SUMMER OF SATAN: Satan’s Children

Meet Bobby (Steven White). He’s bullied by his asshole stepfather (Eldon Meacham) and teased by his sexually precocious stepsister Janis (Joyce Molloy). One night, after Janis shops him over a stash of weed hidden in his room, he storms out and walks the streets angrily. He ends up in a bar where a middle-aged gay guy puts the moves on him. Said individual is swiftly given his marching orders by an asshole biker (the character might have had a name,...

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Carla Gugino

Happy 40th birthday to Carla Gugino. A large glass of rioja is being raised at Agitation Towe...

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GIALLO SUNDAY: The French Sex Murders

Could this be the cheapest, shoddiest, most unintentionally funny giallo ever made? A film so lurid in its intent and retarded in its aesthetic that it makes ‘Strip Nude for Your Killer’ look like Fellini.You know, I rather think it could.On paper, it ought to be brilliant: wrong man shenanigans, a hint of the supernatural, the pseudo-scientific conceits of ‘Cat o’ Nine Tails’ and ‘Four Flies on Grey Velvet’, eye-candy aplenty (Rosalba Neri, Anita...

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Rise of the Planet of the Apes

At the cinema a few weeks ago to see ‘Captain America’, I noticed a big freestanding foyer display for ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’. Memories of Tim Burton’s aesthetically confused ‘Planet of the Apes’ remake came flooding back to me and I groaned aloud. I jerked a thumb at the display and asked of anyone within earshot, “Isn’t that the most redundant concept for a movie?”Fast forward a couple of weeks and a colleague with established good taste...

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Road to Perdition

I wrote about WTF Syndrome when I reviewed ‘Snatch’ a while back. WTF Syndrome is when you tell someone, usually very sheepishly, that you’ve never seen a certain film and their patented response is an incredulous “what the fuck?”Usually, though, there’s a good reason why you’ve never seen the film in question. In my case, with ‘Snatch’, it was because I was influenced by a raft of reviews which painted it as just another iteration of ‘Lock, Stock...

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SUMMER OF SATAN: Messiah of Evil

So, I’m sitting down to write a review of Willard Huyck’s 1973 cult classic ‘Messiah of Evil’ and wondering why I’m bothering given that Tim Lucas, on the indispensable Video Watchblog, captured the essence of the film in three words: “the American ‘Suspiria’.”Yeah, I know: ‘Messiah of Evil’ predates ‘Suspiria’. But still …Both films aurally and visually overwhelm the viewer from the off; both thrust their audience into a milieu that’s off-kilter,...

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GIALLO SUNDAY: Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eye

Of all the gialli I’ve seen, Antonio Margheriti’s 1973 slab of gothic has one of the most wonderfully eclectic casts. Have you ever wanted to see Serge Gainsbourg as a highlands police inspector dubbed with a really bad Scottish accent? Then this is the movie for you!In addition to Gainsbourg, we have Jane Birkin (the absence of “Je T’Aime...Moi Non Plus” from the soundtrack is a positive disappointment), Hiram Keller (‘Fellini-Satyricon’), Doris...

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Amy Adams

The immensely likeable Amy Adams - who embodies a winning combination of smouldering vamp and girl-next-door - is 37 today. A large glass is being raised at chez Agitati...

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SUMMER OF SATAN: Lady Death

According to a song on The Smiths’ first album, pretty girls make graves.‘Lady Death’ is a zestfully cynical anime about a pretty girl (with anime-typical exaggerated décolletage) who makes a fuckload of graves. Difference being, she makes them in hell for a bunch of bad dudes who are not already dead, but damned and unrepentant with it.The story starts in fifteenth century Sweden where nobleman Mattias is subjugating the serfs, pressganging the...

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Sucker Punch

Picture the scene: self and Paula settle down to watch ‘Sucker Punch’ (because nothing says “classy dude” like making your wife sit through a film predicated on fantasy sequences featuring a quintet of attractive twenty-somethings in mini-skirts) and the following exchange occurs: Paula: So what’s this movie about? Me: It’s a kind of layers-of-reality thing. Like ‘Inception’. Fast forward 105 minutes: Paula: So what the hell...

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Barbara Bouchet

I was going to mark Barbara Bouchet's 68th birthday with a review of 'Milano Calibro 9'; unfortunately, the copy I'd acquired started playing funny buggers half an hour in, skipping back to the start. The lovely Ms Bouchet hadn't even played her first scene. Epic fail!Here's a triptych of world-class cheesecake shots instead ...

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GIALLO SUNDAY: A Blade in the Dark

Until I watched Lamberto Bava’s ‘A Blade in the Dark’, my favourite line of dialogue in a giallo was a straight toss-up between “Right, send in the perverts” (‘The Bird with the Crystal Plumage’) and “I killed them because they were dolls, just stupid dolls” (‘Torso’).I now have not one but two lines of dialogue – from the same film – that challenge these. The first, during an argument between film score composer Bruno (Andrea Occhipinti) and his...

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SUMMER OF SATAN: The House of the Devil

Ti West was a name I’d heard a lot, not in mainstream film criticism, but via bloggers who are passionate about horror cinema and make the effort to seek out new and interesting work. But until I picked up a copy of ‘House of the Devil’ dirt cheap on DVD recently, I knew nothing of his work.That gets remedied. As of now.‘The House of the Devil’ is both an homage to 1970s and 1980s low-budget American horror movies, and a reclaiming of an aesthetic...

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