Alter Monrepos (Amélie Daure and Anne-Sophie Charron) has an IV dripping blue liquid into her body, lying on a medical table. Or maybe she’s throwing up. Or is she in hypnotherapy with the cave-dwelling Léandro Lecreulx (Stefano Cassetti)? She could also be hooking up with gas station attendant Chris (director and writer Aurélia Mengin) or El Gringo (Emmanuel Bonami). At least she’s taking photos of everything that happens to her, so that she can show them in therapy and determine what makes her anxious — red — or safe — blue — and then learn what is real. And oh yeah — deal with her mother Rosy (Patricia Barzyk) and get past self-harm and embrace living.

This movie’s PR describes it as “Mario Bava meets David Lynch” but this goes further and better and deeper than that. It’s a world of neon that it stalks through, of desire and despair, of long-buried secrets, of the meanings of colors and a place where it can just all come to a stop so two metallic flaked lovers can grind together while loud mechanical shrill shouts pierce the soundtrack. To compare Mengin’s work to any other creative is a disservice. Here, she announces herself as a bold new voice that will only grow in power and command with each new work. This is not a movie that makes sense and therefore, it makes complete and utter sense. Magical and the note to her father at the end, referring to him as her partner in surrealism, made me wistful.

I watched Scarlet Blue at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

This film comes direct from Justin and Dominic Hardy, two of the eight children of the director of The Wicker Man, Robin Hardy. For years, they’ve said that this movie destroyed their family, but now, they have decided to follow the path of the film and how it was made along with director Chris Nunn and a crew. More than trying to understand how their father made a classic movie, suffered as it was unseen and took it through America where it became a cult film that finally spread back to the UK, only to see writer Anthony Schaffer take most of the credit, this is also about how Hardy had eight children to six women and how the many children have grown together and know one another better than they ever did their father. Now, they try to discover why he could so casually abandon them, obsessed with a film that seemed to go nowhere for so long.

At one point, Hardy believed that he was going to die, so he wrote all of his family letters to be read in the future. Those letters were found in his papers and went unopened until this film. It’s both a funny and sad moment when they are revealed. The true joy is seeing as how Justin and Dominic support one another through this draining experience.

This is less about the behind the scenes experience of the making of the film, which isn’t the story it should tell. That story, of the lives behind its creation, is told quite admirably.

I watched Children of the Wicker Man at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Last year, Hadley Briggs (Emma Reinagel) barely survived Halloween when her ex-boyfriend went on a killing spree. He’s been in a mental ward since then, but as her hometown prepares for both the holiday and its 300th birthday, the killings have started all over again, just days after she attempts to return to school.

This is the kind of town that doesn’t just create urban legends and brutal crimes, but also gives birth to characters that each seem like they could be the killer, even Hadley, as she has some secrets that she’s kept since she was stabbed one year ago. When a body shows up with “Happy Halloween” carved in his chest — and photos are sent to Hadley and all of her friends, like best friend Peyton (Aline O’Neill) and quarterback love interest Kagan (Graham Weldin) — this gets tense almost immediately.

Director and writer Brittney Greer recognizes the debt that all slashers owe to Halloween and that all slashers made after 1996 owe to Scream. As the killer continues to decorate the town with the body parts of his or her victims, the one thing that comes to the fore is that Greer is able to authentically translate the very human voices and feelings of her teen characters.

I watched Happy Halloween at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Upon watching this again for the first time in probably thirty years, I was struck by how European the movie feels. Perhaps it’s the color tones throughout, suggesting the patina of Italian horror cinema (both Fulci and Craven cite surrealist filmmaker Luis Buñuel as an influence). It could also be John Saxon having lead billing. Or just that it doesn’t feel like any horror cinema that was currently being made in the United States.

The real villain of this piece is not Freddy Krueger — more on him in a bit — but the parents of Elm Street who have allowed secrets and their assumed authority over their children to do unspeakable and unspoken things. All of them are haunted by it, divorced, depressed and self-medicating with over-dedication to their jobs or their addictions.

There are stories that David Warner was originally going to play Freddy, but that’s been disproven. After plenty of actors tried out and failed to win the part, it went to Robert Englund, who darkened his eyes and acted like Klaus Kinski (!) to get the part.

The other feeling I have about this movie is that it owes a major debt — as all horror movies post 1978 do –to John Carpenter’s Halloween. Much like that film, the true horror happens within the foliage of the suburbs, with shadow people showing up and disappearing. Much of the action on the final night happens within two houses. One of the main characters has the ultimate authority figure, a policeman, for a father. And the cinematography by Jacques Haitkin glides near the characters and around them, much like the Steadicam shots that start Carpenter’s film.

The film starts with Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss, who puts the events of Better Off Dead into motion by breaking up with Lloyd Dobler) waking up from a nightmare where a disfigured man chases her with a bladed glove. I loved the way this scene looks, as you could almost consider Freddy off-brand here, as his arms grow comedically long and he moves way faster than he would in the rest of the series. Yet by keeping him in the shadows, he’s absolutely terrifying.

When Tina awakens, her nightgown has been slashed and she’s afraid to go to sleep again. She learns that her friends, Nancy (Heather Langenkamp, who left Stamford University to be in this), Glen (introducing Johnny Depp) and Rod (Jsu Garcia, credited as Nicki Corri) have all been having the same dream. To console Tina, they all stay at her parent’s house overnight. But when Tina falls asleep, Krueger is waiting. Rod awakes to find Tina flying all over the room and up the walls — an astounding effects sequence in the pre-CGI era — and he flees the scene after her death.

Soon, Rod is arrested by Lieutenant Don Thompson (Saxon), Nancy’s father. Freddy now starts pursuing her, chasing her as she falls asleep in class (look for Lin Shaye as the teacher) and later in the bathtub, as his claw raises like a demented and deadly phallus between her thighs. Rod tells her how Tina dies and now she knows that the same killer is definitely after her (Garcia’s watery eyes and lack of focus made Langenkamp think he was acting his heart out; the truth is he was high on heroin for real in this scene). She tries to find the killer, with Glen watching over her, but he’s a lout and easily falls asleep. Only the alarm clock saves her, but no one can save Rod, who is hung in his sleep while rotting in a jail cell.

Nancy’s mom Marge (Ronee Blakley, who was married to Wim Wenders, sang backup on Dylan’s song “Hurricane” and is also in Altman’s Nashville) takes her to a sleep clinic, where Dr. King (Charles Fleischer, Roger Rabbit’s voice) tries to figure out her nightmares. She emerges from a dream holding Freddy’s hat to her mother’s horror. Soon, she reveals to her daughter that the parents of Elm Street got revenge on Freddy Krueger, a child murderer after a judge let him go on a technicality. In a deleted scene, we also learn that Nancy and her friends all lost a brother or sister that they never knew about.

While Nancy is barred up in her house by new security measures, Glen’s parents won’t allow him to see her. Soon, he’s asleep and is transformed into an overwhelming fountain of blood. Nancy falls asleep after asking her father to come in twenty minutes. He doesn’t listen and she pulls Freddy into our world. On the run, she screams for help until her father finally comes to her aid, just in time to watch a burning Freddy kill his ex-wife and them both disappear.

This is an incredibly complex stunt where Freddy is set ablaze, chases Nancy up the stairs, falls back down and runs back up — all in one take! At the time, it was the most elaborate fire stunt ever filmed and won Anthony Cecere an award for the best stunt of the year.

Nancy then realizes that if she doesn’t believe in Freddy, he can’t hurt her. She wakes up and every single one of her friends is still alive, ready to go to school. As the convertible hood opens up in the colors of the killer’s sweater, she realizes that she’s still trapped by Freddy, who drags her mother through a window.

In Craven’s original script, the movie simply ended on a happy note. Producer Robert Shaye wanted the twist ending so that the door was open for a sequel, something Craven had no interest in. Four different endings were filmed: Craven’s happy ending, Shaye’s ending where Freddy wins and two compromises between their ideas.

I watched A Nightmare On Elm Street at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Released in the U.S. as Mortal Combat and The Return of the 5 Deadly Venoms, this is the story of how Chu Twin and his son Chu Cho Chang have started a reign of terror. It all begins when Chu Twin returns home to find his wife murdered and his son critically injured, with his arms amputated from the elbows down. Making him iron arms and training him in kung fu, the two find that revenge is not enough and now they have become the villains, crippling four men who get in their way.

The town’s blacksmith is forced to drink a burning liquid that takes his voice whole a ear clap from Chu Twin makes him deaf as well. A travelling salesman is blinded by Chu Cho Chang and another has his legs torn off just for bumping into Chu Cho Chang. When kung fu Yuan Yi, he attempts to make the evil doers pay for this damage, but instead finds his head crushed inside a vice, reducing his intelligence to that of an idiot.

As they escape to the temple of Yuan Yi’s master, they each find ways to use their injuries to their advantage, with the blacksmith increasing his vision, the salesman being able to hear a leaf hit the ground and the legless man gains iron legs and feet. As for Yuan Yi, he now sees fighting as a child’s game, happily laughing even in the face of death.

The four men return on Chu Twin’s 45th birthday and exact their revenge, battling a series of kung fu experts before challenging the evil master and his iron fisted son.

Four of the Venoms — Kuo Chui, Lu Feng, Sun Chien and Lo Meng — show up in this film and it’s quite literally a living and breathing cartoon. Movies like this are why you seek out the films of Shaw Brothers and director Chang Cheh.

Shimmy shimmy ya, indeed. If there’s one thing Hong Kong movies have in store, it’s always plenty of sequels. And yet, we welcome those here with open arms.

Directed by Lau Kar-leung, this is the spiritual second film in a trilogy. Unlike the first and last movie in said triad, Gordon Liu does not play San Te, but instead an imposter monk Chu Jen-chieh, who just so happens to look like the master of the 36th chamber.

After using his likeness to the famed warrior to help his friends — a scheme that doesn’t last all that long — Jen-chieh runs to the temple, where he’s soon kicked out. Only when he meets San Te is he given the opportunity to build scaffolds all around the temple and renovate the entire complex.

From high above the school, Jen-Chieh is able to watch all of the forms of the monks. Finally, when asked to dismantle his work, he rebels and runs through the chambers with ease. That’s because he changed his work to practice each of the forms, which was exactly the plan of the smiling San Te.

In spite of himself, our hero has become an expert at kung fu. Another lesson from San Te. Jen-Chieh saves his village and continues his training.

Directed by Alice Maio Mackay (T-Blockers, Bad Girl Boogey, So Vam), who co-wrote the story with Benjamin Pahl Robinson, this film follows Lola (Jeremy Moineau), who returns home of Purdan for the holidays. It’s the first time she’s been back since she transitioned and the town may seem like it’s changed, but it’s also filled with secrets, like a killer known as the Toy Maker.

Lola is also an investigator and true crime podcaster, so when the murders hit a bit close to home, she’s on the case. Like all of Mackay’s movies, this has more LGBTQ+ representation than pretty much every mainstream movie this year put together. Also: who knew that Australian Christmas was in the summer?

I love that her town has changed to the point that her sister Danielle (Dominique Booth) is proud to take her out, that a former teacher is now a drag queen who runs a queer bar, that Lola is so capable and that this has a neon look that’s helped by taunt editing by Vera Drew (The People’s Joker’s). It’s just 70 minutes long and in that time, it tells a complete story, has a fair bit of red herrings and ends with a killer that makes sense.

Mackay is barely out of the teens and has made six movies already. Each has improved and grown more confident, making each film festival where I encounter one a joy. We can always use more seasonal slashers, sure, but we definitely need more filmmakers doing the work and expanding consciousness like Mackay.

I watched Carnage for Christmas at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.

Directed by Louisa Warren and written by Harry Boxley, Cinderella’s Curse starts with a woman named Phil (Sarah T. Cohen) asking her husband Jacob (Sam Byrne) not to kill her. He opens a book that he has taken from her, as the pages animate into existence, and Terrortures show up to serve him. This leads us to Cinderella (Kelly Rian Sanson), who serves as a slave to her stepmother Lady Dyer (Danielle Scott) and stepsisters Ingrid (Lauren Budd) and Hannah (Natasha Tosini).

This stepfamily is somehow worse than the fairy tales that inspired this movie, as they torture and kill another maid, Anja (Helen Fullerton), and force Cinderella to bury the body. She soon finds the magic book and uses it to bring her fairy godmother (Chrissie Wunna) to her, but again, unlike what Disney or any other storyteller would do with this tale, she has no flesh and her offer of help comes with a price.

The creators of this movie have told fairy tales before — Tooth Fairy, Return of Punch and Judy, Jack and Jill 3 — and that may be because they’re shocking in the way the same company’s Winnie the Pooh slashers are — Warren acted in one of those — and also material you don’t need to pay to film.

The biggest difference in this story is that the stepsisters have been in a throuple with Prince Levin (Sam Barrett) and they are luring Cinderella to the dance to torture and kill her. But this movie decides to rip off Carrie along the way and those glass slippers get used as weapons.

This is trash but you know, sometimes that can be enjoyable. I’m sure the filmmakers want you to know that these fairy tales started off quite bloody, but then again, they didn’t have wanna-be cenobites in them.

I watched Cinderella’s Curse at Pigeon Share FrightFest. It’s the UK’s best, brightest, and largest independent international thriller, fantasy, and horror film festival and has three major events each year in London and Glasgow. Learn more at the official site.