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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.

Frightfest 2015: Day Two

Tenderness Of The Wolves (1973) Don't you just love a true story? This is the one about serial killer Fritz Haarman, who preyed (sexually and murderously) on young boys and drank their blood in post WWI Germany, and who also provided the inspiration for Fritz Lang's...

Weapons /Bring Her Back

WEAPONS There was a lot of hype around writer-director Zach Cregger's follow-up to the promising Barbarian – I remember noticing a website ranking the characters in Weapons in order of how 'iconic' they are. No doubt it is old-fashioned of me to expect to wait a few...

FrightFest 2024 – Mental Health Issues

The big screen at the relocated FrightFest (Odeon Leicester Square) is almost scarily big now: I couldn't face it. For single ticket buyers like me the seating options weren't promising anyway. So I stuck with the Discovery Screens and found myself in another cinema...

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

This was prefaced by a talk from BFI programmer Michael Blyth around LBGT horror which pleasingly focused on less obvious titles – The Ghost Ship, Homicidal, Alucarda – even if he did seem to be stretching a point sometimes. Passing allusions to Dr. Jekyll And Mister...

Burke And Hare (1971)

This is director Vernon Sewell’s last film and there’s something fitting about that: after two ventures into the more fantastical side of horror (The Blood Beast Terror and The Curse Of The Crimson Altar from 1966 and 1968 respectively) neither of which went out of...

The Incredible Melting Man (1977)

Arrow Video keeps up the good work of supplying us with pristine transfers of films that possibly don't deserve it with this DVD/Blu-Ray combo of William Sachs' 70's creature feature. 'Alex Rebar as the Incredible Melting Man' the opening credits say, denying Rebar's...

Kinoteka 2019: Love Express and Fugue

LOVE EXPRESS: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF WALERIAN BOROWCZYK Kuba Mikurda's documentary presents a pretty standard view of Borowczyk, which won't be a problem for people who have no idea who Borowczyk is I suppose, and they are the vast majority of the population, and...

CITIZENFOUR

I hardly ever go to see documentaries because they're about real life, and I can see that for free. But recently, every time I looked at the ICA website, I noticed that they were giving me yet another opportunity to see Laura Poitras' film about Edward Snowden, as its...

White Bird In A Blizzard

This adaptation of Laura Kasischke's young adult novel finds director Gregg Araki in less than full-on mode, and my first impression, such is the uncertainty of tone here, is that when he isn't in full-on mode (eg: Nowhere, Kaboom) he doesn't know what he's doing. But...

Horromford 2: Unspeakable: Beyond The Wall Of Sleep

Not content with having a horror film festival, Romford now has a film festival – which also features a lot of horror. I turned up for just the one offering, Chad Ferrin's Unspeakable: Beyond The Wall of Sleep. Ferrin is a prolific director, and no doubt too busy to...