Sweeney Todd (2007)
In all probability this will be the first and last musical that I will review on the Black Lagoon. At the very least, I don’t expect to write about another one in such glowing terms, given that I can’t think of another film that so completely fulfills its duties as both a full-blooded horror movie and a musical simultaneously. I also can’t think of another film that has been burdened with such a condescending publicity campaign: that the movie is indeed a musical might come as a surprise to those who have only seen the trailer, which did an excellent job of completely disguising the content of a film whose only spoken dialogue occurs in the brief pauses between songs. Read more
The Ghost Galleon (1974)
The Ghost Galleon is the third installment of Spanish director Amando de Ossorio’s series of Blind Dead films, and has all the hallmarks of a franchise rapidly running out of steam. Ludicrously over the top premise? Check. Painful cost-cutting measures? Check. Even the people who made the trailer seem like they are over-compensating, with the voiceover artist portentously declaring it to be “an important film”. The Ghost Galleon may be many things - dull, for instance - but it really is not important. Read more
Scanners (1981)
It recently struck me that one of the more clever devices used by the sitcom Friends was the naming of its episodes. Prefixing each title with the words “The One Where…” is quite a sly but telling reference to how the mass audience receives film and television fiction: no matter how much you put into your product or how much merit it contains, its legacy in the popular mind will always rest on one single hook. Clearly, if David Cronenberg’s Scanners was a Friends episode it would be “The One Where The Guy’s Head Explodes”. Read more
Creepshow (1982)
To this day I remember one of the most insightful observations ever made by one of my tutors at college, namely, that there was no rational link between eating and going to the cinema to watch a film. Why was it, he continued, that the two had become so intertwined in the collective conscience that eating popcorn was now seen as an indispensable element of the cinema-going experience? Over the years I have come to agree with him more and more, especially as cinema menus have expanded to encompass a wider range of annoyingly noisy foods. Read more