Author: Peter 'Witchfinder' Hopkins

CANNIBAL CLAUS ** U.S.A. 2016 Dir: Sean Donohue 66 mins This Santa doesn’t want your cookies and milk, he just wants your lungs and tongue…..and anything the CANNIBAL CLAUS can get his teeth into. Bob Glazier stars as Nick Cringle a mall Santa Claus who mere days before Christmas day gets fired which doesn’t sit well with him. Compiling a list of those who are naughty or nice…but mostly naughty…Nick goes out of his way to enjoy Christmas his way, by gutting those who are bad boys and girls. As the title of the movie suggests, Nick isn’t just about…

FRIED BARRY **** South Africa 2017 Dir: Ryan Kruger. 3 mins Writer-director Ryan Kruger’s career encompasses acting roles for directors like Neil Marshall and Danny Boyle alongside music videos for South African metal bands. His venture into the realm of experimental short films was kickstarted by the festival hit FRIED BARRY – now expanded into a 2019 feature film. It’s a dizzying, disorientating, dialogue-free tale of a junkie’s (Gary Green) body hijacked by an alien life form after a potent hit. Told entirely in acid trip style via jarring visuals, rapid, jittery editing and abrasive use of sound, it finds…

Uncork’d Entertainment have released THE TOKOLOSHE, director Jerome Pikwane’s frightening fictional account of the mythological creature, on digital platforms and disc this December. Synopsis: Busi, a young destitute woman with dangerously repressed emotions, lands a job as a cleaner at a rundown hospital in the heart of Johannesburg. Desperate for the money so she can bring her younger sister to Johannesburg, she must cope despite the predatory and corrupt hospital manager. When Busi discovers an abandoned young girl in the hospital, who believes she is tormented by a supernatural force, Busi must face her own demons from her past…

TRASH ARTS KILLERS: VOLUME TWO * UK 2019 Dir: David Black, Thomas J Davenport, Robbie Hampstead, Jessica Hunt, Emma Jayne Lloyd, Sam Mason-Bell, Grant Murphy, Martin W Payne, Mike Peter Reed. 67 mins Another sub-par compendium of short movies, this time framed by a young female artist (Martyna Madej) painting a grim work that evolves in between the eight subsequent tales. “The Masked One” is a brief homage to silent cinema in which Alexandra Robertshaw is stalked by a mystery stranger in a plague doctor outfit – though more bearable than what follows, it sets a trend for weak pay-offs.…

PRE-CRIME *** Germany 2017 Dirs: Matthias Heeder & Monika Hielscher. 88 mins. A few years ago, China announced they were going to start rating their citizens, based on things like their behavior and spending habits. These scores would impact their daily freedoms—if they were considered “untrustworthy” they would be barred from international travel, education, or property ownership. PRE-CRIME investigates a similar process that’s happening closer to home than most westerners might realize. Predetermining whether or not someone is going to commit a crime seems like something from science fiction (in fact the documentary borrowed its name from MINORITY REPORT and…