The Eye (2002)
On one level it feels quite patronising and imprecise to refer to “Asian horror” as a genre, at least from a critical perspective; one would hesitate to bracket “European horror” and expect to find useful common ground between, say, Terence Fisher and Lucio Fulci. But on another such a generalisation is actually pretty indicative of the lack of differentiation in the gold-rush that saw Hollywood ransacking the back catalogues of directors from countries such as Japan, China and Korea in the early 21st century. Read more
Memories of Murder [2003]
South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho might be best known internationally for his third feature, 2006’s superb monster epic The Host, but his reputation as one his country’s most interesting film-makers was sealed with his preceding movie, 2003’s crime drama Memories of Murder. Based around a string of unsolved real life murders that took place in South Korea between 1986 and 1991, it’s an absorbing, mesmerising piece of work that reveals a director in complete control of his material. Read more
The Innocents (1961)
20th Century Fox were vexed by how to market The Innocents even before it was released. After the recent successes of Hammer Horror, it was recognised that there was a lot to be gained from promoting it as a good, old-fashioned spook-fest. However, even the densest of studio executives were aware that Jack Clayton had crafted something all together more sophisticated than The Curse of Frankenstein, Dracula or The Mummy (no disrespect intended). Succour might therefore be found in jumping on the then-rumbling Hitchcock bandwagon, and drawing on the popular clamour for films in the Vertigo and Psycho mould. Read more
Opera (1987)
Have you ever wondered what a Dario Argento opera might look like? Of course you have. Violence, anarchy, tragedy and death are shared leitmotifs, and given that the merit of Argento’s early work lays as much in his artistic vision and delivery as it does in the nuts and bolts of plot or narrative, the more pointed question is why hasn’t he ever taken the plunge and done something at La Scala? Read more
Black Lagoon show #3: Re-Made in Italy
In our third podcast, we take a look at three Italian films that were “inspired” by hugely successful Hollywood horror movies - Contamination (Luigi Cozzi’s fun take on Alien), The Last Shark (Enzo G Castellari’s Jaws clone) and Beyond The Door (Ovidio G Assonitis’s response to The Exorcist). All three directors take very different approaches to cashing in on genre blockbusters, and we’ll be discussing where they succeed and where they fail. Read more