Fantastic Fest 2024 Review: MADS, Wide-Eyed Descent Into Apocalypse
One of my favorite films of Fantastic Fest 2024 was this taut piece of single-take cinema from France. An already high teen visits his dealer hoping to score the latest designer drug. But before he can get to the ,...
Fantastic Fest 2024 Interview: FRANKIE FREAKO Director Steve Kostanski
I should start by saying I’m a Steve Kostanski stan. Does that make me a Kost-FAN-ski? In any event, his name on a project automatically elevates my interest. This is especially true when he’s in the director's chair. Manborg (2011),...
Fantastic Fest 2024 Review: DADDY'S HEAD Is a Dangerous Place
Friends who express curiosity about my love for horror films are often surprised to hear that, beyond the thrills and chills they provide, I also find them comforting. There are the obvious childhood associations born of discovering them when I...
Fantastic Fest 2024 Review: WHAT HAPPENED TO DOROTHY BELL? It Will Happen to Everyone
As found footage has firmly established itself as a genre, its foothold on the public imagination (and on that of filmmakers) bears scrutiny. The excellent documentary The Found Footage Phenomena (2021) and books such as Found Footage Horror Films by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas...
ENTER THE CLONES OF BRUCE Video Interview: Severin's David Gregory Talks the History of Bruceploitation
I've been blessed to have several conversations with Severin founder David Gregory over the years. He always leaves me feeling that the history of horror and exploitation film is in good hands. It would be enough if he were simply...
Fantastic Fest 2023 Preview: Too Many Great Flicks to Count
Leaves are falling and there's a mild chill in the air. It's Fall Fest Season and that means Fantastic Fest! It's a big year for new genre flicks and some of the best will be playing in Austin from September...
Kino Lorber End of Year: Best of 2022
Looking back on the physical releases sent to me for review over the past year is a good personal reminder about the importance of physical media. True, I stream a great deal. Still, it seems far more cost effective to...
Screen Anarchy Holiday Gift Guide: Mondo and Creepy Co.
Need some last minute gift ideas? Normally I do videos for our gift guides but the carousel of images below will work just fine. I've got a little bit of everything here from two great companies, Mondo and Creepy Co....
Screen Anarchy Holiday Gift Guide: Apparel from JCRT and Creepy Co.
I found some wonderful geeky gear from JCRT and Creepy Co. that make great, last-minute gifts for friends and family. JCRT makes their own clothes to order and first made a splash with horror fans with their bright colored Universal...
DASH Exclusive Clip: How Much is Too Much?
Dash isn’t the first movie to take place in a ride share but it is one of the best. Featuring a protagonist ripe to reap the rewards of countless bad decisions the film is more than content to let him...
Review: THE MENU Expertly Balances Humor and Horror
Hungry for social satire? The Menu is pretty palatable. It follows other recent films pitting the rich against the poor: Ready or Not (2019), The Platform (2019), and Triangle of Sadness (2022) are three examples that do it well. If...
Review: THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN, Of Friendship, Life and Death
I went into The Banshees of Inisherin expecting something special. The last time writer/director Martin McDonagh worked with Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson resulted in In Bruges (2008), by far McDonagh's best film. The Banshess of Inisherin proved to be...
Fantastic Fest 2022 Review: SMILE Opens Wide
Writer/director Parker Finn had me asking one question prior to my viewing of Smile: Would the film simply coast on a creepy visual gimmick or, like It Follows (2016), take that idea and do something genuinely unnerving with it? Things...
Review: HOUSE OF DARKNESS, A Tempting Place To Hide
The eyes can grow accustomed to the dark. Still, the central theme of House of Darkness will become visible to most viewers too soon. Maybe that’s because while director Neil Labute tries to infuse a sense of mystery into...
Blu-ray Review: NIGHT GALLERY (SEASON 2), Pure Horror, Staggering Quality
I won’t quibble. Yes, we live in a golden age of horror television. There are so many horror series available for streaming, you’d drown in special effects blood long before you were able to binge watch them all. So maybe...
Blu-ray Reviews: Kino Unleashes Killer ANTS!, Killer Bees in TERROR OUT OF THE SKY, Killer Spiders in TARANTULAS THE DEADLY CARGO
A trio of new physical releases from Kino have got me thinking about a lot of things. First, what a shame it is that more titles from the golden age of made for TV movies haven’t seen release on...
Blu-ray Review: YELLOWBRICKROAD, Still An Unsettling Journey in the Woods
Celebrating it’s tenth anniversary is YellowBrickRoad (2010), a decidedly surreal horror with an experimental approach to it’s dread soaked aesthetic that in co-director Andy Mitton’s words resulted in “either full on death threats or love letters” from audiences. Looking back...
Review: HE'S WATCHING, Stark Reminder of How Powerful Found Footage Can Be
Economic and production restraints on filmmakers have been hell for a while now. But it has made for some really interesting horror cinema. Hosts (2020) and We're All Going to the World's Fair (2021) are among my favorite recent films....
Review: SHE WILL, More Than a Revenge Horror Fable
She did. That is, Charlotte Colbert did. She’s one of a few first-time directors who turned in great movies at Fantastic Fest in 2021. What seemed like it may be a grim and broody revenge horror fable becomes… something...
Tribeca 2022 Review: FAMILY DINNER Serves Up Grim Lessons
Pia Hierzegger, Michael Pink and Nina Katlein star in director Peter Hengl's horror film from Austria. Read the review; watch the trailer.
