lies, as the sixth part of my Cinema Psychotronicum column Sleeping rough near a cemetery on the outskirts of Barcelona, elderly Eloy de Palma (Lluís Marco) tells his teenaged granddaughter Alba (Clàudia Pons) a campfire story from his own boyhood: in the village of Alba’s great grandparents, the cemetery became a…
First published, a long, long time ago, by Movie Gazette You might not know his name, but I guarantee that you will recognise Clint Howard’s face. With his indefinably odd looks, he is, like Steve Buscemi, Danny Trejo and Tony Shalhoub, a memorable ‘character actor’ doomed forever to play sleazeball antagonist or goofy buddy to…
First published by Grolsch FilmWorks In this film’s title, the word ‘Diaries’ evokes the signature video-journal style of Michael Bartlett and Kevin Gates’ debut features The Zombie Diaries (2006) and World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries (2011), while ‘Paranormal’ points to the occult preoccupations of the Paranormal Activity found-footage franchise – but it is…