Behind the Couch

2000 Dir. Brian Yuzna When John Jaspers’ girlfriend is brutally murdered by a gang of thugs he loses the will to live and plans to kill himself by jumping off a bridge. Just before he jumps he is approached by the sinister "M" who offers a dubious proposition: he will enable Jaspers to wreck brutal revenge in return for the man’s soul. Jaspers accepts and is transformed into Faust, a demon-like superhero who embarks on a bloody trail of vigilante vengeance… However when “M” returns to claim Jaspers’ soul, all hell breaks loose when Faust refuses to stick to the bargain. “I am the pornography that makes you hot!” Based on the cult graphic novel by David Quinn and Tim Vigil, Faust was the first film produced by Brian Yuzna’s Spanish production company, Fantastic Factory. Something of an oddity, the film is, if anything, an interesting attempt to approach the super-hero movie from a slightly different angle. The notion of an avenging demon is a tantalising one akin ...

2001 Dir. Jack Sholder A man with mysterious bite marks on him is taken to a hospital in Guam. This sparks a search for what could have caused such wounds. A small group of doctors and scientists are flown to the island where he lived to investigate. Needing to make an emergency landing due to technical difficulties, the group become stranded and a brief exploration reveals the island is strangely deserted. Before long the group realise, to their horror, what caused the bites… Strange new breeds of killer arachnids! From outer space! Or something.  On the surface, Arachnid has everything a great B-movie should have (checklist includes CGI aliens, giant spiders from outer space, cheesy dialogue, and loads of macho posturing with big guns), and one could be forgiven for expecting a tongue-in-cheek irreverent romp. What becomes apparent though is that  Arachnid   takes itself quite seriously. Which, of course, is fine, except director Sholder never manages to muster ...

2004 Dir. Paco Plaza Spain, 1851. The inhabitants of a small village are terrorised by a savage serial killer. Ravaged corpses bear both animalistic mutilation and precise surgical incisions. As the village is plunged into panic-ridden chaos, travelling salesman Manuel Romasanta eventually confesses to the crimes, but claims that he is not responsible for his actions because he is a werewolf… Romasanta: The Werewolf Hunt is a sensual, unusual, boldly original and, at times, rather uneven take on the werewolf film. It is based on the true story of Spain’s first documented serial killer, Manuel Blanco Romasanta, who confessed to thirteen murders in the mid-nineteenth century. Writers Elena Serra and Alberto Marini (who specialise in lo-fi, brooding horror such as Darkness, The Machinist and The Fragile ) have written a screenplay that concentrates more on presenting the story as a historical drama allegedly based on facts, than a typical monster movie, while director Plaza adop...

2006 Dir. Nacho Cerdà This deliciously dark and broodingly stylish horror follows the sombre journey of film producer Marie Jones (Anatasia Hille) as she chain smokes her way to bleakest Russia in search of her biological parents. This being a moody horror film though, things don’t pan out as she hopes and she ends up spiralling into an abstract nightmare of spooky, bloodied doppelgangers, haunted houses, man-eating pigs, domestic abuse and creepy siblings. Rather low on plot but high in haunting atmospherics, The Abandoned is another production from Fantastic Factory sibling, Fantastic Discovery: a Spanish Hammer House of Horror-type company specialising in moody and stylish horror flicks such as Darkness and The Nameless . Their house style seems to consist of highly atmospheric and lushly shot films the stylistic flourishes of which sometimes overbear the plot.  An intriguing and unsettling prologue sets the scene: a terrified and mutilated woman gives birth to twins...