Murder at the Grindhouse - my new novel...

Murder at the Grindhouse - my new novel - is releasing on August 7th 2026 worldwide via Amazon.

The eBook is already up for pre-order worldwide (e.g. UK, USA) and the physical print edition of the book will go live for purchase on August 7th.

Set during the dying years of the most notorious street in America: New York's 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues, Murder at the Grindhouse is a coming-of-age murder mystery thriller set against a backdrop of social upheaval, the encroachment of corporate America, and a sensational killing streak. The propulsive story is told primarily through Calvin, a scorned small town zero forever chasing to catch up only to arrive too late, who is drawn to the city by a stunning, morbid mystery: who was the second body hidden inside his Aunt's coffin?

Calvin enters this extraordinary land of outlaw film culture and illicit freedoms as a wide-eyed innocent seeking answers and personal redemption, drawing him into a world of copycat murders, temptation, and mob intrigue. Besieged by alluring distractions, he is guided by Angela, a hard-nosed punk rocker; Carol-Ann, a jocular dancer with Broadway dreams; and their coterie of misfit friends. However, when Calvin's amateur sleuthing puts him in the middle of one too many crime scenes, Detective Armstrong begins to like him as a prime suspect for 'The Devil of The Deuce' serial killer. Will Calvin be able to peel back the layers of secrets, lies, and sordid actions to unveil horrifying truths – and at what cost to his soul?

A vivid and gleefully lurid journey through society's edge during a bygone era, Murder at the Grindhouse consumes the reader in a world populated with humorous, vibrant, and emotionally flawed personalities cast against a varied mix of absurd fringe fantasia and sudden danger.

V/H/S/85 (2023) review...

Find more horror reviews here.

The V/H/S portmanteau horror anthology franchise has been a mixed bag from its inception, but this inherently goes with the territory. The first film, from 2012, was a bold but flawed beginning that was clearly one story too long and, most egregiously, suffered from featuring numerous characters who were outright wretched to spend any time with. The 2013 follow-up clocked in at an agreeably brisk 92 minutes, balanced the tone and characters, and explored a nice variety of ideas, styles, and approaches to the set-up. Sadly, 2014's V/H/S/Viral was thoroughly misguided, at times appearing embarrassingly cheap and sloppy, while also featuring mostly uninspiring tales.

Fast forward to 2021 and horror streaming service Shudder co-produced and distributed V/H/S/94, which proved to be a return to form and an impressive doubling-down on the 'vhs style'. It had some weak aspects, but it's strengths outnumbered its weaknesses. Hopes were high, then, for 2022's V/H/S/99, which absolutely dropped the ball. Aside from one segment ("Suicide Bid"), the film was a mess of miss opportunities, half-baked ideas (some of which didn't fit the format or franchise tone whatsoever), aggressive amounts of shaky-cam, and poorly-placed humour.

Nonetheless, V/H/S/99 was a ratings hit, but this was no doubt built more on the achievements of its immediate predecessor that it's own content, as born out by numerous reactions from the audience. Approaching V/H/S/85, therefore, came with some serious concern that the wrong lessons would be learned from V/H/S/99's success. Thankfully, V/H/S/85 feels more in-keeping with the first two entries in the franchise as well as V/H/S/94...

Click "READ MORE" below to continue the review and see more screenshots...

Joysticks (Greydon Clark, 1983) Review

Find more exploitation reviews here.

“We are here to extinguish the filth and the decadence that is commonly referred to as videogame entertainment.” It's 1983. You're a filmmaker and wondering what's popular with the youth right now. Well, on the one hand you've got raunchy comedies like Porky's that have been doing boffo box office on small budgets, and on the other hand you've got the unbridled popularity of videogame arcades which has seen eager gamers queuing up en masse to blast invaders from space. So, what better thing to do that mash those two hands together and come up with Joysticks?!

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

Chopping Mall (Jim Wynorski, 1986) Review

Find more exploitation reviews here.

“I guess I'm not used to being chased around a mall in the middle of the night by killer robots.” The 1980s was the decade when the shopping mall ruled all from the consumerist dream driving the economy to the food court driving teenagers' social engagement. It was a time and a place that was important in people's lives, something worth protecting, but how best to do that? Perhaps big steel time-locked doors and a trio of roaming robots armed with laser eyes? Gee, I sure hope a random lightning storm doesn't scramble their circuits and result in a slew of corpses … oh, hang on, too late!

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

Killer Workout (David A Prior, 1987) DVD Review

Find more exploitation reviews here.

“The workout will kill you!” Otherwise known as Aerobicide, David A. Prior's (Deadly Prey) late-in-the-cycle slasher flick – and feature début – is perhaps the most unabashedly 'eighties' of them all. Beauties clad in Day-Glo Lycra writhing to terrible pop music in the quest for bodily perfection? Check. Convertible Porsches and muscled-up bros with dodgy hair styles? Check. Conspicuous shots of condoms in the wake of the AIDS crisis that was dominating the decade? Check. Visor caps, frizzy hair, and ankle socks? That'll be a big old check on that, too. In some ways, for good and bad, the 1980s have never left us – not in these specific ways, mind you – but the decade of greed and synthesised music has been back in vogue for a while now. But does that mean Killer Workout is any good? Let's find out...

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots…

Flavours of the Month: February 2017...

Music biz excess snuffed out too soon, alternative history meets flying lead, and the guy you send to kill the Boogey Man: some of what's been flavouring my February 2017...

Click "READ MORE" below to see this month's looks, sounds, vibes & flavours...

The writing has begun...

Writing on my new book has begun. The title of it is: Murder at the Grindhouse. It's a coming-of-age murder mystery with a darkly comic tone set during the 1980s on New York's 42nd Street - aka "The Deuce" - between 7th and 8th Avenues (and the surrounding environs). This was movie paradise for cinema goers at the time who wanted unusual, outlandish fare to go along with their mainstream silver screen delights. It was a fascinating time and place to learn about as a movie fan and so I felt it was a great place to set a story.

Thus far I'm up to about 15,600 18,500 words deep* - no idea how long it'll all end up being as there's quite a way to go yet - but I'm off to a good start. It always takes a bit of getting going when you kick off a new writing project before you start feeling the groove, and this is quite a detailed project in many ways - detail oriented - hence the sheer volume of research and story prep that's gone into it.

This is going to be a fun little project...

*Updated on the 23rd.

Space Station 76 - mini review...

What's it about?
Domestic drama and workplace comedy meet ... in outer space. A refuelling station somewhere in the vicinity of Earth in 1976, to be exact. A closeted Captain pines for his lost love, a down-trodden maintenance man struggles with marital disharmony, a young girl has to come to terms with death and her Valium-addicted mother, and the new girl on the scene finds herself stuck in-between it all. Infidelity, gossip, rampant materialism, and visits to a two-foot-tall robotic head-shrinker ensue.
Who would I recognise in it?
Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Matt Bomer, Jerry O'Connell, Keir Dullea.

Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Styled after the sci-fi greats of the 1960s and 1970s, from films like "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Silent Running", to hand-crafted low-fi sci-fi TV shows like "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century", we find ourselves in an alternative 1976 (or thereabouts, we must assume) with all the kitsch fashion, facial hair, and smoking around children to match...

Click "READ MORE" below to continue...

It Follows: Mini Review...

What's it about?
Creep-inducing horror tale about a sexually transmitted demon that stalks its victims in sequence - from most recently infected down the line, killing one-by-one unless the victim can keep one step ahead. A young woman becomes the latest to inherit the deadly curse and it's up to her and her friends to figure out a way to stop it ... whatever "it" is...

Click "READ MORE" below to continue the review...

Turbo Kid: Mini Review...

What's it about?
An apocalypse, ravaged by acid rain and pollution, has obliterated much of the human race, with those still left alive reduced to scavenging and bloodthirsty combat. The year is 1997. The Kid (Munro Chambers), a lone teenager scrabbling through the rubble for the plastic relics of the 1980s, and all-round comic book obsessive, one day stumbles into Apple (Laurence Leboeuf), a curiously manic pink-haired waif whose previous best friend is a festering corpse. As he teaches her about the rules of the wasteland - which is ruled over by the monocular Zeus - he finds the mysterious remains of his hero: Turbo Man - arm blaster included - and takes on the mantle of 'Turbo Kid'...

Click "READ MORE" to continue the review...

"Kung Fury" - rogue cops, laser raptors, and who else but those damn Nazis?

Okay, so I'm a little late to the party on this one, but with so much on the World Wide Web vying for your attention - and with the vast spread of 'clickbait' headlines hovering above wasteful nonsense that never delivers and is only there to 'generate hits' - sometimes you can overlook a good thing.

Sometimes you can overlook a great thing - like Kung Fury - a thirty minute short film from David Sandberg and Laser Unicorns Productions that crams in more neo-1980s fun than you can shake the entire decade at. In the words of the filmmakers themselves: "Kung Fury is an over-the-top 80’s action comedy that was crowd funded through Kickstarter. It features Kung Fury, a Kung Fu renegade cop who travels back in time to kill his Nemesis, Hitler. The film features nazis, dinosaurs, vikings and cheesy one-liners."



The full version of the film is freely available to watch on YouTube HERE.

It was sitting on my 'Watch Later' list for a couple of months, and when I finally got around to viewing it I thought to myself "Why on earth have I waited this long to watch this?!" - so in case you're not one of the 19.8 million hits that this fantastically crazy short film has received GO AND WATCH THIS NOW!

Click "READ MORE" below to continue...

The Las Vegas Serial Killer (Wolfgang Schmidt, 1987) Review

Find more film reviews here.

Just like with The Hollywood Strangler Meets The Skid Row Slasher, Ray Dennis Steckler is under the guises of Wolfgang Schmidt and Sven Christian as Director, Cinematographer and Editor of this sketchy 1987 follow-up, which continues in much the same vein as its predecessor.

Click “READ MORE” below to continue the review and see more screenshots...

Back To The 80s...

The other day I got a last-minute call to do a shoot & edit job on a project called Back To The 80s - a musical put on by Year 6 students from three primary schools (Year 6 being the final year of primary school before you enter Year 7 and High School).

So I was back in the main theatre at the Hereford Courtyard Theatre, where I'd only been a few weeks prior doing a shoot & edit on Hereford's Got Talent, and I'm now off to edit the whole thing together.

Compared to my Year 6 leaver's shindig, now fifteen years ago (blimey!), it was a big old affair. Our gig was a random show that we put on (mostly left to our own devices) ... I can barely remember it, but I was reminded that I was part of a duo doing corny jokes and funny voices, and then we all got book tokens. Times change I guess, but then again I went to a quite small primary school - and our year was a mere 9 people.

Onwards to the edit!