While journeying down for a short trip away to the secluded vistas of the Norfolk broads, little was I aware that the weekend away was to allow for a lecture and a personal chat with one of this writer’s heroes. The brilliant thing about north Norfolk in general is that, in just about every field whether it be art, film or even food, it has … Continue reading Screen-Next-The-Sea Film Festival – Kevin Brownlow Lecture.
Recently I’ve been lucky enough to travel to one of the most beautiful parts of the United Kingdom; the north Norfolk coast. I’ve been coming here since I was little but only recently it has taken on a new light and ethos in terms of filming potential. In the last few months, I’ve been lucky enough to preview all five discs of the BBC Ghost … Continue reading BBC Ghost Story Location Visits – A Warning To The Curious.
Volume 4 of the BBC Ghost Stories At Christmas is a mixed bag of the eerie and the spooky. Housing the last three instalments of the classic series before it ceased until its revival in 2005, it’s a must buy for one of the stories but its other two instalments wobble its consistency. The most appealing aspect of this release is that it contains possibly … Continue reading BBC Ghost Stories Volume 4 (The Signalman, Stigma, The Ice House) – BFI
If Alfred Hitchcock were to have made an occult horror film, it’s not beyond the realms of fantasy to believe that it would look something like Sidney Hayers’ 1962 film Night of the Eagle. Mixing up all sorts of clean cut imagery and marvellously juicy language, the film is one of the more Freudian in the horror canon and a far more subtle affair than … Continue reading Night Of The Eagle – Sidney Hayers (1962)
Following on from Hammer’s The Quatermass Xperiment, the company continued their desire for rating incorporated titles with 1956’s X The Unknown. It may perhaps hold the most unimaginative of Hammer’s titles but the film itself has some surprisingly good moments. The story follows an extremely similar route to its predecessor but certain tweaks allow more paranoia to build specifically around the radiation that clearly obsessed … Continue reading X The Unknown – Leslie Norman (1956)
This review contains spoilers. The second release of the BBC Christmas ghost stories finds the real birth of it as a staple of the wintery Christmas nights of the 1970s and showcases the first two of five serials by Lawrence Gordon Clark. Though both of the stories are again M.R James adaptations the connecting factor here, apart from being chronologically accurate, is the inclusion in … Continue reading BBC Ghost Stories – The Stalls of Barchester/A Warning To The Curious (1971/1972)
This article contains spoilers. As a companion piece to John Gilling’s other big Hammer success The Plague of Zombies, 1966’s other Cornish based horror is an entirely different film even though shot relatively back to back. The Reptile focuses far more on the individual effects of a creature on the loose rather than a general view on the chaos, though obviously the villages where both … Continue reading The Reptile – John Gilling (1966)
The first of the two BFI releases due out on the 20th of August, this double bill of the classic BBC ghost story adaptations sets the tone for the future releases while also justifying the detail and time put into them. This release contains both adaptations of perhaps M.R. James’ most famous short tale and the release plays wonderfully on the natural juxtaposition of the two … Continue reading BBC Ghost Stories – Whistle And I’ll Come To You (1968 & 2010).
Horror films were slow on the upkeep when it came to electronic music. Though elements of it were being used in other genres before 1968, electronic music didn’t really reach horror until the late sixties. The exact date of the first use of electronic score has been attributed to various films; largely Cold War fare such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Invasion of the … Continue reading The Horror Score Rebellion Part 2 – Night Of The Living Dead And The Electronic Score.
F.W. Murnau should be a name familiar to everyone. Sadly this is not the case so some explanation should be given as to his importance. He was one of the key instigators of the German expressionist movement, a group of films that not only visually defy the time in which they were made but are also almost always beautiful to look at. Faust: A German Folk … Continue reading Faust – F.W Murnau (1926).
Celluloid Wicker Man 