Behind the Couch

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...

2007 Dir. Dave Sapp Jill, a young blind woman struggling with her faith, unexpectedly inherits an old mansion from her estranged aunt. When she arrives at the house, she experiences a number of unnerving events and begins to suspect the place is haunted. She soon discovers a secret tragedy about her aunt that will force her to face her greatest fears, changing her forever… The Haunting of Marsten Manor is a quiet melodrama that could have benefited from an injection of suspense. A mild spook-fest, it is perfect afternoon viewing for fans of gentle TV mystery dramas such as Murder, She Wrote – it certainly exhibits the look and feel of a TV movie. Beginning as many haunted house movies begin, someone inherits an old dark house with a shady past. When they move into it, they're plagued by spooky occurrences. In this instance, it's Jill (Brianne Davis) who learns that she’s been left an old dark house by a dead relative she never actually met. Jill is struggling to come ...

There are few other creative figures of a more distinct, visionary and idiosyncratic nature to have emerged from the music industry in the twentieth century, than that of Kate Bush. Not only is she an artist who has accomplished the rare feat of combining musical innovation with commercial success, but she is one who also managed to do so on her own terms, whilst maintaining complete creative control of her work. Bush, in the words of one critic, ‘got all the madwomen down from the attic and into the charts.’ She is heavily inspired by the world of art, philosophy, literature and indeed cinema, drawing upon an almost encyclopaedic array of influences. When one takes a closer look at her work, it becomes apparent that Bush is something of a horror aficionado, drawing on a number of sources to lend her compositions rich, blood-dark depth. Out on the wiley, windy moors. ‘Wuthering Heights’ was a Gothic novel by Emily Brontë in which the conventions of the Gothic novel were refl...

Writer and director Tim Sullivan splattered onto the scene in 2005 with 2001 Maniacs , his satirical remake of Herschell Gordon Lewis’s drive-in splatter classic, Two Thousand Maniacs!  (1964). His follow up,  Driftwood (2006), was about a traumatised teenager sent to a summer camp for troubled young people after he claims his dead brother is haunting him. The filmmaker will soon be seen venturing in front of cameras to portray murderous cross-dressing nun, Sister Mary Chopper, in the forthcoming Bloody Bloody Bible Camp .  Tim very kindly took some time out from pre-production on his dream project, the vampire horror Brothers of the Blood , to chat to me about his latest film - the gruesome sequel 2001 Maniacs: Field of Screams , which has just been unleashed on DVD - as well as his fondness for 'splatstick' comedy-horror, and the importance of gay representation in horror films...   What ingredients did Two Thousand Maniacs! possess that made it so ripe for a...

2010 Dir. Ian Powell While searching for his twin brother, young escort Paul embarks on a dark and dangerous odyssey through the lurid netherworld of male prostitution and the gay porn movie industry. All the while he experiences bizarre nightmares and orgasmic visions – shared by his clients when they have sex with him – of a mysterious masked stranger… Can Paul find his long lost twin and unlock the riddle of his perplexing visions before it’s too late? Ian Powell’s atmospheric and provocative gay art-house horror unfolds as an increasingly nightmarish mystery filtered through the candy-coloured lens of Mario Bava. High-brow allusions to the likes of Narcissus and various other helplessly self-destructive figures of mythology pepper the narrative, not only in the arresting images, but in the story itself. Figures such as Dorian Grey, the doppelganger and Jekyll and Hyde are referred to as Powell works through a series of complex personal ideas about identity, fate and trag...

2009 Dir. Marcus Koch Devastated by his breakup with Jenny, a depressed and heavily medicated Bill rapidly descends into a hellish world in which the lines between reality and nightmares become increasingly blurred. Bloody visions, ghosts from the past and bodies in the bath all conspire to push Bill ever closer to breaking point… Opening with a fractured series of shots of Bill sopping blood off the kitchen floor and listening to a radio whilst in a seemingly catatonic state, Fell starts as it means to go on: nightmarishly, hazily and disorientating. Koch films such mundane actions and activities as Bill cooking eggs, shuffling around the house, talking on the phone and sleeping on the couch so that they seem ripe with an undercurrent of dread. They take on a hellish, threatening glean and are filmed in tightly constructed close-up shots which better serve to thrust us further into Bill’s rapidly fraying mindset. The script, co-written by the cast (Katie Walters, Kristian D...

2009 Dir. Doug Roos A mysterious and highly contagious virus spreads throughout the earth’s population. Those who survive have fled to remote locations, but before long they begin to catch glimpses of mysterious black-cloaked figures, carrying away the dead and experimenting with them. When strangers Lance and Rachel cross paths, they begin to fall for each other and in doing so, realise that despite everything, hope should never be lost and life is always worth fighting for. They set out to kill the leader of the creatures in a last ditch effort to save humanity. The opening credits of Doug Roos’ mainly dialogue driven, character-centric film unspool beneath statically charged radio reports of an airborne pandemic spreading pandemonium across the globe. When the film begins, events are set a while after the earth’s population has been almost completely eviscerated. The two protagonists are amongst only a tiny number of survivors, their initial detachment and wariness of each o...

Bill Moseley is no stranger to portraying psychotic ‘hellbilly’ types, having breathed life into several of the most memorable and downright nasty horror movie characters in recent memory - including the deranged Chop-Top from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 and the mercilessly sadistic Otis Driftwood from Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects and House Of 1000 Corpses . With the release of Tim Sullivan’s 2001 Maniacs: Field Of Screams , Moseley looks set to add yet another barnstorming oddball to his menagerie of freaks. Head over to Eye for Film to check out my interview with him, in which we discuss his career to date, his love for horror movies and how he approaches the dark and disturbing characters he portrays.

Most people will have their own contingency plan in place in case our world should one day be plunged into post-apocalyptic, zombie-ridden chaos. But just how well stocked up are you? Would you know how to deal with the inevitability of destroying a loved-one who returns from the dead? And should you hold up in your local shopping mall or head to the nearest off-coast island resort? These are just some of the points you’ve no doubt considered. And you’re not alone. Last year the Edinburgh Festival Fringe , amongst others, played host to a series of ground-breaking seminars introduced by the leading expert in his field, and ‘zombology’ guru, Dr Dale Seslick. The seminars are your one stop shop to the world of zombie survival techniques. Aided by a dedicated team of specialists from the School of Survival, attendees will learn everything they need to know when coping with the undead as they rise from their graves and begin eating their way through the world’s population....

2009 Dir. Chad Ferrin A group of young medical students experiment with bizarre pharmaceutical research drugs while listening to therapy session tapes from the Seventies. On the tapes are interviews with homicidal couple John and Wilma Hopper (Ezra Buzzington and Elina Madison) - psychotic sexual deviants who claimed to be possessed by demons. Soon the group of students are pursued and essentially raped to death by the shape-shifting Hoppers and their monstrous genitalia. If the above synopsis sounds pretty fucked up to you, you’re not alone! Someone’s Knocking at the Door is part of a breed of horror flicks in which the source of the horror stems from the human body: monstrous, warped and shockingly mutated bodies featuring all manner of grotesque orifices and ghoulish appendages. Troma graduate Ferrins' ups the absurd factor and the ludicrous, comedic tone, riffing on the likes of Frank Henenlotter's Bad Biology and, well, most of David Cronenberg's back catalogue....

2010 Dir. Reg Traviss When horror novelist Susan (Charisma Carpenter) relocates from sunny California to the rural English countryside to recover from a nervous breakdown, her life begins to slowly unravel as she experiences unsettling and horrific visions. Could the blood-spattered sights be real, or the result of her increasingly fragile and unhinged mindset? A multi-layered, frequently engrossing contemporary horror story, Psychosis successfully combines many of the elements that made British horror films of yore so memorable – off-beat mystery, hints of supernatural threat, quirky characters, psychological intrigue and bloody murder. Director Reg Traviss attempts to evoke twisted classic chillers from British cinema past, combining an off-kilter and edgy energy reminiscent of more contemporary horror fare with a classic British sensibility which draws on the old ‘ Hammer House of Horror/Tales of the Unexpected ’ school of terror. Head over to Eye for Film to read my ful...

Fans of Hammer Horror will no doubt be aware of the important role Bray Studios played in the history of the production company throughout the 50s and 60s. Situated next to the River Thames at Water Oakley, Berkshire, Bray Studios was also where Ridley Scott filmed Alien in the late Seventies. The studio has recently come under threat. The current owners have applied for permission to carry out refurbishment work on the Grade II listed Down Place - the building at the centre of the studio complex. It is also their intention to demolish all of the existing Bray Studios buildings and convert the listed Down Place house into private residence (which will be lived in by the owner of Bray Management Ltd.). If this happens, the character of the Bray Studios site will be irreparably altered and a piece of British film history will be gone forever. Bray is actually set to celebrate its 60th year as a film studio next year, and is one of the few surviving studios from the era of classic Bri...

2004 Dir. JT Seaton Matthew Coburn is a young man who would like nothing more than to stay young and attractive forever. On the eve of his 30th birthday, he invites David, a guy he meets in an online chat-room, to his home to have sex. In the middle of the night, Matthew wakes up to find himself alone. Or is he? He soon begins to realize that someone, or something , is lurking in the dark in his home. Is it David? Or someone else, skulking in the shadows? As Matthew is plunged into a waking nightmare, he comes to realise that the price of vanity is high… Very high. ‘ Has your past ever come back to haunt you? ’ Nightshadows was produced the same year as Hellbent - the first gay slasher film. With its cast of gay characters falling victim to a devil-masked psycho, that film had fun Queering the usual conventions of the slasher film, while also sticking quite rigidly to them. Nightshadows , a dark tale of obsession and guilt, follows no such rules or conventions. What direct...

2009 Dir. JT Seaton George's friends have all gathered for an intervention... George's intervention. You see, George is a zombie and his friends have come to realise that he has been snacking on his neighbours. They attempt to convince him to stop eating people and to enter 'zombie rehab'. But the intervention doesn't go quite as planned, and George’s monstrous appetite gets the better of him. Bloody mayhem ensues, as George’s friends, various gate-crashers, door-to-door salesmen, Mormons and strippers all end up on the menu. Ever wonder what happened to the likes of Ed from Shaun of the Dead , Bub from Day of the Dead or Colin from, well, Colin – zombies who somehow retained an element of what it was that made them human – after the credits rolled? What if a zombie was able to retain all of their personality, and everything that made them who they were as a person while they were alive? That is precisely the angle this satirical and bitingly witty comedy ap...