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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.

Theatre Of Blood (1973)

Mark Kermode once stated that anyone who said they'd guessed the ending of The Usual Suspects was lying. I have never quite forgiven him for this - I guessed it, but what proof do I have? Essentially he was out there calling me a liar and I had no redress. However, I...

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...

Burial Ground (1981)

In the prologue to this plot-free Italian zombie opus, also known as The Nights of Terror, a professor raises the dead from an Etruscan tomb just in time for the arrival of a group of privileged merry-makers down for a weekend at the adjoining country house. With one...

BFI London Film Festival 2021: Between Feast and Famine

THE FEAST I remember overhearing a punter at the London Film Festival one year asking the guy next to him what he'd seen and he replied: 'A lot of films that could have been better'. My experience this year (last year) was a bit like that. Even before it started I had...

The Toxic Avenger (1984)

It's fair to say that showings of films in the Cult strand at the BFI have been somewhat underpopulated. In spite of a mention in Time Out, this is no exception – which is as it should be. What point is there in a cult film if everyone wants to see it? This is one of...

Two Takes on Modern Etiquette at the BFI London Film Festival 2015

THE INVITATION This showed (at the Vue Islington) in the Cult strand, but it deserves the widest possible audience. Struggling to get over the accidental death of his son two years previously, Will (Logan Marshall-Green) goes to a reunion dinner of old friends hosted...

Mothra (1961)

After a self-imposed double-bill of Camille Claudel 1915 and Miss Violence at the Curzon Soho, what better way to cool off than with a showing of Mothra, at the Prince Charles off Leicester Square? So I reasoned. And it only cost a pound, if you were a member. I was....

More Quite Good Films of 2014

L FOR LEISURE The fact that people are nostalgic for the 90's is beguilingly weird to me - I was there, and barely noticed them – but maybe this is why I enjoyed Whitney Horn and Lev Kalman's goofy, dreamy, possibly inconsequential L For Leisure so very much. It was...

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...

Aaaaaaaah!

Two men (Steve Oram and Tom Meeten) who only communicate in ape-like grunts, are in the woods mourning the passing of a loved one (we assume) by pissing on a framed photo of her. That done, they set off into the city, to bring (so we might imagine) their primitive...