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)
by Martin | June 29, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
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...
And Soon The Darkness (1970)
by Martin | June 27, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Forget everything I said about the Horror Channel, like for example that it’s 99% shit. In fact it has been keeping me fed with delightful tidbits without over-stimulating me – what more could anyone ask for? This is a case in point. Like The Devil’s Rain it was...
Universal Soldier: Day Of Reckoning (2012)
by Martin | August 3, 2014 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Normally I unearth the cultural artefacts that interest me by dint of patient digging in obscure corners, but sometimes something comes barrelling out of the internet during an idle hour to catch me off guard rather like MMA fighter Andrei 'The Pitbull' Arlovski keeps...
In Pictures 2: Rope (1948) /Possessor (2020)
by Martin | August 30, 2021 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
ROPE On the extras on my DVD of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope screenwriter Arthur Laurents nails several of the reasons why this adaptation of Patrick Hamilton's play (based on the Leopold/Loeb case in which a couple of students felt entitled to kill a 14 year old boy...
Microwave Massacre (1983)
by Martin | June 18, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
It's a truism that when horror goes wrong it can easily turn into comedy – but what happens when a horror comedy goes wrong? Microwave Massacre, available on Arrow Video, provides one possible answer - a vision of Hell made all the more hellish by the awareness that...
The Woods Have Legs – Three Films
by Martin | December 3, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Blair Witch The woods! A simple enough phrase but so ominously evocative – I was quite intrigued on discovering that director Adam Wingard and writer Simon Barrett's film The Woods was due to premiere at Frightfest this year. I found much to enjoy in Barrett/Wingard's...
Tales That Witness Madness (1973)
by Martin | June 15, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
In 1965 Dr. Terror's House of Horrors kicked off a series of 'anthology' horror films, mostly made by Amicus, of which Tales That Witness Madness (not made by Amicus) is often dismissed as a peculiarly ropey example, although its director Freddie Francis - who also...
Horromford 2: Unspeakable: Beyond The Wall Of Sleep
by Martin | September 14, 2024 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
Not content with having a horror film festival, Romford now has a film festival – which also features a lot of horror. I turned up for just the one offering, Chad Ferrin's Unspeakable: Beyond The Wall of Sleep. Ferrin is a prolific director, and no doubt too busy to...
BFI London Film Festival 2021: Age and Agency
by Martin | January 30, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
LA ABUELA In this Spanish film from Rec director Paco Plaza, Susana (Almudena Amor), a fashion model on the verge of success, has to take a career break when her grandmother Pilar (Vera Valdez) has a brain haemorrhage and she has to go and look after her, at least...
The Voices
by Martin | May 4, 2015 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments
A toy factory worker in a small American town, Jerry (Ryan Reynolds) is your standard eager-to-please psychotic passing for normal, at least until he starts ticking the box marked ‘serial killer’ by stabbing his indifferent love-object (Gemma Arterton) to death and...