Behind the Couch

Director Sean Hogan is known to fans of horror cinema for his quietly unsettling and eerily atmospheric tales, usually set against a backdrop of urban gloom and featuring desperate characters with shady secrets. Lie Still followed the increasingly nightmarish experiences of a lonely young unemployed man staying in a creepy, strangely deserted old boarding house. House and Home , Hogan’s contribution to the controversial British horror anthology Little Deaths , focused on the exploits of an upper-class couple with peculiar sexual tastes, who invite a homeless girl into their depravity. With horrific consequences. His most recent title, The Devil’s Business , tells of two hit men sent to murder an old associate of their underworld boss. To their increasing horror, they gradually realise that things are not all they seem to be in their would-be target's house. The discovery of a Satanic altar - and its shocking sacrifice - sends the pair on a descent into the shadowy darkness of...

2013 Dir. Rob Zombie Former addict Heidi (Sherri Moon Zombie) works as a rock DJ at the local radio station in Salem, Massachusetts. When she receives a wooden box containing a vinyl record, ‘A gift from the Lords’, she assumes it’s a PR stunt by a band and gives it a spin. Upon hearing the strange, haunting music, Satanic Panic ensues and she begins to experience vivid hallucinations and bizarre flashbacks to her town's violent, blood-soiled past. Is Heidi going mad, or are the “Lords of Salem” returning for revenge on modern-day Salem? A daring filmmaker with a unique and singular vision, Rob Zombie has never been one to shy away from controversy or despairingly dark subject matter. The Devil’s Rejects focused on the murderous redneck antagonists of House of 1,000 Corpses , essentially rendering them the protagonists and even attempting to humanise them. His remake of John Carpenter’s classic slasher Halloween focused on the back-story and psychology of serial killer Mi...

1943 Dir. Mark Robson A young woman frantically searches New York for her missing sister, only to discover her sibling was involved in a mysterious Satanic cult and now owes her life to them. Combining elements of horror and noir, The Seventh Victim is a sombre, atmospheric and haunting film preoccupied with notions of death, loneliness, suicide and despair. Under the guidance of producer Val Lewton, director Robson conjures an atmosphere of hopelessness and oppression, heightened by shadowy visuals and an unshakable air of paranoia. Rife with a dark and morbid romanticism, the film sleekly unfurls and proves utterly gripping; all the way to its breathtakingly bleak denouement. Purportedly Lewton’s most personal work, The Seventh Victim is set in Greenwich Village and populated by academics, poets and writers who frequent trendy cafes and bohemian apartments. As well as the opening quote which establishes the downbeat tone – “I come to Death and Death meets me as fast and all...

2009 Dir. Sam Drog A motley crew of bumbling Satanists kidnap a waitress to offer her up as a bride to the Devil and to become the mortal mother of the antichrist. However, her boyfriend and no-bullshit-taking Highway Patrol Officer brother have other ideas and set out to rescue her and give the Satanists an ass kicking of Biblical proportions. Unfortunately, their ill-planned intervention merely serves to botch the unholy ritual in progress and all the power of hell is inadvertently transferred into an unlikely host: a recently sacrificed chicken. Now, as the forces of good and evil battle it out between themselves, a demonic, flesh-eating barnyard animal is threatening to engulf their very souls and recruit them in its growing army of the living dead! Dear reader, is it possible to imagine anything more fearsome and terrifying than an undead chicken, possessed by the devil and intent on killing innocent human victims ? I thought not. As incredible as it may sound, a Satanic Kil...

John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness is an underrated, highly moody horror flick from 1987. After the discovery of a giant canister containing an eerie green and swirling mass under a church, a group of students specialising in philosophy, science, theology and linguistics are invited by a troubled priest (Donald Pleasance) to investigate. They realise that the canister will act as a doorway to hell but the only way to open the canister is from the inside… Soon, the liquid begins to seep out and possess the students, one by one. Meanwhile outside, a group of menacing vagrants led by Alice Cooper surround the church and the remaining students must barricade themselves in, unaware that their colleagues are gradually becoming possessed by the evil in the canister. The collective dream shared by the students is, for this reviewer anyway, incredibly creepy and unsettling. A static-hewn shot of a shadowy figure lingering sinisterly in a doorway backlit with spectral light, is perhaps th...