Directed and written by Laurence Vannicelli — he also wrote Porno — the logline for this movie is frankly horrifying: “A man’s fiancée starts behaving like his recently deceased mother, leading him to confront his deepest traumas to free her from the bewildering possession.”
Emmett (Kyle Gallner) is the man, Anya (Holland Roden) is the woman and yes indeed, things do get strange. His mother was a famous therapist and her roleplaying session therapy is supposed to get him through this, but the mindgames between man and woman end up becoming man and woman and mom and oh man, that’s a menage a trois no one wants no matter what the Pornhub paradigm tells you.
If you looked at the woman you loved and she started smoking and dressing like your mom, would you stay? Doesn’t every man want to marry his mother? Well, maybe in theory. But is the solution to this story supernatural or just mental manipulation? Maybe heading back home and settling affairs isn’t really the best of ideas, but I say that with every horror movie, because going back home and being confronted by the loss of a parent is a harrowing thing so I can see why so many movies touch on it. This one does it right, does it strange and ends up being more than memorable.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on September 6, 2020. It returns thanks to a Kino Lorber blu ray reissue, featuring a 2012 2K restoration, new audio commentary by novelist/critic Kim Newman and writer/editor Stephen Jones and the trailer. You can get it from Kino Lorber.
When you mention 1960’s British horror films, most people are going to think of Hammer. Or Amicus. But there’s also Tigon, the very small studio who could, and by could, I mean make some astoundingly strange movies.
Vernon Sewell directed this thriller about young and good looking men having their throats torn open and drained by a killer so frightening that whomever it is has driven the last eyewitness mad, claiming that a horrible winged creature with huge eyes is the killer.
Detective Inspector Quennell (Peter Cushing) responds by thinking that a giant eagle — no, not the Pittsburgh-based grocery store — has to be the murderer.
If this development has you happy, then good news. This is the kind of stiff upper lip British low budget fun you’re looking for. Yes, I struggled to include this in either the werewolf or vampire weeks we’re planning because it features a weremoth who lives on human blood. A weremoth! What will they think of next!?!
Cushing considered this the worst of his many films. Scanning his vast resume should tell you just how low this must be, but he was acting in as many films as he could to pay for the care of his wife Helene, who was suffering from emphysema. She would die four years later and by all accounts, he never recovered.
This played on double bills with the 1962 Italian film Slaughter of the Vampires.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Welcome to the first of this month’s Mill Creek box set articles. Up first — Luigi Cozzi’s Alien Contamination! This was first on the site on August 27, 2018.
As a large ship drifts into New York City, you may wonder, “Am I watching Zombi?” No, you’re watching Contamination or Alien Contamination, but the similarities may be international. Both films shared the same production offices and director Luigi Cozzi (Starcrash, Hercules) was so impressed that he wanted to hire the same cast, but only ended up with Ian McCulloch.
The ship is packed with large containers of coffee, which really hide green eggs that pulsate and make droning sounds. The crew of the ship is more than just dead. They’re in pieces and the rescue team soon discovers why. The eggs tend to explode, spraying acid all over the place that’s toxic to anything human. As soon as it touches them, they explode in glorious slow motion bursts of red food color and Karo syrup.
The military soon links the green eggs with a recent mission to Mars that caused one astronaut to disappear and the other, Commander Hubbard (there’s Ian McCulloch!) to become a drunk. He joins Colonel Stella Holmes and New York cop Tony Aris (Marino Masé, The Red Queen Kills Seven Times) on the case, which takes them all the way to a Columbian coffee plantation (well, the movie was funded by Columbia cocaine dealers) and Hubbard’s old partner, who is now in the thrall of a gigantic alien cyclops (!).
Originally intended as a straight sequel to Alien, this movie enters James Bond territory at times and is not afraid — at all — to wipe out characters left and right. It also has a scene where a green egg menaces a girl in the shower, which should be frightening yet comes off as hilarious. That said, this has a loud Goblin soundtrack that makes this seem like a much better movie than it is.
But hey — who can hate a movie with dialogue like this?
NYPD Lt. Tony Aris: Jesus Christ, the whole world is going to be wiped out and all this broad’s worried about is getting changed!
Colonel Stella Holmes: Listen, Aris, if I have to die with the rest of the world then I want to have a proper dress on and clean underwear.
That’s better than the first few minutes of the film, where almost the entire dialogue is muffled. But hey — you can either choose great dialogue or awesome gore. Guess which one you get here?
Want to see it for yourself? Shudder and Amazon Prime both have this streaming and you can get the Arrow blu ray at Diabolik DVD. You can also watch Contamination with commentary from Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder.
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