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Theatre of Death

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1967 Dir. Samuel Gallu AKA Blood Fiend The investigation into a number of grisly murders in which the victims bodies have been exsanguinated, leads detectives to a creepy Parisian theatre specialising in horror productions. Could someone at the theatre be responsible? No! Surely not ! Opening with a scene in which a woman is forced onto a guillotine and decapitated in front of an appreciative audience, only for her to emerge alive and well from behind the theatre curtain to accept her applause, Theatre of Death is intent on letting us know from the outset that all will not be as it seems. The lines between what is real and what is not twist and turn throughout proceedings. Setting the story in the real-life Theatre du Grand Guignol in Paris is an inspired choice. Between the years of 1897 and 1962 it specialised in the production of deliberately shocking and lurid plays, the raison d’être of which was to depict bloody scenes of murder and torture on stage to titillate and te...
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Pit & the Pendulum

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1961 Dir. Roger Corman Francis Barnard (John Kerr) makes his way to the home of his late sister Elizabeth (Barabara Steele) to meet her husband Nicholas Medina (Vincent Price) and learn more of her death. Whilst there, he witnesses Medina slowly sink into mourning and insanity as his sister Catherine (Luana Anders) helplessly looks on. Francis soon begins to realise Elizabeth’s death occurred under mysterious circumstances and all is not as it seems…  The Corman adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe stories were perhaps some of the first horror films I ever watched as a youngster. Staying up late and secretly watching the little portable TV in my room, with the light on of course, I often peered at these lurid gems of the genre from between my fingers. None had more of an impact than Pit and the Pendulum . It still retains the ability to chill and unsettle in its own unique way. Watching it is pure nostalgic bliss. Adding to the nostalgia and the bliss is the fact that the film stars...
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I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

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Directed by Jim Gillespie and written by Kevin Williamson - whose screenplay is loosely adapted from the YA novel of the same title by Lois Duncan -  I Know What You Did Last Summer tells of a group of friends who cover up their involvement in an apparently fatal car accident. One year later, their dark secret resurfaces in the form of a mysterious stalker intent on terrorising them and spilling their blood. Coming in the wake of The Craft and Scream , I Know What You Did Last Summer was produced in the late nineties, a time when teen horror was officially hot (titles such as Urban Legend , Halloween H20 , The Faculty  and Cherry Falls   would soon follow). Like Scream before it, it heralded the arrival of Kevin Williamson and his distinctive brand of horror drama, driven by likeable, literate, pop-cultured characters the audience were invited to care for. Williamson’s work slyly (and not so slyly) references, subverts and pays homage to the very tropes and conventio...
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