The Conspiracy Of Dark Falls (2022) Is Very Dull


If you’re getting wound up by this years Oscar lists, then please rest assure that movie awards are pointless marketing doodahs, handed out through a combination of marketing, indifference, and stupidity. My evidence for that statement is that this film has won 16 awards and been nominated for another 15, for acting, direction, and production, when it’s less cinematically fulfilling than the NFT adverts YouTube holds your time ransom with. Continue reading

Project: ALF (1996) is Tea-Time Kafka

For those who don’t know it, ALF was a mid-80s sitcom about and Alien Life Form living with a suburban middle-class family in a generically affluent part of mid-80s California. Other than ALF’s propensity for eating cats, it was mild mannered family entertainment hinging on culture shock and mild ill-mannered behaviour. As a series it touched on nothing of any real importance, other than being based on a flagrant disregard for immigration laws, and it go through it’s 102 episodes on the principle that anyone will laugh at a 3-foot-tall fury humanoid with a Connecticut accent. So whilst I knew the series ended on ALF being captured by the US Air Force I wasn’t expecting the movie to be an unrelenting nightmare.
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A Warning To The Curious (1972)


It may surprise modern folks, but the reason that A Christmas Carol did so well when first released by Charles Dickins was because it tapped into a grand tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas time. So it’s probably of no surprise that the BBCs decision to commission a run of ghost stories for Festive viewings in the 70s was less to do with providing an alternative to bawdy light-entertainment and more to do with maintaining Victorian values. So it’s educational horror, beyond the usual anatomy lessons.
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Santa Vs The Devil (1959) is devilishly good Christmas fun

In context even this is problematic, which is impressive.


Mexico isn’t the first place you’d think of when it comes to Christmas, but they like commercialism as much as any temperate zone country and, as films like The Batwoman show, they sure have a knack of low-budget high-energy fantasy. And when something is introduced to me as “Mexico’s answer to Santa Conquers The Martians” I just have to give it a go*.
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13 Slays Till Xmas (2020)


The straplines made me think this was going to be good old fashioned Psycho Santa Slasher, but this is actually a horror story anthology with a Christmas motif and framing device. Which isn’t a problem as that’s prime quality festive family fun in the Super Fortress. Thus we fired up the streaming service and let the intro credits roll.
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Christmas Evil (1981)


People can complain about Christmas themed horror all they want, but it taps into three key traditions. You have the Northern European tradition of telling horror stories at Christmas, the horror genre tradition of taking happy situations and warping them, and the horror movie tradition of ripping off anything succesful. You also have the great tradition of misleading posters, which occasional leaves you with something other than a lump of coal.

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The Magic Christmas Tree (1964) is a lot


Who’s up for a timeless tale of Christmas joy, told with grace and style? Tough, all I’ve got for you today is 60 minutes of badly made insanity, the likes of which can only be found in 60s TV specials. A film so thoroughly low budget that only one of the cast has any credits other than this film, and none of them have face on IMDB. So; yes, this is the good stuff! Continue reading

Essex Space Bin (2016) Is Amazing


If you ever wanted to know what films Ken Loach would have made if he had been brought up on a steady diet of The Evil Dead and cheap speed on a sink estate in Maldon then do we have a treat for you! Made by the Chelmsford Film Society and distributed by independent film royalty Troma Entertainment, it tackles questions of reality, social degradation, mental health, and quantum physics. Mostly it does it by taking the piss and being cheap as hell, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be groundbreaking in it’s own rights.
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Rising Storm (1989)


I went into this knowing practically nothing about it, either with it’s original title or AKA of “Rebel Waves”. Given the amount of post-apocalyptic nonsense I watch, and the number of books I read on the subject (like the rather excellent https://pulsestore.net/produit/after-the-world-ends/?lang=en After The World Ends by Claude Gaillard, that I encourage all fans of the genre to check out), that surprised me, but after about 10 minutes I’d worked out why. And for the cynics amongst you it wasn’t because it was yet another low cost Mad Max lite Continue reading

Gold Told Me To (1976) is not that devine

Spooky


This was picked because of it’s title and enigmatic premise. After watching it I found out it was made by Larry Cohen, and then I found it he had directed, written, and produced such genre classics as Q: The Winged Serpent, Maniac Cop, and Black Caesar. He also did The Stuff, which I love but I get why others find a bit tedious. So it’s nice to see where he came from, and how far he had improved.
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