Reviews

Directed by Tom Donovan
Written by Rita Lakin
Starring Bradford Dillman, Lois Nettleton
ABC, 1974
Review By Amanda Reyes

This Toronto-lensed, shot-on-video thriller originally aired under the ABC Afternoon Playbreak moniker all the way back in 1974. The Playbreak series, which ran from October 31st, 1973 – February 13th, 1975, was a cycle of 90 minute stand alone episodes that would air once a month, preempting the daytime soap programming, and there were about 4 to 5 episodes per season. The afternoon movie format proved to be popular and many of the Playbreaks won Emmys, including The Last Bride of Salem which garnered an award for TV stalwart Bradford Dillman...

Directed by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo
Written by Agnieszka Wojtowicz-Vosloo, Paul Vosloo & Jakub Korolczuk
Featuring Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci, Justin Long
Review by Hal MacDermot

Do the dead live, or are the living dead? What does it mean to be dead anyway? Great questions, but I’m not sure if Agnieszka Wojtowicz really manages to answer them. After.life is her first feature, a psychological thriller, and despite some top notch talent in the persons of Liam Neeson, Christina Ricci and Justin Long, the film never lives up to potential. Liam Neeson’s performance as scary funeral-director-guy is the saving grace...

Written and directed by Oren Peli
Starring Demon Off Camera, Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat
Review by Lis Fies

If you haven't seen Paranormal Activity by now, it can't possibly live up to its word of mouth and you're probably a more experienced genre-lover who is over 25. That being said, there's some good content of the Pretty/Scary nature that makes this 11k ultra-low-budget phenom a solid choice for your Halloween bucks.

As you've heard, because you're a smart horror-lover not born under a rock, the movie basically stars a girl, a boy, a camera, and an off-camera demon...

Directed by Karyn Kusama
Written by Diablo Cody
Featuring Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons
Review by Matthew Funk

Fans of Joss Whedon will delight—four years after FOX cancelled Firefly, they pay partial penance with this well-intentioned Buffy: The Vampire Slayer remake: Jennifer’s Body. Like Buffy, Jennifer’s Body uses wit and comic book violence to observe that high school social climbing is a close cousin to cannibalism. Unlike Buffy, it fails to deliver the dramatic goods or to show more sophistication than a bitchy teenager...

Directed and written by by Steve Balderson
Featuring Karen Black, Mink Stole, Jane Wiedlin, Jeff Dylan Graham, Starina Johnson, Pleasant Gehman, Susan Traylor, Stacy Cunningham,
Review by Andrew Shearer

Unbelievable. Un-fucking-believable. A new women in prison film (WIP for short) starring Karen Black, Mink Stole and one of the Go-Go's was shot less than two hours away from me and I didn't even know about it! I consider it a lost opportunity. I'm currently developing a nice, dark bruise on my left leg from kicking myself repeatedly with my right...

Written by Paul Kane
2009, Skullvines Press
Review by Barbie Wilde

“What Big Teeth You Have!” “The Better To Eat You With, My Dear!”

Sex and violence run like scarlet, subterranean rivers beneath the surface of many iconic fairy tales and Little Red Riding Hood is no exception. A young girl loses her way in a dark forest and meets a Woodsman and then a Wolf. They both ask her questions and give her advice, but who is friend and who is foe? She arrives at Grandma’s house, only to find her beloved Nan in the belly of the beast, literally...

Written by Sarah Langan
Harper - Available Sept 23, 2009

Audrey’s Door is the latest horror novel from Sarah Langan, who gave us The Keeper and The Missing, and it channels Polanski’s The Tenant along with a little bit of Rosemary’s Baby (which are both listed as inspirations in the preface) along with a creepy almost ‘Henry James’ attitude towards New York City and its inhabitants. Langan has a great talent for character development if, despite the intensity of the plots, good tends to triumph over evil (I never like that) and things get wrapped up nice and tidy in the last chapters of her novels. Nevertheless, Audrey Lucas is a creation with whom a chick can really identify; she’s insecure, complex, and caught up in a severely screwed up and macabre situation in her new apartment building where the other tenants are more than a bit odd...

Directed by Esther Gronenborn
Written by Christian Limmer & Sönke Lars Neuwöhner
Featuring Benno Fürmann, Alexandra Maria Lara
Review by Hal MacDermot

A lonely forest at twilight, the haunting sound of a piano, a young girl walks alone, she looks back perhaps to see if she’s being followed. Will she find a wolf? No, but she will find a farmhouse full of dead bodies with their heads smashed in. Kaifeck Murder is a beautifully shot horror/thriller/fairy tale with fine performances from Benno Fürmann (Jerichow, Mutant Chronicles) and Alexandra Maria Lara, (Control & Youth Without Youth). The film draws inspiration from the true life unsolved murder of 6 people in small German village back in 1922. This is a story of superstition and community in the vein of the original Wicker Man, or even Neil Jordan’s gothic horror fairy tale “The Company of Wolves.” Don’t expect a slash fest, but do expect an excellent and thoughtful movie...

Directed by Marcus Koch
Written by Joe Davison
Featuring Raine Brown, Jeff Dylan Graham, Joe Davison, Georgia Chris, Jack Amos, Kibwe Dorsey, Rod Grant
Review by Mario Dominick

Marcus Koch’s recent killer clown slasher gorefest presents us with the story of two tabloid reporters (Joe Davison and Georgia Chris) who are out looking for a new story for their publication. A rash of killings by a circus clown known as “The Teardrop Killer” causes a stir and the two believe they’ve found their big break...

Written by Arthur Marks and Bob Peete
Directed by John Peyser
Starring Jamie Lyn Bauer, Aldo Ray, Ray Danton, Francine York, Jennifer Ashley, Tiffany Bolling, and Andrew Prine
1974, Dark Sky Films

On DVD April 28th, Centerfold Girls is a gritty and grim movie not just about deranged killer stalking vapid, busty nude models, as the title first implies. It's about all the horrible things that happen to perfectly nice girls whose only fault is talking their clothes off for a men's magazine. The way people see them and the way they're degraded by sex-crazed perverts is completely undeserved: most of them are actually pretty nice girls who just needed a few extra bucks. Centerfold Girls focuses on two models that are systematically stalked and killed by a very convincing Andrew Prine as 'Clement Dunne', a man who feels that posing nude is wrong and that these women need to suffer;