Behind the Couch

Artwork by Tim Bradstreet " I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker ." Stephen King " Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red ." Clive Barker Every once in a while I like to delve into a particular series/franchise of horror films and completely immerse myself in the universes they create. The various movie marathons I've foolhardily thrown myself into include Halloween , Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street . There has also been consideration of adaptations of work by such writers as HP Lovecraft and MR James . I have decided that March is as good a time as any to embark on another marathon of a specific horror series. Therefore throughout this month I’ll be watching all nine Hellraiser films. Yes, there are nine. Who knew? As I have said before, usually prior to embarking on such sordid excursions, these things just have to be done. Sometimes. With its blushless exploration of such ad...

2013 Dir. Marcus Dunstan When a young woman is captured by a masked psychopath after attending an underground warehouse party, where the revellers were mowed, sliced and crushed to death by a macabre series of contraptions, a group of mercenaries are dispatched by her rich father to track her down. Aiding them is Arkin, a former captive of the killer who somehow managed to escape. Can they get to Elena before she becomes part of his gruesome 'collection'? Attempting to do for The Collector what Aliens did for Alien, The Collection ups the scope of the first film from the get-go, lurching into gear immediately with a series of jaw-dropping bloody spectacles that set the scene for the large scale carnage that follows. The introduction of a group of bad-ass mercenaries, who are attempting to hunt down the mysterious serial killer and do what 'the police can't', also establishes the action-packed ante. These guys mean business. Too bad they’re all two-dimens...

2009 Dir. Federico Zampaglione Throughout the 60s and 70s, Italy was responsible for producing some of the most unique, striking and disturbing horror films in the history of the genre. Italian cinema was even bigger than its US counterpart in terms of exports. Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Sergio Martino, Riccardo Freda, Lucio Fulci and Ruggero Deodato are just a few of the filmmakers responsible for creating some of the most lurid, bizarre, searingly brutal and unforgettable imagery to ever bleed across the silver screen. Italians were churning out all sorts of genre gold dust; from spaghetti westerns, stylishly violent giallo films, blistering detective movies, to comedies, erotic dramas and explosive action flicks. This Golden Age of Italian cinema began to fade during the Eighties however, and it has been too long a time since anyone but Dario Argento has flown the flag for Italo-horror. Federico Zampaglione’s Shadow should hopefully change all that now. It marks the long ov...

2011 Dir. Lucky McKee Social satire or torture-porn movie? Misogynistic trash or an examination of fundamentalist attitudes towards women? Feminist wish-fulfilment or objectifying glorification of violence? These are the kinds of questions that are being asked about  The Woman  and its gruelling rape-revenge story. Whether the film is viewed as a powerful portrait of misogyny, a thoughtful 'torture-porn' flick or simply a brutal and nasty gore-fest - The Woman proves to be an uncompromising and memorable ordeal. More a film to be endured than enjoyed, it has left audiences and critics divided and immersed in deep debate. Some critics have suggested that rape-revenge narratives can subvert traditional power dynamics, ultimately empowering the victim. Others have said films like The Woman or I Spit on Your Grave can't possibly be regarded as feminist works because rape-revenge films are inherently misogynistic, produced solely to depict violence against women. View...

2009 Dir. Tiwa Moeithaisong Troubled Buss (Mai Charoenpura) struggles to make ends meet and pay off her absent husband’s debts, selling noodle soup from her food cart. One day she is caught in the midst of a student riot and dragged to safety by activist Attapol, with whom she begins a tentative relationship. Buss later discovers the body of one of the rioters in her food cart and decides to cook it, adding the meat to her noodle soup. Before long, her business becomes very successful, meaning she must find a steady supply of fresh human meat to use in her cooking… Heavily marketed as the latest Thai ‘torture-porn’ export, Meat Grinder wears its promise of gut-wrenching gore and sadistic scenes of violence rather proudly. And so it should, for they are amongst the most startling and insistent scenes of carnage in recent memory. The opening monochromatic montage depicts a woman calmly preparing a human cadaver for cooking, smearing it with herbs and spices and marinating it befor...

2010 Dir. Daniel Grou aka Podz Middle-aged surgeon Bruno Hamel (Claude Legault), his wife Sylvie (Fanny Mallette) and their eight-year-old daughter Jasmine (Rose-Marie Coallier) live a happy, uneventful life in the suburbs of a quiet town. When Jasmine is brutally raped and murdered by a local man, Anthony Lemaire (Martin Dubreuil), Bruno hatches a meticulous plan to make him pay for his crimes. He will kidnap and torture Lemaire for seven days before executing him and then turning himself in… Directed by Daniel Grou ( Vampire High, Big Wolf On Campus, The Hunger ), aka Podz, and adapted for the screen by author Patrick Senécal ('5150 Elm’s Way,' 'Evil Words') from his best-selling novel, ‘Les sept jours du talion,’ 7 Days is an intense and disturbing French-Canadian thriller that has been described as ' Saw directed by Michael Haneke ( Funny Games ) or Lars von Trier ( Antichrist ).’ Coldly filmed in a stylish, yet detached manner, 7 Days is a harrowi...

2010 Dir. Joey Stewart Tired of being bullied by the high school jocks and their girlfriends, a group of awkward students plot bloody revenge for the years of humiliation they’ve been subjected to. Driven by their deadly vendetta and suicidal tendencies, they gather their tormentors in an isolated barn, under the guise of a highly exclusive party, and begin a long night of retribution… The Final , the debut feature from director Joey Stewart, is at times an uneven and ambiguously centred film that can’t quite decide if it’s a righteous-revenge fantasy or the latest ‘torture-porn’ flick. Since the Columbine High School massacre, a number of films - including  Elephant, Zero Day and The Class  - have attempted to tackle the subject of deadly high school shootings with varying degrees of depth. The Final is the latest to broach this volatile subject, and it attempts to set itself apart from its peers by filtering its already grim subject matter through a cruelly sadisti...

2009 Dir. Pascal Laugier Anna (Morjana Alaoui) and Lucie (Mylène Jampanoï), two young women with revenge on their minds, track down a family who held one of them captive as a youngster. Their quest for vengeance and knowledge leads them on a gut-wrenching and depraved journey into the dark recesses of pain and suffering, anguish and torture. Brutal. Shocking. Intense. Provocative. Raw. Unflinching. Disturbing. Numbing. Powerful. Unforgettable. These are just a few of the words that have been used to describe the jaw dropping spectacle that is Martyrs . The thing is though, while they are all accurate, no words can really be utilised to fully prepare you for the visceral onslaught you will undergo while watching this breathtakingly extreme film. With its astoundingly sadistic violence, Laugier's film is part of the current wave of extreme horror coming out of France, and firmly rooted in the realms of ‘Torture Porn’. Directed with ferocity, it strives to provoke and stimu...