Happy Halloween!

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“Wild, ugly faces we carved in its skin, 
Glaring out through the dark with a candle within!” 

- John Greenleaf Whittier 

Happy Halloween everyone!

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Lived Once Buried Twice: The Legend of Margorie McCall (2025)

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Written and directed by Olivia Rose Beatty, this short film brings to life a spooky old folk tale from my hometown, Lurgan, County Armagh*. According to local legend, poor Margorie McCall died after a brief fever. At her wake there was much commotion concerning her wedding ring. Many of the mourners tried in vain to prise it from her finger, perhaps anticipating that grave robbers might attempt to steal it. Margorie was buried in Shankill Graveyard, and sure enough that very same night, her body was exhumed by robbers after her precious ring. Also unable to remove the ring, the ghouls tried to cut off Margorie’s finger, and as soon as they began cutting and the blood began to flow, Margorie awoke with an unearthly scream… Her headstone still stands in Shankill Graveyard to this day, and it bears the eerie inscription, 'Margorie McCall: Lived Once, Buried Twice.' This old tale has always been ripe for a filmic adaptation, and Beatty, in her directorial debut, has created a stri...
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7 Days

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2010 Dir. Daniel Grou aka Podz Middle-aged surgeon Bruno Hamel (Claude Legault), his wife Sylvie (Fanny Mallette) and their eight-year-old daughter Jasmine (Rose-Marie Coallier) live a happy, uneventful life in the suburbs of a quiet town. When Jasmine is brutally raped and murdered by a local man, Anthony Lemaire (Martin Dubreuil), Bruno hatches a meticulous plan to make him pay for his crimes. He will kidnap and torture Lemaire for seven days before executing him and then turning himself in… Directed by Daniel Grou ( Vampire High, Big Wolf On Campus, The Hunger ), aka Podz, and adapted for the screen by author Patrick Senécal ('5150 Elm’s Way,' 'Evil Words') from his best-selling novel, ‘Les sept jours du talion,’ 7 Days is an intense and disturbing French-Canadian thriller that has been described as ' Saw directed by Michael Haneke ( Funny Games ) or Lars von Trier ( Antichrist ).’ Coldly filmed in a stylish, yet detached manner, 7 Days is a harrowi...
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Poison for the Fairies (1986)

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When Flavia is enrolled at a new school she is befriended by Verónica, an unpopular orphan who lives with her ailing grandmother and whose nanny regales her with tales of witches, fairies and spells. What begins as an innocent enough friendship soon turns coercive, as Verónica confides to Flavia that she is a witch in disguise, making Flavia a reluctant accomplice in several acts of wickedness. As the line between what is real and what is imagined begins to blur, Flavia descends into a terrifying spiral of magic, manipulation, petty jealousy, and murder. Written and directed by Carlos Enrique Taboada, and part of a rich tradition of Mexican Gothic horror cinema - which includes such titles as The Witch’s Mirror (1962) and The Curse of the Crying Woman (1961) -  Poison for the Fairies unfurls as a complex study of the fraught and intense friendship between two impressionable girls whose dabbling in witchcraft and descent into occultism leads to tragedy. While it quite comfortably...
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