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Martin P. Lumbridge (not his real name) persists in writing about film even though he has no professional qualifications or compelling reason to be believed. Expect spoilers.

Strongroom (1962)

Vernon Sewell's career in British film started, weirdly enough, with a German film - Morgenrot (1933) a collaboration with Gustav Klimt's illegitimate son (one of them) that premiered in front of Adolf Hitler. Apparently Hitler liked it. His next collaborative...

White Devils: Get Out, The Transfiguration and Whity (1971)

GET OUT In Get Out a black American guy Chris (Daniel Kaluuya) goes with his white girlfriend Rose (Allison Williams) to visit her (rich) family, only to find them a little overbearing in their acceptance of him. Sure, they're liberal, but as he wearily agrees with...

Crazy About Love: Fingernails, Vincent Must Die, and Tchaikovsky’s Wife

FINGERNAILS Love is lighter than air, sings Stephen Merritt of The Magnetic Fields. It floats away when you let go. Love therefore needs to be grounded: in Greek director Christos Nikou's follow-up to his debut film Apples it is grounded in having your fingernails...

Ghost Theatre / Yakuza Apocalypse

GHOST THEATRE Hideo Nakata, director of the Ring movies and the excellent Dark Water returns with this theatrical tale that never comes to life – unlike the dummy being used as a prop in the play Ghost Theatre revolves around. The dummy's head, you see, comes from a...

The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972) / Effie Gray (2014)

Before he (apparently) disappeared into thin air, Emilio P. Miraglia made a couple of films blending the giallo with the Gothic, 1971's The Night Evelyn Game Out of the Grave, and this, his last film. The giallo and the Gothic are simultaneously very different (the...

Mandy / Knife + Heart / Suspiria

MANDY Mandy sold out very quickly at the London Film Festival, so I was pleased, having failed to secure a ticket, to see that it was showing in that very same week at the Prince Charles Cinema, which meant that I could see it for a fiver rather that sixteen quid. It...

Monster On The Campus (1958)

This begins with college professor Donald Blake (Arthur Franz) completing his collection of busts depicting the various stages of human evolution with one of 'Modern Woman', taken from his  fiancée's face. Subsequently, as if this is the peak of evolution and there's...

Frankenstein 1970

This begins generically but effectively with a screaming girl being pursued across the (German, it turns out) countryside by a nightmarishly-contorted Frankenstein's monster whose face we never see; this proves, however, to be part of a TV programme being shot in the...

Cold-Blooded Beast / Bloodsucking Freaks

COLD-BLOODED BEAST (1971) 88 Films' Italian Collection yields this giallo in which a masked murderer stalks an all-female (the patients not the staff) mental institution but the occupants are all too busy playing with themselves and each other to notice, at least...

Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)

Who the hell's Diane Arbus? If this is your reaction to the above title, then you probably won't get much out of this film. I knew little about Diane Arbus, and having seen the film, now feel that I know less. Which is not the film's fault. It begins with a disclaimer...