Category Archives: retrospective

Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 — A Misguided Sequel Lost in Its Own Darkness

26 Sunday Oct 2025

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When Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 arrived in 2000, it was less a haunting continuation than a jarring detour — an ill-fated attempt to capitalise on the cultural storm whipped up by The Blair Witch Project just a year earlier. Directed by acclaimed documentarian Joe Berlinger, known for his work on true-crime investigations, the film promised a layered, self-aware dissection of horror fandom. Instead, it spiralled into a confused and heavy-handed meta-experiment that buried any sense of dread beneath studio interference and incoherent storytelling.

Set in a world where The Blair Witch Project is treated as a fictional film, Book of Shadows follows a group of obsessed fans who embark on a tour of Burkittsville’s cursed woods. After a night of drinking and ritualistic dabbling, they awaken with no memory of what occurred — only to discover that something unspeakable has followed them back to civilisation. It’s a concept that could have worked, especially given Berlinger’s fascination with media, hysteria, and the blurred line between truth and fiction. But what unfolds is a tonal nightmare: part supernatural horror, part psychological thriller, and part MTV-era montage stitched together under studio panic.

Gone is the quiet, creeping terror that made The Blair Witch Project revolutionary. In its place are slick edits, forced symbolism, and a heavy-metal soundtrack that feels more Hot Topic than haunting. The atmosphere never gels; Berlinger’s original vision — a slow-burn descent into mass paranoia — was hacked apart in post-production, leaving behind something neither smart nor scary.

Even the performances, led by Jeffrey Donovan and Kim Director, struggle against the chaos. There’s a glimmer of an idea buried in there — a commentary on obsession and media manipulation — but it’s drowned by overwrought exposition and desperate attempts to shock.

Twenty-five years later, Book of Shadows remains one of horror’s most perplexing sequels: too ambitious for its own good yet too compromised to deliver. Whatever spirit haunted the woods of Burkittsville was lost in translation — and Elly Kedward would indeed be spinning in her grave.

The Prognosis:

A muddled, misguided sequel that confuses provocation with profundity. Berlinger’s vision was strangled by studio meddling, leaving behind only echoes of what might have been.

  • Saul Muerte

Buried Ambitions — Tobe Hooper’s “Mortuary” Tries to Laugh Through the Rot

20 Monday Oct 2025

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By 2005, Tobe Hooper’s once fearsome reputation as a master of horror had begun to fade into something far more uncertain. Mortuary, his final American feature before his death, feels like a strange, uneasy echo of the brilliance that gave us The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Poltergeist. Set in a decrepit Californian funeral home and built around a familiar haunted house premise, it’s a film that wants to be both grotesque and gleeful — a late-career experiment in dark comedy that never quite rises from the slab.

The story follows a widowed mother (Denise Crosby) and her two children who relocate to take over an old mortuary, despite the locals’ warnings of curses, restless dead, and black ooze seeping from the earth. Before long, things decay in true Hooper fashion: corpses twitch, strange fungi spread, and reality slips into chaos. Beneath the mess, though, is a faint pulse of humour — a macabre self-awareness that nods toward Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, where he first married horror and absurdity in equal measure.

But here, the tonal blend doesn’t quite hold. The gags are awkwardly timed, the scares too routine, and the effects — though spirited — never disguise the low budget. Still, there’s something oddly endearing about Hooper’s refusal to take it all too seriously. The film occasionally sparkles with flashes of his old, anarchic wit — a momentary reminder of the director who once turned rural America into a living nightmare.

Unfortunately, Mortuary never finds its footing. What should have been a campy, self-aware romp too often feels sluggish and shapeless, as though Hooper was wrestling with the ghosts of his own filmography.

The Prognosis:

A faint echo of a great filmmaker’s past glories — Mortuary is too uneven to resurrect Hooper’s legacy, but its dark humour and decaying charm make it a curious, if minor, entry in his body of work.

  • Saul Muerte

Tokyo Fist: Shinya Tsukamoto’s Violent Ballet of Flesh and Fury Turns 30

20 Monday Oct 2025

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When Tokyo Fist exploded onto screens in 1995, it was less a film than a sensory assault — a hallucinatory plunge into the body and the city, where love, rage, and industrial noise fused into something both grotesque and transcendent. Thirty years on, Shinya Tsukamoto’s bruised masterpiece still feels electrifying, a raw depiction of masculine collapse that punches with every frame.

Following Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer, Tsukamoto turned his kinetic eye inward, shifting from techno-flesh obsession to the violence that seethes beneath modern alienation. The story seems simple: a meek salaryman, Tsuda (played by Tsukamoto himself), reunites with a childhood friend turned boxer, Kojima, and suspects him of seducing his fiancée, Hizuru (Hisashi Fujii). But in Tsukamoto’s world, suspicion is only the spark — what follows is an implosion of jealousy and self-destruction that blurs the lines between punishment, passion, and transcendence.

As Tsuda trains and reshapes his body into a weapon, the film mutates into a study of transformation — not heroic, but pathological. His bruises and cuts become symbols of rebirth, his pain the only way to feel alive amid Tokyo’s oppressive sprawl. Tsukamoto’s editing and camerawork — all whiplash movement and oppressive close-ups — turn every punch into a scream of existential agony.

There’s also a surprising tenderness beneath the steel. Hizuru’s own evolution, from passive fiancée to self-actualising force, brings balance to the film’s masculine ferocity. Tsukamoto’s vision is never merely about brutality; it’s about connection through suffering and finding the pulse of life in the noise of decay.

Three decades later, Tokyo Fist remains a testament to Tsukamoto’s ability to merge the physical and the psychological into pure cinematic expression. It’s as vital, exhausting, and hypnotic as ever — a bruised valentine to the body under siege and the madness that lurks beneath the surface of civility.

The Prognosis:

A feral, intimate, and unforgettable piece of Japanese cyberpunk melodrama, Tokyo Fist still lands its blows with unflinching force. Tsukamoto’s vision is as vital today as it was in 1995 — both brutal and strangely beautiful.

  • Saul Muerte

Re-Animator (1985) – Mad Science, Maximum Splatter!

17 Friday Oct 2025

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“Herbert West has a very good head… on his shoulders. And another one… in a dish on his desk.”

If you haunted the horror aisle of your local video store in the 1980s, chances are you’ve seen Re-Animator glaring back at you from a lurid neon-green VHS sleeve. Released in 1985, Stuart Gordon’s cult classic is the stuff of midnight movie legend: a delirious cocktail of Lovecraft, gore, black comedy, and mad science that set a new standard for splatter cinema.

Loosely adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West—Reanimator, the story plunges into the twisted experiments of medical student Herbert West (Jeffrey Combs, in a career-defining role). West has discovered a serum capable of reanimating the dead—though what comes back is never quite what was lost. As corpses twitch, shriek, and explode back into grotesque parodies of life, West’s obsession pushes medicine, morality, and sanity to their breaking point.

What makes Re-Animator endure, 40 years later, is the sheer precision of its madness. Stuart Gordon, in his feature debut, creates a bold visual aesthetic: sterile hospital halls colliding with garish splatter, glowing syringes of radioactive-green fluid cutting through shadow, and a pace that never lets you catch your breath. It’s both theatrical and grimy, like Lovecraft dragged kicking and screaming into the grindhouse.

Then there are the performances. Jeffrey Combs doesn’t just play Herbert West—he becomes him. Clinical, arrogant, and perversely charismatic, West is one of horror’s most iconic creations, a character whose clipped delivery and maniacal focus have carved him a permanent place in the genre pantheon. Beside him, Barbara Crampton brings heart and vulnerability to Megan Halsey, grounding the film’s madness in a performance that makes her both victim and survivor. The chemistry between Combs and Crampton, along with Bruce Abbott as the conflicted Dan Cain, is the human spine of the film’s monstrous body.

And then, of course, there’s the gore. Re-Animator doesn’t just dip into blood—it wallows in it. Heads roll (literally), entrails spill, and practical effects run wild with gleeful excess. This is splatter at its peak: not just shocking, but imaginative, choreographed chaos that keeps finding new ways to disturb and delight. Gordon walks the razor’s edge between horror and comedy, and somehow, miraculously, never loses balance.

Four decades on, Re-Animator is still a head of its class. It’s soaked in Lovecraftian dread, powered by unforgettable performances, and dripping with the kind of splatter that defined an era of VHS horror. Whether you’re a first-time renter or a long-time cult devotee, Re-Animator remains that rare horror feature that shocks, entertains, and endures—an unholy hybrid of brains, blood, and black humour that refuses to die.

📼 Staff Pick!
“One of the goriest, funniest, and most unforgettable horror films of the ‘80s. Jeffrey Combs IS Herbert West. Be warned: once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it… and you won’t want to.”

  • Saul Muerte

Guts, Gears, and Gore: The Chaotic Carnage of Meatball Machine

13 Monday Oct 2025

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Japan has long specialised in splatter cinema that fuses body horror with outrageous imagination, and Yudai Yamaguchi and Jun’ichi Yamamoto’s Meatball Machine (2005) is no exception. Equal parts grotesque creature feature and tragic love story, the film delivers a heady mix of practical effects, nihilistic violence, and gooey romance—though its impact depends on one’s tolerance for viscera and chaos.

The premise is gloriously absurd: alien parasites crash-land and infect human hosts, transforming their bodies into biomechanical nightmares called NecroBorgs. Once fused, these creatures are compelled to fight each other to the death, their flesh weaponised in ever-more creative and revolting ways. At the centre of this carnage is a budding romance between two lonely misfits, whose connection endures even as they’re overtaken by the infestation.

Visually and tonally, Meatball Machine is unashamedly indebted to Shinya Tsukamoto’s Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989), trading in similar industrial grit and fetishistic body horror. But where Tetsuo is a lean, avant-garde nightmare, Meatball Machine takes a more chaotic, popcorn-splatter approach, reveling in its outrageous gore. The special effects are commendably tactile, with oozing prosthetics and clunky mechanical designs that give the film its visceral punch.

The downside is that beneath the outrageous spectacle, the narrative feels thin. The love story offers a beating heart, but it’s sketched more as a tragic afterthought than a fully developed arc. The film’s pacing often sags between its bursts of carnage, and its attempts at poignancy sometimes clash with the gleefully trashy violence.

The Prognosis:

There’s a certain charm in its refusal to play safe. In retrospect, Meatball Machine is emblematic of mid-2000s Japanese splatter cinema—a scene that thrived on pushing boundaries and daring audiences to look away. It may not have the visionary clarity of Tsukamoto’s work or the cult staying power of contemporaries like Tokyo Gore Police (2008), but it holds its own as a bizarre, bloody curiosity.

For fans of the genre, it’s a fascinating if uneven ride—part horror, part romance, all drenched in slime.

  • Saul Muerte

Fragile: A Haunted Hospital That Lacks Staying Power

13 Monday Oct 2025

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Jaume Balagueró, best known for his later work on [Rec], tried his hand at the English-language supernatural chiller with Fragile (2005), a film that blends gothic atmosphere with familiar ghost story tropes. While the set-up carries promise, the end result is a middling effort that neither reinvents the genre nor fully capitalises on its cast.

The story centres on Amy (Calista Flockhart), a nurse haunted by her own professional tragedy who takes a position at a crumbling children’s hospital on the Isle of Wight. There, she discovers the young patients live in fear of “the mechanical girl,” a spectral figure stalking the halls and punishing those who try to leave. It’s a classic haunted-hospital premise, filled with creaking corridors and flickering lights, but one that quickly leans on convention rather than innovation.

Flockhart, coming off her Ally McBeal fame, delivers a serviceable performance as the fragile yet determined Amy. However, her casting feels almost like a gimmick, as though the film relied too heavily on the novelty of seeing her in a horror context rather than developing a character with genuine depth. Richard Roxburgh, an actor capable of commanding presence, is oddly sidelined in a role that fails to give him much to do beyond lend some authority to the hospital staff.

Balagueró brings atmosphere, of course—the dilapidated hospital is a moody, effective setting, and the ghostly imagery has the right amount of menace. But unlike his Spanish-language work, which brims with urgency and invention, Fragile feels cautious, as though designed to play it safe for international audiences. The result is a film that has plenty of eerie window dressing but lacks the substance or scares.

Fragile sits as an intriguing but underwhelming waypoint in Balagueró’s career. It showcases his eye for atmosphere but not his knack for redefining horror, something he would prove just two years later with [Rec]. Flockhart’s presence gives the film a certain curio appeal, and Roxburgh’s involvement hints at what might have been, but the film itself remains a fairly standard ghost story—watchable, but not remarkable.

  • Saul Muerte

When the Devil Fell Flat: Lost Souls and the Forgotten Millennial Apocalypse

12 Sunday Oct 2025

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At the turn of the millennium, Hollywood seemed obsessed with the end of days. Films like End of Days (1999), Stigmata (1999), and The Ninth Gate (1999) all dove headfirst into Catholic mysticism, demonic prophecy, and the anxieties of a new century. Into this crowded field came Lost Souls (2000), the directorial debut of renowned cinematographer Janusz Kamiński, armed with Winona Ryder as its headliner and the promise of a brooding religious thriller. What audiences got instead was a film that quickly faded from memory.

The plot follows Maya (Ryder), a young woman convinced that Peter (Ben Chaplin), a respected New York crime journalist, is destined to become the Antichrist. Her mission is to awaken him to this truth before evil consumes him—and the world. On paper, it could have rivaled Stigmata’s heretical thrill ride or End of Days’ action spectacle. Instead, it delivered long stretches of gloom with very little pulse.

Kamiński’s cinematography skills are on full display—sepia shadows, oppressive yellows, and compositions that scream menace. Unfortunately, visuals alone can’t carry a two-hour film. The story crawls forward, recycling the same beats of Ryder’s pleading and Chaplin’s disbelief without ever building toward real urgency. Even the climactic moments arrive with a dull thud rather than the fiery damnation the premise demands.

Performances can’t salvage the material. Ryder plays her part with conviction, but the script gives her little dimension. Chaplin, saddled with a thankless role, never sells his character’s shift from skeptic to potential vessel of evil. Even veteran talents like John Hurt and Philip Baker Hall are wasted in supporting parts that add gravitas but no depth.

In the millennial apocalyptic boom, Stigmata leaned into controversy, End of Days embraced blockbuster excess, and The Ninth Gate played with ambiguity. Lost Souls aimed for a meditative, moody parable—but ended up inert, remembered mostly for its look rather than its impact.

The Prognosis:

Lost Souls stands as a relic of its time: an atmospheric curiosity drowned by the weight of its own seriousness. Where its contemporaries burned brightly (if unevenly), Lost Souls simply flickered out.

  • Saul Muerte

Silver Bullet (1985) – Full Moon, Half Thrills: A retrospective

10 Friday Oct 2025

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“It started in May. In a small town. And every month after that whenever the moon was full… it came back.”

Dig into the horror aisle at your local video store and you’ll find Silver Bullet, a werewolf yarn soaked in King mythology and slathered in small-town Americana. Directed by Daniel Attias, this 1985 adaptation of Stephen King’s novella Cycle of the Werewolf promises fur, fangs, and full moons—but only partially delivers the bite.

The sleepy town of Tarker’s Mills is rocked by a string of grisly murders. Whispers of a beast grow louder as the body count rises, and while most townsfolk hide indoors after dark, one brave boy in a souped-up motorised wheelchair dares to face the lurking horror head-on. The premise has all the makings of a great ‘80s creature feature, and with King himself penning the screenplay, the setup drips with lore and that unmistakable New England dread.

But here’s the rub: Silver Bullet is a film forever caught in the shadows. On one side, it wants to be a heartfelt coming-of-age tale, steeped in nostalgia. On the other, it reaches for werewolf horror glory. In the end, it struggles to rise above being a middle-of-the-road monster movie with more bark than bite. The creature effects—courtesy of Carlo Rambaldi—are clunky by modern eyes, and even back in ’85 they looked a little tame compared to the lycanthrope heavyweights of The Howling and An American Werewolf in London.

Still, there’s fun to be had. Corey Haim delivers a charming performance as Marty, the young hero on wheels, while Gary Busey goes full throttle as Uncle Red, equal parts lovable and unhinged. Their chemistry injects life into the otherwise plodding hunt for the beast. And that climax, when silver meets fur under the glow of the moon, has just enough punch to remind you why werewolf movies never go out of style.

Looking back four decades later, Silver Bullet is soaked in nostalgia, saturated in mythology, and baked in King. But it never quite breaks free to bask in the moonlight. It’s not the best werewolf movie of the ‘80s, not by a long shot—but for horror fans prowling the aisles in search of VHS-era chills, it’s still worth a late-night rental.

📼 Staff Pick!
“Stephen King writes it. Gary Busey chews it. A kid in a turbo wheelchair vs. a werewolf—how can you not at least take this home for the weekend?”

  • Saul Muerte

Freddie Francis and a Star-Studded Descent into Victorian Horror

03 Friday Oct 2025

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A man of medicine… A pair of murderers… An unholy alliance.

By the mid-1980s, horror was dominated by slashers and supernatural spectacles, but The Doctor and the Devils offered something older, bloodier, and more rooted in history: a reimagining of the infamous Burke and Hare murders of 19th-century Edinburgh. Directed by veteran Freddie Francis, the film promised prestige horror, boasting a glittering cast and the bones of a Dylan Thomas script. Yet, for all its pedigree, it sits uneasily between period drama and gothic horror, never fully committing to either, and settling into a curious middle ground.

The story is well-worn: two unscrupulous grave robbers—here played by Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea—strike a deal with an ambitious anatomist, Dr. Thomas Rock (Timothy Dalton), who requires a steady supply of fresh cadavers for his medical research. Initially content with digging up the dead, the pair soon realise that creating their own corpses is a far quicker route to profit. The tale’s themes of science, morality, and exploitation are timeless, yet Francis’ film struggles to give them the bite they deserve.

What elevates the material is the cast. Dalton lends Rock a stern gravitas, a man torn between his lofty ideals and the sordid means that fuel them. Rea and Pryce inject menace and pathos into their criminals, turning what could have been caricatures into unsettling portraits of greed. Add to this the likes of Patrick Stewart, Julian Sands, and Twiggy, and The Doctor and the Devils becomes a veritable parade of British talent. The performances are sharp enough to carry the film through its slower patches, giving the gothic material a theatrical weight.

For Freddie Francis, this film represents a late chapter in a long and varied career. Having cemented himself in the 1960s and ’70s as both a director of Hammer horrors (The Evil of Frankenstein, The Creeping Flesh) and as one of Britain’s most celebrated cinematographers, Francis brought to The Doctor and the Devils a painterly eye. The cobblestone streets, shadow-draped laboratories, and candlelit taverns all bear his meticulous touch. Yet, as we’ve seen across his career, Francis was often at the mercy of the scripts handed to him. Here, despite the Dylan Thomas connection, the film leans too heavily on period trappings without fully exploiting the macabre potential of its subject matter.

The Prognosis:

In retrospect, The Doctor and the Devils stands as a respectable but flawed effort—a prestige horror that never quite finds the balance between gothic chills and dramatic weight. Its star-studded credits and Francis’ steady craftsmanship make it worthwhile, even if it lacks the raw energy or daring that might have elevated it into a classic.

  • Saul Muerte

Detectives, Damnation, and Derrickson: Revisiting Hellraiser: Inferno

02 Thursday Oct 2025

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By the year 2000, the Hellraiser franchise had drifted far from its grisly, surreal origins under Clive Barker. What had once been a baroque tale of desire, pain, and cosmic horror had, by its fifth entry, morphed into something altogether more familiar: a standard-issue psychological thriller with the faintest whiff of Cenobite leather stitched across it. Scott Derrickson’s Hellraiser: Inferno epitomises this era of crowbarring unrelated stories into the franchise, taking what could have stood alone as a grim detective noir and grafting Pinhead and his puzzle box onto its framework.

The film follows Detective Joseph Thorne (Craig Sheffer), a morally compromised cop whose corruption and addictions lead him down a spiralling rabbit hole of violence, betrayal, and surreal torment. Along the way, he encounters the infamous Lament Configuration, unleashing the Cenobites. Or at least, in theory. In practice, Doug Bradley’s Pinhead barely registers, appearing only in fleeting, spectral cameos as though contractually obligated. It’s a curious bait-and-switch: marketed as a Hellraiser sequel, but functioning more as a hallucinatory morality play about guilt and punishment.

Craig Sheffer delivers a performance that is both strange and strangely compelling. His Thorne is less a hardened detective than a man visibly unraveling from frame one, his paranoia and sweaty desperation walking a fine line between over-the-top and hypnotic. His odd choices give the film its only real personality, even when the script veers into derivative territory.

For Scott Derrickson, Inferno marked his feature debut, and in hindsight, it reads like an intriguing blueprint. The seeds of his fascination with morality, spirituality, and personal damnation—later explored more successfully in The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Sinister—are all present here, though buried under the constraints of direct-to-video horror branding. His direction adds a layer of polish and atmosphere to what otherwise could have been disposable.

The Prognosis:

In the end, Hellraiser: Inferno is less a Hellraiser film than a late-night cable thriller wearing Cenobite skin. It embodies the era when Dimension Films would shoehorn iconic franchises into unrelated scripts, keeping names alive while draining them of identity. As such, it’s both frustrating and oddly fascinating—a film that feels at once forgettable and, in retrospect, a small but notable stepping stone for Derrickson.

  • Saul Muerte