'See No Evil' (2006) – Gregory Dark.

A querulous group of juvenile delinquents are tasked to clean up the ruinous-looking, parasite-infested, long derelict Blackwell Hotel, all unaware that an outsized, orgiastically organ harvesting psychotic behemoth Jacob Goodnight (Kane) has sinisterly booby-trapped the mildewed rooms for his own evil edifications! Jacob Goodnight's manically obscene modus operandi makes Hatchet's hackneyed hackings look like the banal gorings of a hapless stumblebum! Whereas galloping gorehoud Gregory Dark's sicko slasher remains a sight for 'Saw' eyes! While some fright-fans might find Jacob's obscene ocular hobby a somewhat jarring affair, his particularly perverse predilection for grimly purloining a persons personal peepers is one not oft seen on the screen obscene! 'See No Evil' is sheer blinding, slasher-tastic terror, and once the dead-eyed diabolist Jacob gets his horror hooks deep inside you, it's lights out!!!...The slasher movie just got super-sized! 

 

 
 

'Lake Mungo' (2008) - Joel Anderson.

This superlative, stylishly shot, grief-laden Australian shocker has an unusually hypnotic quality that drew me deep into its eerie, nightmarishly unfathomable mystery! A bleak, morbidly fascinating, deliciously slow-churning, spectrally sinister creep-out from down under which relied on atmosphere rather than facile gimmickry! On occasion, poor Alice Palmer's grievous torment felt uncomfortably genuine, upsettingly close to my own bouts of depression. Director Joel Anderson's glacially gripping doom-fest included some especially oppressive, expertly eerie interludes, wherein Alice's paralysing sense of despair over her apparently inexorable demise seem inextricably linked to the distressing, precognitive events that befell her at the ill-omened Lake Mungo resort, the desolated location's alien, other-worldly topography adding much to the film's emotionally devastating impact! And the heart wrenchingly earnest scenes where the visibly traumatized Palmer family fearfully await the fateful news of their daughter Alice has a grimly resonant quality you rarely see in the populist, jump-scare saturated genre films of today. 'Lake Mungo' is a sombre, diabolically disquieting descent into one of contemporary horror cinema's more memorably hateful hauntings! The immaculate performances, relatable humanity, nervy, discordant score and intelligent, compassionate film-making have yielded a bona fide modern horror classic! 

 

 

'Images' (1972) – Robert Altman.

Maestro moviemaker Robert Altman's hugely underrated visually stunning, eerily hallucinatory psychodrama is a singularly tweaked masterpiece! Featuring a bravura performance by Susannah York. This was another spectacular film I was lucky enough to catch on the telly box when I was a kid, and it lodged pretty deeply in my film-soaked mind!

 

 

'A Window in London' (1940) – Herbert Mason.

Herbert Mason's lustily performed, enjoyably light-hearted romantic thriller 'A Window in London' still retains its effervescence, being a vibrantly written, engagingly brisk, warmly nostalgic cinematic treat! This frequently refined vintage entertainment documents some truly evocative moments along with its beguilingly monochrome views of 1940s London! And certainly no less appetising is the vivacious, and disarmingly pretty Sally Gray who makes for an especially charming, drop-dead gorgeous heroine! With her crisply moustachioed, monstrously arrogant, ferociously jealous illusionist hubby brought to meticulous life by Paul Lukas, who energetically portrays the picture-perfect pantomime villain Louis Zoltini with a deft Lugosian panache! Far from primitive, Mason's pristine 'A Window in London' is not only a fascinating window into a bygone Britain, it also maintains lively interest as a pleasingly whimsical, sweetly romantic, deliciously theatrical romp in its own right, and while the tall, almost absurdly photogenic Michael Redgrave is, perhaps, a trifle miscast as the cavalier, rough-handed cockney crane driver, he nonetheless remains a sympathetic lead, whose gallantly dramatic intervention playfully heralds an eventful jaunt across the picturesque diorama of 1940s London. 

 

 

 

 

 

'The Glimmer Man' (1996) – John Gray.

Burnished, bullet-blasted 90s action classic 'The Glimmer Man' is arguably the very last intentionally funny, legitimately righteous Steven Seagal actioner. To whit: He still proudly sports his sparse, oleaginous-looking ponytail, which would very soon malevolently morph into military grade 'Gene Simmons helmet-hair'! He smiles a lot!!!??? Sensei Seagal still mischievously maintains his Buddhist, Blah-Blah, reluctant bone-breaker shtick! And there's only sporadic use of his 'patent dramatic whispering'!!!??? Unlike today, The Glimmer Man's generous budget is conspicuously heftier than Seagal's wantonly walrusing waistline! And the 'master-of-everything' shows some legit screen chemistry with his charismatic co-star, the entirely excellent, expertly bantering Keennan Ivory Wayans. Today, the plus-sized, insufferably sedentary DTV Seagal has gone full Jabba The Gut, the porcine, self-congratulatory pugilist merely squats down scowlingly, folding his sluggish meat-hooks smugly over his titanic tummy, asthmatically whispering his imagined omnipotence, while his svelte stunt double thanklessly does all the busy work! So, frankly, rewatching 'The Glimmer Man' was quite a severe shock to the system, Seagal smiles???? WTF???!! And composer Trevor Rabin's strident, chromium-sheened score is pretty rocking too! Ah! Unfortunately, there's very little in the way of comedic running, so, that omission may well prove to be a dealbreaker for those seasoned Seagallions craving some of Seagal's singularly sloppy man-stride!

'The Glimmer Man is tastier than dried deer penis...try it, you might like it!' - Weirdlingwolf / Dirty Kunst Video.

 

 

'The Challenge' (1960) – John Gilling.

'The Challenge' (1960) is a stylishly mounted, frequently volatile, jazzy-cool early 60s Brit-Noir by extremely versatile Hammer Horror alumnus John Gilling, who consistently proved himself to be equally adept at crafting exciting, flint-edged pot-boilers along with his bravura, bodice-ripping, blood-chilling Gothic shockers! This compelling, well above average crime thriller has a cracking cast of agreeably familiar genre faces, with super charismatic screen icons Jayne Mansfield & Anthony Quayle making for an attractive, if somewhat tempestuous pair of ill-fated lovers. And it might be a fair assessment to claim that maestro John Gilling's shadow-steeped, cult crime caper The Challenge's more demonstrative charms are not so much hard-boiled, as fabulously full-bodied!!!

The circuitously double-dealing, gun-powdered plot is mesmerically matched by the no less fascinating twists and turns of The Challenge's preternaturally pulchritudinous star! This bracing, sporadically violent, action-packed B-Thriller finds the affable, hard luck Jim Maxton (Anthony Quayle) in shtook, having being used as a Patsy by an especially duplicitous, grubby-looking mob of scheming blaggers, glamorously led by deliciously Machiavellian matriarch Billy (Jayne Mansfield). Dynamically paced, competently written, 'The Challenge' percolates potently until its locomotive climax which delivers a deadly kick like a strychnine-laced espresso! The brooding, commanding actor Anthony Quayle is a seething ball of repressed anger, with the high-voltage, bra-burstingly buxom B-Movie bombshell Mansfield providing some welcome luminosity to this crepuscular crime caper!