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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.

Strait Jacket (1964) / Lizzie

STRAIT JACKET Winding up the Joan Crawford season at the BFI was this William Castle production from the trashier end of her spectrum, though compared to Trog (1970) it's a masterpiece. The audience have come over-determined to giggle at a camp classic, and to be fair...

The Wolf Of Wall Street

Mere seconds after rogue stockbroker Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) appears in Martin Scorsese's film, I was eagerly awaiting his comeuppance, if not actual slow death by steamroller. Unfortunately I had to wait nearly 3 hours and even then (SPOILER ALERT) it...

Three Against Nature

THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA (1976) 'An insult to any audience' concludes the review of Lewis John Carlino's film The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (hereafter referred to as Sailor) in my damaged-in-transit Waterstones-freebie edition of the...

Koko-Di-Koko-Da / Swallow

KOKO-DI-KOKO-DA (LONDON FILM FESTIVAL 2019) Johannes Nyholm's film starts with a mother, Erin (Ylva Gallon) suffering a bout of food poisoning which leaves her face swollen so that she looks, as her husband Tobias (Leif Edlund Johansson) jests, like Freddy Kruger. The...

LFF 2019: Queen Of Diamonds (1991) / Krabi 2562

QUEEN OF DIAMONDS (1991) Showing in the 'Treasures From The Archive' section at the LFF, Nina Menkes’ Queen of Diamonds features her sister Tinka playing a character who, in the director’s words, ‘hasn’t learned to say hello’. In keeping with her air of diffidence,...

45 Years

Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling play Geoff and Kate, a couple in their 70's who seem to think they are happily married until his ex-girlfriend Katya turns up, entombed in ice in a Swiss glacier and apparently unchanged since she fell into a fissure back in 1962....

Attack Of The Giant Leeches (1959)

Into my life comes a dumpbin full of DVD's at £3.00 each, temporarily arresting my progress through Fopp. Movie Legends. They don't look promising. Murky covers and nothing on the back but a plot summary (that does however, in the case of Attack, include the ending)....

Post-Horror: Men / Bergman Island

MEN I see that the Barbican are putting on a summer season of 'post-horror' films. Is that a film you see after a horror film, for light relief perhaps? Well no, apparently – it's just another iteration of our old friend 'elevated horror'. So the films in question...

L’il Quinquin

My jaw dropped when I heard that divisive auteur Bruno Dumont's next film would be a comedy about cops, and remained in that state throughout the three-hour plus length of the film (actually a four-part TV series, served up in a single showing at the London Film...

The Million Eyes Of Sumuru (1967)

'I have a million eyes, for I am Sumuru', says Shirley Eaton in voiceover at the beginning of this particular disaster. She doesn't really have a million eyes - that's the first disappointment. The notional 'million eyes' belong to her followers. Sumuru leads an...