Pumpkinhead (1988)
I’m in a real bind trying to review Pumpkinhead, primarily because it had the potential to be so much better it turned out to be. Stan Winston is one of the finest special effects guys going (think The Terminator, Jurassic Park, Edward Scissorhands) and Pumpkinhead marked his directorial debut, a point obvious from many of its strengths. Read more
City of the Living Dead (1980)
Another day, another Lucio Fulci zombie movie. I watch them because I enjoy them, but watching a lot of a director’s output over a relatively short space of time really shows up their strengths and weaknesses with startling clarity. City of the Living Dead is the second in Fulci’s popular quartet of zombie movies, following Zombie Flesh Eaters and preceding The Beyond. Seen in this context, City seems like almost a dry-run for The Beyond, setting up a lot of the latter film’s concerns and featuring Catriona McColl in a very similar role to the one she subsequently played. McColl is probably Fulci’s greatest asset in these films; although not an A-list performer, she’s incredibly well suited to this kind of movie, bringing a zippy lightness of touch without ever camping it up or being too knowing. She’s an engaging, naturalistic presence who carries much of the audience interest with her. Read more
Bride of the Monster (1955)
The second – and most successful – of Ed Wood’s Bela Lugosi films, Bride of the Monster is the closest the infamous director came to making a ‘conventional’ B-movie and, despite the flaws you come to expect in his works, is well worth having a look at. Read more
Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Received wisdom dictates that Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale’s own follow-up to his epochal Frankenstein, is one of the few sequels that actually outclasses the original. Bettering a film as magnificent as Boris Karloff’s first outing as the nameless monster is quite a tall order, and although I accept I’m in a minority opinion, I really don’t think the sequel comes anywhere close; instead of the all-conquering masterpiece I was expecting, it’s actually a bit of a curate’s egg. Read more
White Zombie (1932)
White Zombie has to be one of the most unappreciated horror films of all time. It came worryingly close to never being finished, the Halperin brothers (Victor and Edward – producer and director) rarely feature in histories of the genre and it hardly ever resurfaces on TV or reissue. This is a tragedy as White Zombie is a film of stunning merit; as well as being one of the first to feature reanimated corpses it is noteworthy as one of the few successful talkies of the era to perfectly capture the atmospherics of the silent films which were on the demise at the time. Read more
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