Behind the Couch

1976 Dir. Pete Walker AKA The Confessional Jenny (Susan Penhaligon), a troubled young woman, seeks help at her local church. Unfortunately for her, the sexually repressed priest Father Meldrum (Anthony Sharp) she confesses to, becomes obsessed with her. He begins to stalk her and will stop at nothing, including blackmail and murder, just to get close to her. ‘He's gone out again. You're all alone ... with me.’ If House of Whipcord was Walker’s attack on the British moral conservatism and the justice system, House of Mortal Sin is surely his scathing defilement of the Church, or perhaps just organised religion in general. Released in the States as The Confessional it plunges the viewer into even darker territory than before. Walker drew on his own fears and opinions as a lapsed Catholic to create a more considered and mature film than most viewers would have expected, particularly given its lurid title and subject matter. Typical of Walker though, the film was a de...

1987 Dir. Michael J. Muro A dodgy liquor store owner flogs bottles of out of date ‘Viper’ at discount rate to the local homeless community, unaware of its true properties: it causes its consumers to melt. Very graphically. Fred and his brother Kevin, two young drifters, find themselves up against the effects of the toxic brew, as well as having to contend with the junkyard overlord Bronson, an unhinged war vet… When a film opens with a slapstick chase scene in which a tramp steals liquor and money from various people, full frontal nudity, fart gags, a man falling out of his wheelchair and some completely random and absurd violence when a man is pulled from his car by a hulking shell-shocked hermit and hurled through his own windshield, you just know you’re in for an utterly depraved splurge of a treat. Dearest reader, may I present to you the gloriously perverted and truly outrageous schlock-fest Wes Craven once said made John Waters look like Mary Poppins: Street Trash ! Leave y...

1974 Dir. Pete Walker British director Pete Walker is often unfairly overlooked in the history of British horror cinema. In a time when Hammer was, well, ‘hammering’ out elaborate gothic fantasies set in far off lands full of superstitious locals, middle class genteel types and otherworldly monsters, Walker was setting his more grimy tales firmly in contemporary England. His horrors spewed out within grotty bed-sits, bleak London streets and hideous seventies décor. Frightmare explores notions of family, generational conflict and authority, with graphic and, dare I say it, gritty enthusiasm. The film follows the exploits of Dorothy Yates (Sheila Keith). Released from incarceration after fifteen years, Dorothy is not as reformed or rehabilitated as her carers would like to believe. She is, in fact, utterly deranged. As soon as she is released she resumes alleviating her insatiable appetite for human flesh. Setting up a tarot-reading service in her home, she lures innocents vict...