Noticias

Radiance Films is set to revive two of Harry Kümel’s most provocative works in sparkling new 4K restorations at FrightFest 2025 this August. The Belgian visionary behind Daughters of Darkness and Malpertuis will be on hand in London’s Leicester Square for a Q&a following the UK premieres of both films. Daughters of Darkness will unfurl its decadent horrors on Saturday 23 August, while the surreal terror of Malpertuis follows on Sunday 24 August.

Daughters of Darkness (1971) stands as a landmark of European vampire cinema. Newlyweds Stefan and Valerie arrive at a deserted seaside hotel only to fall under the thrall of Countess Bathory and her enigmatic companion. Delphine Seyrig, in a mesmerising turn as the blood countess, leads an intoxicating cast that includes John Karlen and Danielle Ouimet. The restoration, overseen by Kümel himself, restores every candlelit corridor and silken shadow to its full moody splendour. The forthcoming Limited Edition...

No jokes about fish and visitors please — Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s horror fantasy musical is indeed about delectable creatures from the deep, but these particular mythical misses have their own agenda, and woe to the man who trifles with their affections. What’s today’s catch? A Polish phantasmagoria seemingly teleported from the glitzy 1980s.

The Lure

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 896

2015 / Color / 2:39 widescreen / 92 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 10, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Kinga Preis, Michalina Olszańska, Marta Mazurek, Jakub Gierszał, Andrzej Konopka, Zygmunt Malanowicz, Marcin Kowalczyk.

Cinematography: Kuba Kijowski

Film Editor: Jarosław Kamiński

Production Design: Joanna Macha

Costume: Katarzyna Lewińska

Special Effects makeup: Tomasz Matraszek

Choreography: Kaya Kołodziejczyk and Jarosław Staniek

Original Music and Lyrics: Barbara Wrońska and Zuzanna Wrońska

Written by Robert Bolesto

Produced by Włodzimierz Niderhaus

Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska

I’m normally an easy mark for bizarre genre-bending horror fare. I also like musicals of all sorts,...

Exclusive: Director revisiting his 70s cult horror.

Harry Kümel’s cult classic Daughters Of Darkness (1971) was one of the cult lesbian vampire films of the 1970s.

Now, more than 40 years later, Kümel is revamping and plotting a sequel.

Details of the new feature, Mothers Of Darkness, were revealed by producer Tomas Leyers of Brussels-based Minds Meet, the art-house company best known for such titles as Little Baby Jesus Flandr and Lost Persons Area.

“He (Kümel) came to me with several projects. I read all of them and one of them was the first draft of the script for Mothers Of Darkness… it sparked the fire immediately to work on this project,” Leyers said.

A new version of the script is now finished and the filmmakers are talking to international cast for the English-language project, which is slated to shoot in the summer of 2018.

“It’s the world of Harry, of course, gorgeous women and...

Savant UK correspondent Lee Broughton analyzes one of his favorite pictures starring Stacy Keach, who seemed to make only cult items in the '70s and '80s. William Peter Blatty dishes out a thick mix of comedy and dark soul-searching about the human condition as a Caligari- insane asylum, but with new twists. The Ninth Configuration Second Sight Region B Blu-ray 1980 / Colour / 2.35:1 enhanced widescreen / 118 m. / available through Amazon.uk Starring Stacy Keach, Scott Wilson, Jason Miller, Ed Flanders, Neville Brand, George Dicenzo, Moses Gunn, Robert Loggia, Joe Spinell, Tom Atkins. Cinematography Gerry Fisher Production Design William Malley Film Editors Peter Taylor, T. Battle Davis, Roberto Silvi, Peter Lee-Thompson Original Music Barry DeVorzon Written, Produced and Directed by William Peter Blatty from his novel

Reviewed by Lee Broughton

(Note: Savant reviews as a guest at Tfh. Here I stretch my prerogatives by presenting a review from Lee Broughton, a valued U.

An amateur psychic investigator once told a friend of mine that the way to access the other dimensions around this one was to meditate upon the works of Lewis Carroll, Aleister Crowley, or the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Or to drink a lot of whisky and smoke a lot of dope.And it's a well-attested fact that hanging around people who are drunk or high can make you feel drunk or high too, even if you're abstinent.So it follows that the boundaries between this world and the mysterious others underlying it must have been considerably thinner in the seventies, since so many people were so messed up on assorted chemicals and herbs, and so many of them were reading the right kind of material, and the rest of the populace had to hang out with those weirdos.The Coming of Joachim Stiller (De komst van Joachim Stiller, 1976) was made...

Cinema's Architects Of The Uncanny, London

Artist Pablo Bronstein has taken over the Ica and temporarily remodelled it to disorienting effect, but you'll find no refuge in the cinema. Instead, you'll get a selection of great artists who've achieved similarly surreal architectural effects on celluloid. The weirdest ones seem to last the longest. Buñuel mischievously swapped dining rooms and lavatories for The Phantom Of Liberty's infamous dinner party, and prevented guests from leaving another one in The Exterminating Angel. There are spooky houses exerting sinister influences in the likes of Dario Argento's Inferno, Rivette's Celine And Julie Go Boating and Orson Welles-led oddity Malpertuis. In Repulsion, all Roman Polanski needed was a London apartment and Catherine Deneuve.

Ica Cinema, SE1, Wed to 30 Jun

Ray Davies, London

You can hear the Kinks on screen in everything from Hot Fuzz to Juno, but how many have seen Ray Davies's acting?...