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...

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...

2000 Dir. Jan Svankmajer Little Otik is the troubling tale of a couple whose desperation for a baby pushes them to the brink of sanity. In an attempt to alleviate his wife Bozena’s distress, Karel offers her a tree root which she accepts as their child. Eventually however, they realise to their horror that the root has a voracious appetite that can’t be quelled by milk and carrot soup alone. Not since  Eraserhead  has parenthood seemed like such a nightmare. Svankmajer is renowned for his ground-breaking and innovative use of stop-motion animation in his films. Many of his surreal short films comprise of his experiments in this medium. Svankmajer imbues his animated creations with so much life and character, more so in fact than those of his human/live action characters. Indeed Little Otik seems to highlight this trait of Svankmajer’s and even steps it up a notch. The human characters are drawn with the broadest of stokes, however the writhing mass of roots and twigs...