Behind the Couch

1974 Dir. Larry Cohen Larry Cohen is renowned for his low budget, high octane and surprisingly thought provoking B thrillers laced with social and political commentary. After penning and directing the blaxploitation movie Black Caesar (1973) and its sequel Hell Up in Harlem (1973), Cohen returned with his outrageous and highly satirical shocker It’s Alive , a cult hit that crossed over into Seventies mainstream cinema and highlighted the sly wit and subversive bite of the filmmaker. Frank (John P Ryan) and Lenore Davis (Sharon Farrell) are plunged into a nightmarish world after the birth of their second child: a monstrously mutated toddler with an insatiable appetite for blood! With quite a startling premise, Cohen really wastes no time in cutting to the chase and evoking surprising emotional depth from the outset. Sociological and environmental issues are addressed throughout the film. The over-prescription of drugs to expectant mothers, like Thalidomide in the 50s and 60s, an...

1965 Dir. Seth Holt Returning home from spending two years in a juvenile psychiatric hospital after the suspicious death of his younger sister, Joey (William Dix) finds it difficult settling into his family home again. His insensitive and neglectful father Bill is still as distant and nearly always absent from the house; his still-grieving mother Virginia as distraught and emotionally unstable as she was when he left; and his dedicated Nanny (Bette Davis) still as protective and strangely overbearing. Joey was blamed for his sister’s death and his difficult behaviour makes it hard for his parents to accept him back and does nothing to alleviate their suspicions. Insistent that he can look after himself, he goes out of his way to ensure his contact with his Nanny is minimal. He refuses to take the room she has prepared for him or eat any of the food she has cooked. He alleges that she was responsible for the death of his sister and is now determined to kill him too. The Nanny is ...

Adapted from Stephen King’s best selling 1975 novel of the same name, Tobe Hooper’s supremely creepy TV mini-series follows writer Ben Mears (David Soul) as he travels back to his hometown of Salem’s Lot in order to write a new novel and research the old Marsten house. The house’s latest tenants are causing quite a stir in the town. One of them, sinister Richard Straker (James Mason), runs a small antique shop in the town; the other resident, the mysterious silent partner Kurt Barlow, has yet to be glimpsed by anyone. It becomes clear as the series unfolds, that Barlow is an ancient master vampire and is gradually turning the residents of Salem’s Lot into vampires. One of his first victims is a young boy, Ralphie Glick. Glick disappears soon after Straker and Barlow move into town. His grisly fate becomes clear later in the series in a scene that makes the blood run cold and hairs prick up… Ralphie appears floating outside his brother Danny’s bedroom window, feebly scratching at t...

2001 Dir. Brad Anderson An asbestos removal firm headed by harassed and down-on-his-luck Gordon (Peter Mullan) begin working in an abandoned psychiatric hospital. Under pressure to get the job finished in as little time as possible, the close-knit group begins to fracture and unravel as the oppressive atmosphere of the building entwines itself with their already troubled and fragile psyches, leading to the unveiling of sordid secrets, mental break-down and murder… In the wake of films such as The Blair Witch Project (1999) and The Sixth Sense (1999), many horror films utilised a more subtle approach in their efforts to terrify and extract more cerebral chills. The ‘less is more’ approach of film makers such as Val Lewton is strongly evident in Session 9 , a film that perversely revels in its icy suggestiveness and shadowy menace. Even without showing us something scary, Anderson conveys a particular tone of psychological horror in much of the dialogue: characters discuss the fa...

1981 Dir. Tom DiSimone The early Eighties was officially a good time for slasher movies. From 1978 to round about 1985 is generally considered the slasher heyday. From Black Christmas to Halloween, Friday the 13th to, well, Friday the 13th Part 5: A New Beginning , and everything in between; the output of the horror genre at this time usually involved some masked psycho or other stalking teenagers in an isolated location, killing them off in grisly fashion, one by one, until only a single character was left alone, usually a young woman, with nothing but her level head and resourcefulness to aid her in defeating the brute.  Hell Night is one such film, its ominous atmosphere and gothic trimmings marking it as one of the better ones. As part of their initiation into the fraternity Alpha Sigma Rho, four young pledges must spend the night in the exceedingly creepy Garth Manor, where legend has it, many years before, disturbed patriarch Raymond Garth slaughtered his wife and mo...

1990 Dir. Francis Teri AKA The Suckling If trashy, splashy, very un-PC horror is your thing, then Sewage Baby will no doubt have you convulsing with shameful delight. A monstrously mutated foetus goes on a vengeful killing spree in a brothel.  A college student discovers she is pregnant. Before she even has time to fully process this or make any decisions, her boyfriend takes her to a brothel insisting she has an abortion. She is reluctant, saying she needs more time to think. She is soon drugged by the domineering Madam of the brothel, Big Momma, who makes it her business to make the decision for the young woman. After Big Momma performs the abortion, she disposes of the fetal remains in a most undignified manner. What she didn’t count on however, was that on encountering some convenient toxic waste in the sewers, the aborted hell-bent-on-revenge foetus would soon mutate into a gigantic and slobbering creature, complete with claws, fangs and the ability to spin webs...

1986 Dir. Fred Dekker ‘What is this? A homicide, or a bad B Movie?’ – Det. Cameron Night of the Creeps wears its B-Movie status proudly on its sleeve. It plays out like a homage to 50s style sci-fi films such as Invasion of the Body Snatchers , with elements of Night of the Living Dead , Shivers and various slasher movies thrown in for good measure. And Tom Atkins as a hard-boiled and cynical detective!  The opening scenes really succeed in setting the tone of the film as an outrageous comedy horror. Bizarre miniature aliens are battling onboard a spaceship. They eventually flush their unseen enemy out of an air-hatch and into space. It crash lands on earth in the 1950s near a university campus. On what looks distinctly like a Lover’s Lane, two teenagers make out in a parked car. The guy notices the comet and goes to see where it landed leaving the girl waiting in the car. On the radio is an announcement that a psychotic lunatic has just escaped from a nearby asylum. Sure...

In the aftermath of St Patrick’s Day I thought it appropriate to feature what is perhaps one of the all time creepiest moments ever in a film about leprechauns. Produced by Disney and starring a young Sean Connery, Darby O’Gill & the Little People follows the exploits of amiable town drunk Darby O’Gill (Albert Sharpe) and his attempts to outwit the King of the Leprechauns in order to obtain his fabled gold. Well, his attempts were hilarious when I was about 7 or 8 and was too young to realise the underlying pathos of this lonely old social outcast’s situation: spinning tales of the supernatural and the fantastic to try and win his fellow villagers’ admiration and acceptance. Anyway, Darby works as a grounds keeper for an affluent family on the outskirts of the village. Because he spends most of his time in the pub, neglecting not only his work but also his daughter Katie (Janet Munro), his landlord understandably decides to hire Sean Connery to replace him. When Katie finds out...

Shrooms With this week’s St Patrick’s day celebrations still ringing in your ears, why not spend the weekend unwinding and descending into the darker side of Irish culture and indulge in a few Gaelic tinged horrors… While some of these aren’t exactly Irish films, they do have connections (some more tenuous than others) to Ireland and creepy Irish folklore. Dead Meat (2004). Mixing chills with thrills, Conor McMahon's Dead Meat is an Irish comedy horror in the same vein as Shaun of the Dead or Boy Eats Girl . The first horror film to be funded by the Irish Film Board, it features a twisted tale of zombies, mad cows and cannibalism, oh my. After accidently hitting a man with their car, Helena and her husband bundle the body into their car and continue on their way. What with this being a zombie movie though, the body doesn’t stay dead and attacks Helena’s husband. Making a run for it, Helena stumbles across an isolated farm and battles a few of its undead inhabitants before...

1981 Dir. Wes Craven Wes Craven burst onto the horror scene in the 1970s with his distinctive brand of thought-provoking, gritty, survivalist horror titles Last House on the Left and The Hills Have Eyes (both of which have been remade, with the former's 'reimagination' due in cinemas any day now). Before the success of A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1984, Craven directed a number of films including the made-for-TV Linda Blair-starring witch-flick Summer of Fear,  and an adaptation of DC Comic’s Swamp Thing. In between these two films, Craven directed Deadly Blessing , a barmy yet haunting tale of fanaticism, obsession and fear. Among others, it starred Sharon Stone in one of her earliest roles. When her husband dies in a suspicious slow-motion tractor accident, Martha (Maren Jensen) is visited by her two friends from the city. They are unsettled that Martha lives right next to an austere religious community of Hittites ('They make the Amish look like swingers...

1976 Dir. Charles B. Pierce Loosely based on the true story of the ‘Moonlight Murders’, this often unnerving creeper follows a gruff Texas Ranger as he attempts to track down the hooded maniac terrorising the residents of a small town in Arkansas, 1946. Director Pierce adopts a documentary style approach to lend proceedings an air of authority and realism. Throughout, a narrator puts things in context for us, and paints a wonderfully vivid picture of post-war American small town life. Newspaper headlines also flash up on screen to keep us abreast of the grisly goings-on. Just after WWII, the predominantly working class community of Texarkana have welcomed home their soldiers who are trying to return to normalcy and find work. Just as they thought that things couldn’t get anymore downtrodden, a lunatic wearing a sack over his head begins to menace couples on Lover’s Lane, attacking several people and leaving them traumatised. Later on, another unfortunate couple are beaten to deat...

1981 Dir. Andrew Davis AKA Campsite Massacre Bump in the Night Carnivore The Creeper The Forest Primeval A group of forest rangers and their girlfriends head up into the wild woods for a few days hiking. Unbeknownst to them they are being stalked by a vicious and deranged killer who begins to pick them off one by one… Trespassers will be prosecuted, indeed. This probably sounds familiar by now, right? A group of people in the middle of nowhere, being murdered one by one by a largely unseen, unhinged lunatic. The early Eighties were saturated with slasher movies set in the backwoods of rustic Americana, where partying young people from the city were hacked and slashed without mercy by inbred rural cannibals when investigating strange noises in dark forests. Friday the 13th (1980), Just Before Dawn (1981), Madman (1982), The Burning (1981), The Prey (1984), sorry, getting a bit carried away, I’m sure you get the drift. ‘Killer in the woods’ films were popular in the ea...

1959 Dir. Ed Wood Whilst investigating reports of dubious activities and ghost sightings at an old house in the middle of nowhere, Lt. Dan Bradford, a specialist in supernatural crimes and lover of opera, encounters the rather odd and obviously phony physic Dr. Acula. It turns out Dr. Acula has been conducting fake séances and ripping off bereaved families desperate to contact their dead loved ones. However, it turns out that Acula’s dabbling in the occult may actually have summoned forth a few bewildered and vengeful spirits and as the night unravels, it won’t just be his collection of skeletons that are going bump in the night. No. It will also be the rickety sets, plodding pace, terrible acting and the unnecessarily overlong exposition throughout Night of the Ghouls . This is after all an Ed Wood production, so what do you expect? Director Edward D. Wood Jnr. has (posthumously) garnered a cult following as the worst director to ever work in cinema. Harsh, but this is not ne...