Posts by Simon Powell

Assault on Precinct 13 was John Carpenter's first foray into professional filmmaking, and although today it is arguably remembered largely as an urban siege thriller and an homage to the westerns of Howard Hawks, there is also a nod to a classic horror film, as well some weird and ambiguous elements that point to the direction Carpenter was to take with his future work. (read more...)

One of the great things about horror films is the constant evolution of the genre; just when you think you've seen every possible take on a premise, somebody will come along with a new twist on an old favorite. The bare bones of the plot of House (a group of teenage girls, trapped in a creepy old mansion, being murdered one by one) may sound very familiar. However, in the hands of a first-time director with a background in both art and advertising, it becomes a chaotic and experimental piece of work that, aside from being baffling, bloody, and disturbing, is a great example of the theory of Pure Cinema. (read more...)

Freaks, Tod Browning's peek behind the curtains of a circus sideshow, was greeted with disgust and outrage on its initial release due to its unflinching portrayal of disability, as well as its gruesome ending, (and was not helped by the lurid title and marketing campaign – "Can a full grown woman truly love a MIDGET?"). MGM quickly disowned the film, letting it sink into semi-mythical obscurity, but the last 40 years or so have seen a massive upswing in both the popularity and reputation of Freaks. If you can look past its notoriety, it paints a largely compassionate picture of the title characters, and has an amazing and inflammatory message of the downtrodden and mocked violently getting one up over the beautiful people.(read more...)

Dr. Terror's House of Horrors was the first in a series of anthology films from the Amicus studio, and the one that launched them for a time to the same dizzying heights, at least at the box office, as their arch rival Hammer. But it is a film that prove Hitchcock's maxim about a film needing three things: a good script, a good script and a good script, as the poor quality of the writing is the factor that stops this from becoming a masterpiece.

Six strangers share a train carriage on a journey out of London. To pass the time, one gets out a deck of tarot cards and starts to tell the fortunes of his fellow passengers; however, all the stories end with the same card - Death...(read more...)