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.
Mirror Mirror (1990) / Happy Deathday (2017) / Thelma (2017)
by Martin | September 9, 2018 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
MIRROR MIRROR 'Long may it continue', I said earlier in the year about the BFI's 'Cult' strand. Well now it has ended (though replaced by something very similar called Terror Vision) but at least its last showing, curated by feminist film collective the Final Girls,...
Office Killer (1997)
by Martin | August 14, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
The first thing I knew about photographer Cindy Sherman making a sort of horror film was when I saw that feminist film club the Final Girls were screening it at the Prince Charles; either that, or I did actually see it at the cinema in the 90's and subsequently forgot...
LOCKDOWN! The Giant Claw (1957)
by Martin | April 24, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
How often have I fantasized about the government forbidding me to leave the house so that I am finally compelled to watch all the DVDs I have accumulated over the years? Well never, since that would have been absurd, even for a fantasy. Nevertheless here we are. Or at...
Phantoms of the Opera
by Martin | October 3, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
IL MOSTRO DELLA OPERA (1964) In the days before the cities became tombs and the cinemas morgues I went to a showing of this obscure Italian film at the Barbican on a Saturday morning, only to discover that I was encroaching upon a Phantom Of The Opera symposium. Who...
In Pictures
by Martin | May 30, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
BLOOD AND BLACK LACE (1964) Mario Bava's The Girl Who Knew Too Much (1963) is said to be the first giallo, but of Bava's films it is this that feels like the ur-giallo, a template for everything that came after – not just 70's gialli, but 80's slasher films as well....
Evolution (BFI London Film Festival 2015)
by Martin | November 15, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Not to be confused with a 2001 David Duchovny film I've never seen, Lucile Hadžihalilović's second feature cranks the eeriness of 2004's Innocence up a notch, coming on like an anxiety dream H P Lovecraft might have had as a child. On a remote volcanic island, a group...
Eyeball (1975) / Short Night Of Glass Dolls (1971) / Spasmo (1974)
by Martin | August 5, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
EYEBALL The original Italian title of Umberto Lenzi's Eyeball translates as Red Cats In A Glass Labyrinth, which makes very little sense and is all the more impressive for it. However, there is no doubt that Eyeball is more to the point. This giallo is about a busload...
Monster Mulch: Vintage Creatures From Talking Pictures
by Martin | May 7, 2018 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
I like to think that there is no such thing as a bad film. Philosophically speaking, there is no such thing as a film at all, since films only 'really' exist in the watching of them, and this is done by people, and no two people will experience precisely the same...
New Year’s Evil (1980) / Bloody New Year (1987)
by Martin | February 11, 2018 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
New Year is, as everybody knows, a massive anticlimax. We all get frantically excited about what turns out to be just a glib transition into more of the same. Here are two films (showing in the BFI's Cult strand) which try to give New Year some genuine significance...
O Lucky Man! (1973) etc….
by Martin | August 25, 2024 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
My introduction to Lindsay Anderson was being shown the 1968 film If.... in (judiciously edited) half hour portions at secondary school in the 70's in a lesson called 'Design for Living', a rather random class which was used to dispense whatever we had in the way of...