British fringe cinema from the BFI

The Volunteer (Mary Woodvine) gradually merges with the island in Mark Jenkin's Enys Men (2022)

Four releases from the BFI offer excellent presentations of a pair of features from the 1970s which didn’t leave much of a mark at the time but are well worth rediscovering – Richard Loncraine’s Flame (1975) and Simon Perry’s Eclipse (1977) – and two recent experimental features – Bait (2019), Enys Men (2022) – by Cornish filmmaker Mark Jenkin, which provide a hand-crafted glimpse of disruptive social change in a timeless landscape.

The destructive power of fragile masculinity: Terence Fisher’s Four Sided Triangle (1953)

Bill (Stephen Murray) is so tightly focused on his research that he becomes blind to consequences in Terence Fisher's Four Sided Triangle (1953)

In 1953 Hammer Films took the first step on a path which would soon give the company an international reputation as a key purveyor of horror movies. Terence Fisher’s Four Sided Triangle, a modest production which combined science fiction, psychological horror and romantic melodrama in a prosaic English village setting laid the groundwork which would lead two year later to Val Guest’s The Quatermass Xperiment (1955), and two more years beyond that to Terence Fisher’s The Curse of Frankenstein (1957), the movie which changed the course of modern horror cinema. Hammer’s 4K restoration of Four Sided Triangle will hopefully dispel the film’s rather low reputation, with a beautiful new transfer, two commentaries and three interview featurettes which argue for its value as a pioneering contribution to British genre cinema.

Horrors old and new

Kronos (Horst Janson) uses his modified sword to deflect the vampire's hypnotic gaze in Brian Clemens' Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974)

Horror is a flexible genre, capable of using science fiction, history, adventure, action and terrible real-life events to touch on existential questions as well as provide escape with a frisson of pleasurable fear. Three recent releases span a broad range of the possibilities – Roger Corman’s X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), arguably his best film; Brian Clemens’ Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter (1974), one of the best late films from Hammer Films; and Nick Kozakis’s Godless: The Eastfield Exorcism (2023), a bleak examination of the dangers of fundamentalist religious beliefs based on a tragic case which occurred in Australia in 1993.

Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970): Criterion Blu-ray review

The androgyny of former rock star Turner (Mick Jagger) fuels the gender fluidity of Donald Cammell & Nicolas Roeg’s Performance (1970)

Performance (1970), co-directed by Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg, is one of the key films to emerge from Britain towards the end of the 1960s, a turbulent decade during which the post-war order was challenged by a generation seeking to redefine society; the film’s radical style – with disorienting editing and a rejection of conventional linear narrative – both reflected and embodied the chaos in a story which deconstructed class, sexuality and individual identity in a welter of violence clashing with art and music. More than fifty years later, the film seems fresher and more pertinent than ever.

More folk horror, old and new

Maura O’Donnell (Mary Ryan) can see beyond the material world in Robert Wynne-Simmons' The Outcasts (1982)

Three recent releases from England explore the survival into the modern world of ancient mystical forces, illustrating different aspects of folk horror. In Daniel Kokotajlo’s Starve Acre (2023) a pagan entity brings tragedy to a family; in Robert Wynne-Simmons’ The Outcasts (1982), villagers in 19th Century Ireland believe a farm girl is a witch: and in Peter Sasdy’s The Stone Tape (1972), scripted by Nigel Kneale, a research team believe they’ve found the mechanism behind hauntings.

A world of horror from Arrow and Severin

Koji Shiraishi’s Noroi: The Curse (2005)

Two recent box sets – Arrow’s J-Horror Rising and Severin’s All the Haunts Be Ours Vol. 2 – provide a dizzying range of horror and fantasy movies from multiple cultures and cinematic traditions. Each set includes a range of extras which illuminate not only the cultural differences but also similarities in theme and emotional impact displayed by these movies.

Fall 2024 viewing round-up, part two

FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) faces two serial killers in Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

A pair of Jonathan Demme features and several box sets are among my Fall movie watching, featuring various genre titles ranging from the Hollywood prestige of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) to the cheap regional horror of Doug Robertson’s HauntedWeen (1991), early ’70s Brit exploitation including Jack Palance sacrificing women to an African idol in Freddie Francis’ Craze (1974) and four Lucio Fulci and Umberto Lenzi made-for-television ghost stories in Cauldron’s Houses of Doom collection.

Pete Walker, master of British exploitation

The threat to Marianne (Susan George) comes from inside her family in Pete Walker's Die Screaming, Marianne (1971)

Two new box sets from 88 Films provide an opportunity to re-visit the work of Pete Walker, arguably the best exploitation filmmaker working in England from the late-’60s to the end of the ’70s. The Flesh and Blood Show collects the seven horror movies which are his best-known work, while the Pete Walker Sexploitation Collection includes his first playful features which grew out of years of making sex loops as well as his final film of the ’70s in which the sex takes on a much darker tone.

Blasts from the past

Catching up on Arrow

Collecting in the time of plague

Recent Arrow viewing

The future crimes of David Cronenberg

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