Author: Peter 'Witchfinder' Hopkins

Jack McHenry’s genre-bending directorial debut HERE COMES HELL is coming to DVD after a smash hit festival run. Best described as THE OLD DARK HOUSE meets THE EVIL DEAD, the stylish horror-comedy is an homage to classic horror, with a bloody twist. Filmed in black and white, HERE COMES HELL follows the plight of a group of 1930s socialites attending a dinner party in a dilapidated mansion. Bloody mayhem ensues when their host coerces them into performing a séance, accidentally opening the gates of hell. After premiering at Frightfest Glasgow, the film went on to screen at festivals across the…

BLISS *** USA 2019 Dir: Joe Begos. 80 mins Although he has yet to make a fully satisfying feature, there is much to admire in writer-director Joe Begos’ 80’s-infused output, and BLISS cuts loose in ways that ALMOST HUMAN and THE MIND’S EYE never quite managed, even if it doesn’t quite hit the bullseye despite plentiful gore eye candy and a ferociously impressive lead performance. Prolific composer Steve Moore, whose soundtrack was the best thing about THE MIND’S EYE, returns with a characteristically pulsing, intimidating score. The camerawork is as restless and jitter-inducing as the editing, spiralling into anarchy as…

OFFSPRING ** USA 2009 Dir: Andrew van den Houten. 80 mins Adapted by Jack Ketchum from his own novel sequel to the superior “The Off Season”, this is a tacky poor man’s THE HILLS HAVE EYES. Retired, hard-drinking cop Art Hindle is dragged out of retirement when the brutal murder of a young woman by feral kids has strong parallels to an earlier, infamous case. A sighting of a wild naked girl near his house makes him suspect a local hippy commune, unaware she’s part of a bunch of cannibalistic descendants of an 18th century lighthouse keeper, who have…

HERE COMES HELL *** UK 2018 Dir: Jack McHenry. 80 mins Set in the 1930’s, shot in Lincoln and filmed in black and white in Academy ratio, this opens as a riff on Agatha Christie-infused old dark house murder mysteries and incorporates an initial straight-to-camera curtain-raising intro in the spirit of Carl Laemle’s onscreen scene-setting for Universal’s original FRANKENSTEIN. In the fashion of the period’s comic horror mysteries, an ensemble cast are gathered at an imposing old mansion with a bad history. The previous owner was notorious occult artist Ichabod Quinn, and batty old medium Maureen Bennett is called in…

101 Films presents PROM NIGHT (1980), a slasher classic and one of the most influential horror films of the 1980s, released on Blu-ray for the first time in the UK in an extras-packed limited edition. Starring Jamie Lee Curtis (HALLOWEEN) and Leslie Nielsen (AIRPLANE!), and adorned with a highly-regarded original score and disco soundtrack, PROM NIGHT is a bloody landmark in high school horror. This will be title 011 on the 101 Films Black Label which will be a Limited Edition version with slipcase and booklet limited to 3000 units. Synopsis: Four Hamilton High School seniors have been hiding…