About Unworldly Views | Unworldly Views

The Revenant

by Martin | May 29, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Early reports of this film had audiences scandalised by the sight of star Leonardo di Caprio being raped by a bear. Three times. I suspect that this was hype worked up by the studio's marketing department, but I suppose it depends on whether you think people are more...

Burke And Hare (1971)

by Martin | January 26, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

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...

Camille Claudel 1915

by Martin | July 26, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

This meeting of two arthouse legends – Bruno Dumont, a director who has previously always refused to work with professional actors, and Juliette (Chocolat) Binoche – is heralded by posters screaming BINOCHE CLAUDEL DUMONT, in the manner of ads for an action movie...

The Mad Ghoul (1943)

by Martin | January 2, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Director James Hogan's film begins with an unusually delicate situation for a mad scientist flick – the heroine Isabel (Evelyn Ankers) has fallen out of love with the hero Ted (David Bruce). Isabel confides this melancholy fact to Dr. Alfred Morris, Ted’s chemistry...

Frightfest 2015 Day One

by Martin | September 12, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

The Rotten Link Raulo and Roberta (Luis Ziembrowski and Paula Brasca) are two unlikely siblings: a simple-minded hulk, he looks old enough to be her father while she is a pretty young thing barely out of her teens. But they fit into their isolated Argentinian...

Frightfest 2017: Outliers

by Martin | November 5, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

DHOGS I'm a genre lightweight really, a dilettante. Of all the films I saw at Frightfest this year, only one – The Glass Coffin - could really be called a horror film, and that was probably the least of them. Why, I wasn't even wearing a black T-shirt. Dhogs isn't...

Sleepaway Camp (1983)

by Martin | March 20, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

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...

Our Time / Once Upon A Time In Hollywood

by Martin | September 7, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

OUR TIME There was quite a high turnout for this three-hour epic of directorial self-laceration from Mexican director Carlos Reygadas, although admittedly this was at the Minema screen at the Curzon Bloomsbury, which seats about 20 people. I had a guy ahead of me...

The Hart Of London (1970)/Sodom (1989)

by Martin | May 23, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Experimental cinema – you either love it or you hate it. Or you don’t know what to think. The BFI’s Will Fowler assembled this double bill in January 2015 under the heading of ‘Transcendence’. And rightly so, I think. The Hart of London confounds our expectations from...

Emmanuelle 5 (1987)

by Martin | January 25, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

My interest in Polish director Walerian Borowczyck came about by accident. Back in the early 80's I saw his 1971 film Blanche described in the Daily Mail's TV listings as one of the most frightening ghost stories ever filmed - at any rate, this is what I remember. As...