Horror | Cagey Films

Recent big-screen viewing

Posted on August 28, 2024August 26, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Young Alena (Natalie Jane) and Benny (Christian Meer) share a terrible secret in Sean Garrity's The Burning Season (2023)

I don’t get out to a theatre very often these days, so my choices of what to see are more judicious than they used to be, generally the work of directors I’m particularly interested in. The one dud is the latest superfluous entry in a franchise I’ve quite liked – Wes Ball’s Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes – but the rest have been satisfying to some degree: George Miller’s latest apocalyptic action epic, Furiosa; M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, which as usual I liked in contrast to the predictable critical derision: MaXXXine, the conclusion of Ti West’s trilogy starring Mia Goth: and the small Canadian drama The Burning Season by sometime Winnipegger Sean Garrity.

Fede Alvarez’s Alien: Romulus is a fine franchise reboot

Posted on August 24, 2024August 23, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Too close for comfort in Fede Alvarez's Alien: Romulus (2024)

Bypassing Ridley Scott’s tediously pretentious attempts to reboot the Alien franchise, co-writer/director Fede Alvarez strikes gold with Alien: Romulus, a relentlessly-paced, well-designed return to basics which manages to reference all four of the original movies while creating something which feels fresh and original.

Murder, witchcraft, doppelgangers and stranded astronauts from Imprint

Posted on August 21, 2024August 20, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Flora Carr (Margaret Johnston) uses magic to destroy her husband's rival in Sidney Hayers' Night of the Eagle (1962)

A batch of new releases from Imprint in Australia introduced me to the first feature of Gordon Hessler, a noirish mystery called Catacombs (1965), and provided an opportunity to revisit Sidney Hayers’ excellent supernatural tale Night of the Eagle (1962), Basil Dearden’s doppelganger thriller The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), and for the first time since its theatrical release in 1970 John Sturges’ Marooned, a movie which bridges the gap between science fiction and naturalistic drama which happens to involve a space mission.

Aussie horror and Mexican luchadores and luchadoras from Indicator

Posted on August 7, 2024August 7, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Masked women wrestlers combat a cult of shape-changing witches in Rene Cardona's The Panther Women (1967)

Indicator continue to raise Mexican genre movies from obscurity with three recent limited editions of films by the prolific Rene Cardona Sr.: The Panther Women (1967), The Bat Woman (1968) and Santo vs the Riders of Terror (1970). In addition, they give substantial upgrades to a pair of early Ozploitation features – Richard Franklin’s Patrick (1978) and Simon Wincer’s Snapshot (1979).

Resurrecting a disparaged monster: Reptilicus (1961) in 4K

Posted on July 31, 2024July 30, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

The monster rampages through Copenhagen in Reptilicus (1961)

Frequently derided as the worst giant-monster-on-a-rampage movie ever made, Reptilicus (1961) gets a 4K restoration from Vinegar Syndrome in a three-disk, dual-format set which presents both the more familiar, shorter U.S. cut credited to Sidney W. Pink and the longer Danish-language version directed by Poul Bang. The effects are bargain-basement, but the movie has genuine charm and a few surprisingly impressive sequences.

Spring 2024 viewing, part three

Posted on June 12, 2024June 12, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Violent J (Joseph Bruce) is perplexed that the government would designate him and his fans as a criminal gang in Tom Putnam & Brenna Sanchez’s The United States of Insanity (2021)

Yet more recent viewing, ranging from several documentaries about the intertwining of personal identity and the cultural products we attach ourselves to and consume to unsettling explorations of sex, violence and misogyny and an ambitious, though not entirely successful, work of folk horror from Switzerland.

Ghosts, demons and cinematic experiments

Posted on May 29, 2024May 28, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cruel doctor Age Krüger (Udo Kier) returns from the dead to sire a son in Lars von Trier's The Kingdom (1994)

The new MUBI seven-disk set of Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom provides an opportunity to re-visit the original two seasons from 1994 and 1997 and finally see the elaborate blend of satire, soap opera and ghost story reach some kind of conclusion with the third season made in 2022; while it proves impossible to attain the unique energy of the original, which achieved a perfect balance between horror and comedy, The Kingdom: Exodus does tie up many of the loose ends left dangling for twenty-five years. An even stranger piece of experimental horror has been restored by Le Chat Qui Fume with their 4K edition of Leslie Stevens’ Incubus (1966) in which a pre-Kirk William Shatner confronts demons while speaking Esperanto.

Spring 2024 viewing, part two

Posted on May 22, 2024May 20, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

A strange young woman disrupts a middle-class home in Go Yeong-nam's Suddenly in the Dark (1981)

Continuing my survey of what I’ve been watching this Spring… Mondo Macabro Mondo Macabro is a label I haven’t mentioned much here, though they specialize in genre movies from around the world and I’ve discovered some real oddities through them – like H. Tjut Djalil’s Mystics in Bali (1981) and Juan Lopez Moctezuma’s Alucarda (1975). […]

Spring 2024 viewing, part one

Posted on May 15, 2024May 13, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

The new preacher in town (Robert Mitchum) has more than religion on his mind in Henry Hathaway's 5 Card Stud (1968)

Springtime viewing includes monsters and murderous mayhem, found-footage rawness and classical Hollywood craft, psycho killers and ancient evil, along with a couple of westerns with different attitudes towards violence on the frontier.

Recent releases from the BFI, part two

Posted on May 8, 2024May 8, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Mary (Natasha Richardson) dreams herself into Henry Fuseli's 1781 painting The Nightmare in Ken Russell's Gothic (1987)

A wildly varied selection of recent releases from the BFI, with Pat Jackson’s Western Approaches (1944) transforming propaganda into art via Jack Cardiff’s Technicolor photography; Roddy McDowall’s The Ballad of Tam Lin (1970) infusing folk horror with the Hollywood glamour of Ava Gardner; and Ken Russell turning the famous 1816 house party presided over by Lord Byron on the shores of Lake Geneva into a fever dream of the Romantics’ fascination with love and death in Gothic (1987)

Tag: Horror