HCF Review - Idyll

KILLBILLIES (2015)

Slovenia’s first horror film, an award winner at the Portorose film festival is clearly influenced by the kind of American films to feature lost travellers, mountain men and inbred killers living in the wilderness. It’s the kind of film where the antagonists actions and facial features are equally awful.

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Halloween Wrap Up

Well that's all we have time for this year ... as if seasonal ideas have ever dictated when a horror film or ten get screened. While it's not quite the 31 days of nonsense that I'd have preferred there are some considerations to take into account that may have cut it a little short. Still this is the biggest and most eclectic mix yet.

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Scorecard

OCTOBER

FILM OF THE MONTH House (Hausu) ☆☆☆☆
Blood Simple ☆☆☆☆
Bride of Frankenstein ☆☆☆☆
The Devil Rides Out ☆☆☆☆
The Mummy ☆☆☆☆
The Thing 1982 ☆☆☆☆
Phantom of the Paradise ☆☆☆☆
Phase IV ☆☆☆☆
We Need To Talk About Kevin ☆☆☆☆
Psycho ☆☆☆☆

Horror Bites - It's Different Than Us

THE THING (1982)

This was not a commercial success on release as many are well aware. Just three years after the release of Alien some people apparently forgot what it was like to enjoy a serious science fiction horror story that was well made and really got under your skin. It was deemed was too nihilistic and too mean spirited in the wake of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. But why is that even a factor? Just because they came out close to one another? It seems like a bizarre comparison to make. Because both have spaceships? I'm sure they can exist together, I mean nobody balked at Alien because Star Trek: The Motion Picture had a different tone. It's 'pure nonsense'. This is of course John Carpenter's magnum opus; a love letter to the original 1950s movie and the peak of his work with Kurt Russell.

Horror Bites - Motel Hell

PSYCHO (1960)

It's crazy to imagine now but that famous Bates Motel shower scene might ever have happened... this could have been a murder mystery with Audrey Hepburn instead. After she dropped out another direction was chosen, however studio stomachs turned at the idea of this adaptation of what they considered to be repulsive novel, and refused to produce the story. Costs were cut, black and white photography was in, and of course movie magic was set in motion. The look of the film as a purely economical measure seems strange to imagine, after all the fractured Saul Bass credits and many shots of silhouetted knives and creepy houses are so iconic in monochrome. But like many production stories there's often art through adversity.