Don't Answer The Phone! (Robert Hammer, 1980) DVD Review

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“RUN – if you must. HIDE – if you can. SCREAM, but … He'll Know You're Alone!” Conceived of before John Carpenter's Halloween blew the doors wide open for the slasher movie craze that swept the horror genre during the 1980s, Robert Hammer's one and only film – Don't Answer The Phone! – is a curious schism between disturbing realism, dark humour, and jumping aboard the killer thriller bandwagon...

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Flavours of the Month: August 2013...

LOOKS:

The Kevin Pollak Chat Show - it's a little rough around the edges, and Sam Levine's semi-off-camera interjections don't float my boat, but there's some good and lengthy interviews to see on YouTube. Some I've dug into this month have been Ed O'Neil, Lisa Kudrow, Matthew Perry, and a massively entertaining sit-down with the reliably verbose John Landis who has a veritable shedload of fascinating and entertaining stories from his decades in the movie industry to share. The shows are good because it's just two people having a relaxed and varied chat - although Pollak could ask his questions faster and more succinctly.

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Maniac (Franck Khalfoun, 2013) Review

In the last decade there has been a veritable monsoon of horror movie remakes, and while familiar names both large and small underwent the 're-imagining' process (to widely varying degrees of success), William Lustig's notoriously nasty Maniac (1980), slid under the radar – until now.

“Leave her alone!” Written and produced by Alexandre Aja and Gregory Levasseur (worthwhile remakes of The Hills Have Eyes in 2006, and Piranha in 2010), with Lustig on-board, and Franck Khalfoun (the utterly dreadful and menace-free P2) in the Director's chair, it was a real toss-up how this one could turn out. Would it be a pointless exercise in thoughtless money-making (akin to A Nightmare on Elm Street 2010), or would it be a fresh and worthy new spin on familiar material that is held dear as a dark and sinister example of the slasher genre at its best?

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