Flavours of the Month: May 2015...

This month I polished off the excellent "South Park: The Stick of Truth" (shame about the constant loading screens, though), gave the show's 18th season a quick second spin, and indulged in the superb "6 Days To Air: The Making of South Park" documentary ... there's also been an awful lot of Rob Zombie, plenty of writing, crackin' telly, and the glamorous thrills of the Monaco F1 weekend among the flavours of my May 2015...

Cold In July: Mini Review...

What's it about?
A pulp thriller set in 1989 in which a humble family man, a picture framer by trade, kills an intruder in his home only to be flung into an ever darkening criminal underworld in which vengeance will cleanse the wicked. From Jim Mickle, the director of Stake Land, and based on the book by Joe R. Lansdale.
Who would I recognise in it?
Michael C. Hall, Don Johnson, Sam Shephard, Vinessa Shaw, Wyatt Russell and others.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Taking stylistic cues from John Carpenter (who is acknowledged directly in the credits) - from the titles font to the pounding pulse of the synth soundtrack - this brooding thriller combines exploitation thrills with slick production value. Taught, efficient, and disturbing throughout, the film's 80s aesthetic is simultaneously played for smiles and realism. Triumphant hair metal and nascent mobile phones on one hand, video rental stores and old school machismo on the other. Blood, guns, and damaged male bonding is where it's at here, as fraught explosions of violence and gore blend into a pulse-pounding, primary-coloured haze of no-nonsense Southern darkness. Indeed, the colour scheme - rich blues, greens, and literal washes of blood-red light - seems to take some inspiration from Jason Eisener's "Hobo With A Shotgun"; this is like a neo-grindhouse revenger with some decent money to its name. A thoroughly effective thriller with a dark heart and an electro-groove. On the cusp of Great.

The Sister of Ursula (Enzo Milioni, 1978) DVD Review

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“Terrible things are going to happen, I see blood.” The 1970s were the swinging heyday of Italian 'giallo' cinema with a veritable glut of gruesome and sexy thrillers filling silver screens far and wide. However, by 1978 gialli were becoming a bit worn out – but meanwhile the market for adult entertainment was exploding – and while many of Italy's pulp thrillers flirted with sexuality and eroticism, few straddled the line this side of full-blown flesh flicks quite like Enzo Milioni's The Sister of Ursula...

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Short stories and other writing projects...

Recently I've been working on some short stories, a form I used to write in a number of years ago, but from which I got distracted by other creative endeavours. In addition to using the short story format to further improve my writing and try out some things, I'm also pursuing it for competitions as well as submissions to publications that specialise in short stories.

Right now I've just started putting together "We Should Eat Ice Cream Too" (sci-fi), and I've also got "The Seventh Rub" (no particular genre and more of a personal tale), and "Dug Deep" (horror). "Dug Deep" is a ghost story situated in a collapsed mine as trapped workers are painstakingly being rescued, while "The Seventh Rub" deals with the issue of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. "We Should Eat Ice Cream Too" - a subtle kind of sci-fi story - deals with themes of immigration, societal cohesion, and family - particularly fathers and sons...

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Manborg (Steven Kostanski, 2011) DVD Review...

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“Remember, it's not about the killing, it's about family.” Astron-6, the crazy VHS-loving movie making machines behind the Troma-tastic Father's Day and the much anticipated neo-giallo The Editor, have been cranking out bizarre shorts and features that appeal to the very best of 80s nostalgia for years. 'Lazer Ghosts' and 'Bio-Cops' are one thing, but then there's Manborg – a low-fi large scale action sci-fi chaos-mobile featuring Nazi demons, laser battles, and a home-made future dystopia...

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Galaxy of Terror (B.D. Clark, 1981) Review

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“ALIEN Was Just The Beginning … Hell Has Just Been Relocated!” Produced by Roger Corman – on a relatively handsome budget of $700,000 – if Battle Beyond The Stars (1980) was New World Pictures' answer to 1977's Star Wars, then Galaxy of Terror was clearly their less-than-subtle take on Ridley Scott's Alien (1979). Swapping out H.R. Giger's iconic xenomorphs for – among other things – a giant and rapacious worm-thing – and sticking with the basic setup (oblivious crew sent to a hostile planet to investigate suspicious goings on), Bruce D. Clark's sci-fi horror nonetheless throws up some pleasing surprises...

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