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.
The Secret of Dorian Gray (1969)
by Martin | March 11, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Ah, Valentine's Day – my favourite feast day, since my single status means I don't have to observe it. Nevertheless I was moved to recognise it to the extent of braving rail replacement services to get to the Barbican, where film programmer Josh Saco (aka Cigarette...
The Burning (1981)
by Martin | April 24, 2020 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
CAUTION: Contains unlicensed film theory Carol Clover's Men Women and Chainsaws is most famous for drawing our attention to the figure of the Final Girl. Clover had been struck by the way that slasher films, aimed (as she saw it) at an audience of adolescent males and...
Caged Women: Hounds of Love, Berlin Syndrome, The Beguiled
by Martin | September 16, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
HOUNDS OF LOVE In 1987 sullen Australian teenager Vicki (Ashleigh Cummings) seethes with resentment at her mum, who has chosen to split with surgeon dad, necessitating a move to a seedier part of town – still, things could be worse, as she soon discovers when...
Kothanodi (BFI London Film Festival 2015)
by Martin | November 1, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Indian horror films are hard to come by – and this isn't one either, or not exactly. Nevertheless, Kothanodi (it means 'river of fables'), a compendium of four interlinked folk tales from Assam, is almost grim enough to qualify. In the most optimistic of these tales...
Amulet /Master
by Martin | May 2, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
AMULET Can horror be 'progressive'? Actor and now director Romola Garai talks about 'changing the narrative' of horror with her first film but I'm not sure that she's managed it (what is this 'narrative' anyway?) though she might have thrown a few spokes in its...
Downton Abbey (2019) / Ray and Liz (2018)
by Martin | April 7, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
DOWNTON ABBEY For many years the TV series Downton Abbey, created by Julian Fellowes, mined the Sunday night craving for reassurance about the past, presenting it as a world in which everyone knew their place. The past, at least the past we never knew personally, is a...
London Film Festival 2016 – Further Off The Beaten Track
by Martin | January 29, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
EYES OF MY MOTHER This curious little black-and-white number, from America, has received some acclaim but to these eyes was not quite curious enough. It's the story of Francisca, who at the start of the film is a young girl leading an idyllic existence in a remote...
The Witch
by Martin | April 9, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
I saw this at the Odeon Covent Garden. Amazingly, they are only charging £6.00 a ticket at the moment for any showing Monday to Thursday. I hope this doesn't get out, or my chances of getting an entire screen to myself (that ever-elusive dream) will diminish even...
Gentrified Horror: The Nightcomers (1971) and Us
by Martin | July 21, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
THE NIGHTCOMERS In Nick Pinkerton's positive Sight and Sound review of Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich (which I thought was shit by the way) I first encountered the phrase 'gentrified horror', a pejorative term for the kind of upmarket horror that plays to...
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...