Flavours of the Month: January 2016...

Hobbits, exploitation flicks, and a brand new screenplay - just a couple of this month's flavours...

Click "READ MORE" below for January 2016's looks, sounds, vibes & flavours...

Texas Chainsaw: Mini Review...

What's it about?
A direct sequel to Tobe Hooper's legendary 1974 film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in which, after Sally Hardesty's escape, the Sawyer family - including an extended rabble of misfits coming along for family support - are burned alive in their home. It's 1973 and there's only one survivor - a Sawyer family baby - who grows up forty years later to be in her early twenties. Seriously. Lack of respect for the audience's intelligence and the horror genre in general aside, young 'Heather' is surprised one day to learn that her grandmother - whom she never knew - has died and left her an inheritance in (where else) Newt, Texas - where all the chaos happened in 1973. She and her friends go to investigate - guess what happens next.
Who would I recognise in it?
Alexandra Daddario, Tania Raymonde, Gunnar Hansen, Bill Moseley, Marilyn Burns, Scott Eastwood, Richard Riehle.
Great/Good/Alright/Shite?
Written by Adam Marcus (the writer/director of the initially intriguing but ultimately lamentable Jason Goes To Hell), the film starts off strong - the attention to detail in re-staging the post-massacre location from the original film is impressive - with a non-Leatherface cameo from original chainsaw-wielder Gunnar Hansen, and Bill 'Chop Top' Moseley playing Jim Siedow's part as Sawyer patriarch Drayton. However, the strange tone of the film - in which the monsters are unconvincingly cast as victims to be sympathised with - becomes evident early on. Moving forward to the present day - from 1973 to 2013 - comes the film's major F-You to the viewers. It's not explicitly stated that it is present day - but the up-to-date hip-hop, vehicles, and (most blatantly of all) smart phones - makes the space-time continuum-breaking 2013 setting undeniable. As previously stated, but repeated for emphasis - the infant survivor of the 1973 lynching grows up FORTY YEARS LATER to be in her early 20s, in the shape of Alexandra Daddario (True Detective, Burying The Ex)...

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The Girl Who Knew Too Much (Mario Bava, 1963) Blu-Ray/DVD Review

Find more giallo reviews here.

“Don't you see it over there? Blood. Blood everywhere!” Originally intended to be a frothy romcom about tourists on an adventure in Rome, when horror maestro Mario Bava (Black Sunday) entered the project, it changed into something altogether darker. Not only did Bava transform the film, but he altered the face of murder mystery cinema. Tracing its roots through Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace, the German 'Krimi' films, and Hitchcock, the giallo film – named after the yellow colour of pulp novels detailing lurid murders and twisted crimes – was birthed by Bava.

The genre, which he would finesse the following year with the technicolour terror of Blood and Black Lace, was turned – by Dario Argento (The Bird With The Crystal Plumage), Sergio Martino (All The Colours of the Dark), et al – into a hugely popular cinematic movement. So successful were the gialli, in-part through their sexuality and blood-splashing violence, that the American slasher film came to pass (Bava's own A Bay of Blood gave particular inspiration to Friday the 13^th Part 2). The importance of giallo films in the history of genre cinema cannot be overstated. The transition, from paperback to celluloid, happened here: The Girl Who Knew Too Much...

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"A Sideline In Vengeance" - update #3...

A quick update: Today I reached the end of Act II - on page 72. It's currently at a 'Draft 1.5' stage, as I made a few ad hoc tweaks along the way as-and-when they popped into my head or I stumbled upon something in my notes I had forgotten about.

Next up I shall go through all of Act II and make some changes. It's also a good way to get several days worth of writing straightened out in your head within a much more compressed time frame in advance of starting work on the following act.

I'm happy to say that it's coming together nicely!

Chillerama (Green/Lynch/Rifkin/Sullivan, 2011) DVD Review

Find more exploitation reviews here.

“What I want to know is what the sweet scent of Satan's scrote is going on here.” Anthology horror – as well as horror heyday nostalgia – has been in rude health in recent years. Case in point: Chillerama – a goofy horror comedy that takes a love of Drive-In movie-going memories and splatters it from head to toe with blood, guts, puzzling blue goo, and an awful lot of the, not only brown, but white stuff for good measure! Featuring Werebears, a nymphomaniac Eva Braun, an enormous killer spermatozoa, and an outbreak of horny zombies – which accounts for just the tip of the bizarre idea iceberg – Chillerama is, to put it mildly, just a little bit strange...

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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'...

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"A Sideline In Vengeance" is off to a good start...

A quick update on the screenwriting front: Four days into the process and already I've got the first act done - and tweaked into a third draft for good measure.

So things are off to a good start - hopefully this vibe continues! Thus far I'm pleased with how the scenes are coming out, I'm able to navigate (with the help of numbered record cards for clear reference) the myriad of hand-written pages of notes from December (which laid out all the characters, their journeys, and the overall plot), and I'm still feeling good about the whole endeavour.

Next week I'll be heading into the belly of the beast - Act II.

"A Sideline In Vengeance" is underway...

After getting the bulk of the planning done during December (and a little bit of last minute tinkering in the first few days of 2016), I've started writing my new screenplay called "A Sideline In Vengeance".

It's a conspiracy thriller inspired by some dark and twisted stories that have been hitting the headlines in the UK over the last couple of years...

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The Final Girls (Todd Strauss-Schulson, 2015) DVD Review...

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“They won't be singing kum-ba-ya, they'll ve screaming kum-ba-noooooooo!” Taking the bulk of it's cues from Sean S. Cunningham's iconic 'slasher flick that defined the 80s' Friday the 13^th (1980), The Final Girls (not to be confused with the entirely unrelated Final Girl) is a meta comedy-horror mash-up in which a group of friends attend a screening of 'Camp Bloodbath', only to end up journeying into the film itself. However, if they thought it was going to be difficult escaping the machete-wielding Billy Murphy, they clearly didn't stop to think about getting their camp counsellor cohorts – pre-destined to fornicate with abandon – to keep their zips up and their buttons fastened...

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