DEAD BRIDE ** Italy 2022 Dir: Francesco Picone. 83 mins Italian Horror should be more than the works of Dario Argento, Mario Bava, and Lucio Fulci. How does one compete with icons? Well the answer for me is that you don’t. The long shadows of these and others cannot help to be thought of in Italian genre cinema. One just has to look at Argento’s Dark Glasses (2022) aka Occhiali neri to see that even a Master still has it in a slightly different form. A new example is Dead Bride (2022) by Writer-Director Francesco Picone who shows us that…
Author: Terry Sherwood
Terry Sherwood
Terry Sherwood Born in Ottawa Ontario, Canada; Terry is a "Monster kid ', film fan and popular culture person. Once worked in television as a commercial writer/ Director. Writer of the SKELETONS IN THE CLOSET site covering aspects of the Horror Genre from Books, Comics, to Film old and new. He has previously written for WE BELONG DEAD and MONSTERMANIA magazines, The Spooky Isle UK website, Horror hound and Turner Classic Movies. Published Book of own writings titled SCREEN AND SCREEN AGAIN: ESSAYS ON THE HORROR FILM on amazon world wide plus contributed to other genre books. Chaired numerous convention panel discussions on Horror and Comics Terry is member of The Horror Writers Association and Dracula Society in U.K.
RHYME OR DIE *** UK 2021 Dir: Max Lincoln. 10 mins Small films like short stories are the hardest to write and review they must be complete in scope much like the literature format ‘shotgun fiction’ designed to be read while waiting for public transport. Writer Alex Moran and Director Max Lincoln take to the concept of a ‘rap contest’ and combine it with the Saw franchise to a deadlier conclusion with Rhyme Or Die (2021). Five strangers of diverse backgrounds are kidnapped only to wake up with ‘Thrall‘ like metal collars (From the Classic Star Trek episode The Gamesters…
SPELLBOUND *** UK / Switzerland 2022 Dir: Robin Rippmann. 11 mins Films can get interpreted differently by the audience. We each whether we like it or not bring our backgrounds, experiences, and life to the viewing experience. This brings us to Spellbound (2022) by Director Robin Rippmann who as I see it brings elements of Gothic romance to the screen. The Gothic as illustrated in the classic work of Ann Radcliffe, Emily Brontë, and Daphne du Maurier coalesces quite well in the film. The definition of the romance of a Gothic nature is a romance that deals with desolate and…
THE PYRAMID *** Italy 2013 Dirs: Luca Alessandro, Simone Chiesa, Alex Visani, Antonio Zannone, Roberto Albanesi. 90 mins Portmanteau or Anthology horror films seem to be the forte of the UK and the USA making The Pyramid (2013) somewhat of an oddity. The film also has the device of a demon-conjured small Pyramid that physically appears in the various stories in the tradition of the Hellraiser series. That small pyramid spreads madness, death, and destruction in four different episodes directed by four Directors and four different writers. The Pyramid (2013) opens with an unsavoury character looking like it stepped out…
ABRUPTIO **** USA 2023 Dir: Evan Marlowe. 109 mins Refreshing takes on similar tropes that have been done to undeath are quite rare. The horror genre is seeing this in some film work such as Piggy (2022) or dare I suggest Pearl (2022) and Barbarian (2022). Evan Marlowe’s labour of love film Abruptio (2023) comes into this fold with an unsettlingly funny, gory piece of work told entirely with life-like puppets. These are not the puppets of Charles Band’s Puppet Master series, Small Soldiers (1996) or others. Director Evan Marlowe describes them more like The Dark Crystal (1982) and the…