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…
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.
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…
FROZEN ALIVE ** UK / West Germany 1964 Dir: Bernard Knowles. 81 mins Sometimes you just view a film that is just there. Many of the ‘slow burn’ pictures of today with their build-up followed by rapid-fire scares and effects-laden conclusions that set up a sequel are this way. Frozen Alive (1964) just simply exists with a simple story overshadowed by domestic troubles. Strikingly like Curse Of The Fly (1965) with an American star, in this case, star Mark Stevens as a scientist, Frank Overton, working with his associate Helen Wieland (Marianne Koch) to perfect suspended animation. In this case,…
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER *** USA / Ireland 2021 Dir: Kevin Pontuti. 100 mins Horror genre at its best tackles (sometimes literally) themes and the society in which it was made. James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931) worked as a ‘self-made in articulate man’ in an era where The Great Depression and impending war clouds in Europe were gathering. Heady stuff to compare that film and the now classic Bride Of Frankenstein (1935) with The Yellow Wallpaper (2021). This film and James Whale’s Frankenstein films of the thirties have a common thread that influences the way the world and the story is told.…
BUNKER 717 (aka Deep Fear) *** Belgium / France 2022 Dir: Grégory Beghin. 80 mins I have said before that often in genres there are no new concepts. Reinventing the wheel is not necessary however healthy execution of ideas is. Director Grégory Beghin and writer Nicolas Tackian have fashioned a competent if not unremarkable horror picture called Bunker 717 (aka Deep Fear) (2022). Competent in that it has its moments bogged down by tropes we have seen before. Firstly, taking a page out of all those cave or enclosure horror films like the now classic The Decent (2005), The Keep…