I Spit On Your Grave (1977)

It seems to have fallen to me to review many of the bloodier movies on this site, to the extent that it’s not uncommon for me to spend a couple of evenings a week watching eviscerations, disembowellments and other unpleasantness. For this reason, I occasionally wonder how desensitised I’m becoming to this sort of carnage, and whether I’m starting to lose objectivity - am I watching these films for their intellectual qualities or am I just bloodthirsty? It’s something of a relief, then, to report that I found I Spit On Your Grave pretty repugnant and gruelling, both for the film’s fairly sickening catalogue of violence, and for its total failure to put this violence into any sort of context. The plot - such as it is - tells the story of Jenny (Camille Keaton - Buster’s great-niece), an author who rents a house in some remote Connecticut woods in order to write her first novel. A city girl, she soon attracts the attention of four local rednecks, who gang rape and mutilate her and leave her for dead. Shellshocked, she plots her revenge, picking them off one by one. Read more

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

From a post-Scream perspective it’s easy to forget that Wes Craven also left an indelible impact on 1980s horror with his finest creation to date, the inimitable Freddy Krueger. A Nightmare on Elm Street is-without doubt-the superior of the two movies and Craven’s never really topped it. Rather like Halloween, a plethora of sequels and spin-offs has tarnished the reputation of the original Krueger brand but these should not be allowed to blot out the sheer magnificence of the original. Read more

Saw (2004)

Saw was the surprise horror hit of 2004, seemingly coming out of nowhere to gross over $55 million - that’s fifty five times its meagre $1 million budget. Given the other genre smashes of the year were the limp remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Dawn of the Dead, it was proof that there was still a public appetite for inventive, low-budget chills. Whilst Saw doesn’t offer much in the way of ideas for the audience to mull over, it’s an extremely well put-together series of scares and mind-bending plot twists that manage to sustain a sense of edge of the seat tension without resorting to cliche. Read more

The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)

It’s always instructive to watch a few movies by the same director in quick succession, so after the joy that is the Masque of the Red Death I was very much looking forward to moving backwards in Roger Corman’s Edgar Allen Poe series to his second offering, Pit and the Pendulum. You don’t watch any of the films in the cycle if you’re looking for a true to the text adaptation of Poe’s stories, and Pit is no different in this respect. In Masque, Corman departed from the story only in order to enhance the movie experience (especially with the brilliant ‘brothers of death’ scenes) to great success. In comparison here he seems almost bored with the story, picking out the bits that seem to fit together well and leaving the viewer to fill in the gaps. Read more