Herbert West's reagent - a glowing green liquid in an unbreakable plastic vial. Instructions for use: inject directly into the brain of a recently deceased specimen. Intended result: re-animation of the specimen to full life. Possible side effects: erratic heartbeat, chronic internal pain, exploding eyeballs, homicidal psychosis, and fun fun fun.

Stuart Gordon's first feature film (after years as a director of experimental theater) is a brilliant tour-de-farce of gut-busting laughs and plain old gut-busting. The key is that the completely far-fetched story is told with such brazen confidence that you never question how a decapitated head can hold a conversation without lungs.(read more...)

Three cheers for another Hammer horror film that moves slower than lymph from a decapitated torso! (Er… I HEARD it moves slow. Yeah, that’s it). Despite one of Peter Cushing’s more spectacular performances for Hammer, Frankenstein Creates Woman needs a viewer who has a lot of patience. Perhaps someone who chooses to watch Dance with Wolves in slow motion. Someone not like me.(read more...)

Judged on plot alone, Nakata Hideo’s Ring ought to be pretty tame. Indeed, this uniquely compelling cinematic work often comes across, on first description of the story, as a piece of over-the-top Japanese kitsch. The story of a cursed videotape that kills the viewer within seven days ought not to be this scary. Yet it has chilled and awed mainstream Western audiences, and almost single-handedly brought about our current obsession with Japanese horror. Arguably, it has paved the way to mainstream success in the West for the likes of Takashi Miike and others. The point is that the art of terror revolves around context. That old campfire chestnut in which a ghost hunts down the liver stolen by a schoolboy from his now uninhabited corpse looks ridiculous on paper.(read more...)