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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.

Strongroom (1962)

by | August 31, 2019 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Vernon Sewell's career in British film started, weirdly enough, with a German film - Morgenrot (1933) a collaboration with Gustav Klimt's illegitimate son (one of them) that premiered in front of Adolf Hitler. Apparently Hitler liked it. His next collaborative...
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Slack Bay (2016) / Zombie Lake (1977)

by | April 22, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

It was last November that I went to the Cine Lumiere to catch up with the latest offering from Bruno Dumont, showing at the French Film Festival, and it has taken me up until now to process it. In fact that's a lie – I still haven't processed it. In Slack Bay Dumont...
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Bad Luck Banging, Or Loony Porn

by | February 13, 2022 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Ah, masks! Still de rigeur at the ICA at this point (this was before Plan B kicked in). During the London Film Festival I dared to go in there unmasked, which felt like a transgressive act, but hey, it was a festival and anyway isn't the ICA supposed to welcome...
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Mirror Mirror (1990) / Happy Deathday (2017) / Thelma (2017)

by | 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,...
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The Burning (1981)

by | 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...
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Frightfest 2014: Open Windows, Nekromantik and Der Samurai

by | September 21, 2014 | movies, reviews, Uncategorized | 0 Comments

OPEN WINDOWS In an age when you can watch films on your phone, here's another novelty – going to the cinema to see a film whose action takes place entirely on someone's laptop screen. I think it did, anyway – I was frankly a little befuddled by the end. Bear in mind...
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The Witch

by | 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...
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Frightfest 2017: The Glass Coffin

by | September 23, 2017 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

Some kind of religious revival seems to be going on outside Frightfest's new (old) home, the Cineworld (formerly Empire) Leicester Square. A sign saying 'Repent or Perish' has been held aloft. I wonder if this is particularly aimed at the Frightfest crowd. Maybe it's...
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Frightfest 2016 Day Three

by | October 23, 2016 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

MAN UNDERGROUND Or do I mean Day Four since I skipped Day Three? Oh what the hell. Nobody's paying me to do this. By this stage (Bank Holiday Monday) 'not really horror' (a term coined by Anton Bitel in a recent article for Sight and Sound online) seemed to be turning...
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The Curious Dr. Humpp / Vengeanza Del Sexo (1967 or thereabouts)

by | August 12, 2023 | movies, reviews | 0 Comments

I had reservations about going to see Brainwashed: Sex – Camera – Power, Nina Menkes' take on 'the male gaze' at the BFI, partly because it seemed like the kind of thing that would turn up on BBC4 or Sky Arts in a month or two, but there is a certain advantage to...
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