Behind the Couch

Directed by RKSS (Roadkill Superstars, aka trio François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell) and written by Alberto Marini, this merciless slasher features a cast of idealistic Gen Z activists who are violently picked off by a deranged security guard after they sneak into a huge furniture store to stage an environmental protest. While it touches on some very current social topics - environmental activism, nonviolent civil disobedience, social media, and arguably even corporate employee vetting processes - at heart, Wake Up is an old-school slasher, with a simple premise that is well executed (sorry!). Extraneous frills like characterisation, motivation and backstories are trimmed right down, leaving a lean, mean, cat-and-mouse narrative, with brutal violence and a certain sense of hopelessness running throughout. When the store closes in the evening, the gang come out of hiding to spray graffiti and deface displays with bags of blood procured from a butcher. They film eve...

A group of carnival sideshow workers are abducted and forced to fight for their lives against a gang of killer clowns as mysterious, bewigged oligarchs in aristocratic period garb wager bets on who will survive. 31 is a film about violence as entertainment and death as spectacle. It’s a film about the depths of human depravity. It’s also about survival and the things rational, sane and civilised people will do when they are backed into a corner and forced to fight for their lives. While it riffs on the likes of similarly themed films such as The Most Dangerous Game (1932), The Running Man (1987) and Death Race (1975), it is all, obviously, presented in Rob Zombie’s inimitable and furiously violent style. Like so much of Zombie’s film work, 31 has strong echoes of Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), though more so of its sequel (1986), both stylistically and in its fiendishly warped sense of humour. Film scholar Robin Wood once said The Texas Chain Saw Massa...

Horror cinema flourishes in times of ideological crisis and national trauma - the Great Depression, the Cold War, Thatcher-era Britain, the Vietnam War, Western society post-9/11; since the dawn of the silver screen, the genre has held a mirror up to society, throwing back a shocking reflection to provoke and perturb huddled masses in darkened rooms; who more often than not, may see nothing but the horror of reality itself staring back at them from the screen. Subversive Horror Cinema: Countercultural Messages of Films from Frankenstein to the Present , a fascinating, meticulously researched and compellingly written new book by Jon Towlson, argues that a succession of filmmakers working in horror - from James Whale to twisted twins Jen and Sylvia Soska - have used the genre, and the shock value it affords, to challenge the dominant ideologies of these times. Jon recently took the time to have an in-depth chat with me about his new book, the subversive nature of horror cinema, and ...

1970 Dir. Jess Franco 17th Century England is in the grip of Satanic Panic, and amongst those seeking to rid the land of traitors to the throne and anyone 'in league with the devil’, is Judge George Jeffreys, whose unreasonable sentences and excessively violent tortures are dished out with puritanical abandon. He soon becomes obsessed with Mary, a young women whose sister he accused of witchcraft and whose lover is a rebel against King James II. When the rebels are defeated, Mary tries to save her beau by surrendering herself to the Judge’s cruel lust. Betrayal, bloody torture and murder ensue. Believe it or not, The Bloody Judge marks the first time I’ve reviewed a Jess Franco film for this blog. Despite his insanely prolific career - spanning decades and genres alike - this humble scribbler has seen but a mere scrap of Franco’s films, which, not including my recent indulgence in The Bloody Judge , includes his kitsch classic Vampyros Lesbos and his more recent not so...

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...