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DRagonSTUDIOS proudly presents Driller Killer 2, A bold new sequel to the 1979 cult horror classic now on pre-launched on Cinebacker. Driller Killer 2 Starring Eric Roberts & Beverly Randolph and featuring Hollywood legend Denzil Washington with music from Kid Creole & The Coconuts. Decades after the original Driller Killer murders, crime journalist Jayne Goodman [...]

The post Driller Killer 2 Starring Eric Roberts & Beverly Randolph and featuring Hollywood legend Denzil Washington first appeared on Horror Screams Video Vault - Supporting Independent Horror.

DRagonSTUDIOS proudly presents Driller Killer 2, A bold new sequel to the 1979 cult horror classic now on pre-launched on Cinebacker.

Driller Killer 2 Starring Eric Roberts & Beverly Randolph and featuring Hollywood legend Denzil Washington with music from Kid Creole & The Coconuts.

Decades after the original Driller Killer murders, crime journalist Jayne Goodman investigates a new spree of killings from behind her screen. But when the original killer’s twisted artwork reveals hidden messages to the murderer, Jayne is pulled into a psychological game of art, madness, and murder.

Developed, produced, and fully copyrighted and trademarked by DRagonSTUDIOS. All rights reserved.

Driller Killer 2 Cinebacker

https://cinebacker.com/pre-launch/driller-killer-2/

The post Driller Killer 2 Starring Eric Roberts & Beverly Randolph and featuring Hollywood legend Denzil Washington appeared first on Horror Asylum.

DRagonSTUDIOS proudly presents Driller Killer 2, A bold new sequel to the 1979 cult horror classic now on pre-launched on Cinebacker. Driller Killer 2 Starring Eric Roberts & Beverly Randolph and featuring Hollywood legend Denzil Washington with music from Kid Creole & The Coconuts. Decades after the original Driller Killer murders, crime journalist Jayne Goodman …

The post Driller Killer 2 Starring Eric Roberts & Beverly Randolph and featuring Hollywood legend Denzil Washington appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

Abracadabra new Independent streaming platform launches featuring horror, fantasy, and science fiction. There are some incredible films on Abracadabra including 3 on a Match, Avenger, Bigfoot!, Driller Killer, Pirates of the Airwaves, Return of the Kung Fu Dragon, Satans Cheerleaders, Sword and The Dragon, Vault 13 Anthology, Vixens of Virtue, Vixens of Virtue 2, You [...]

The post Abracadabra Launches – Independent Streaming Movie Magic first appeared on Horror Screams Video Vault - Supporting Independent Horror.

Abracadabra new Independent streaming platform launches featuring horror, fantasy, and science fiction. There are some incredible films on Abracadabra including 3 on a Match, Avenger, Bigfoot!, Driller Killer, Pirates of the Airwaves, Return of the Kung Fu Dragon, Satans Cheerleaders, Sword and The Dragon, Vault 13 Anthology, Vixens of Virtue, Vixens of Virtue 2, You …

The post Abracadabra Launches – Independent Streaming Movie Magic appeared first on Horror News | Hnn.

The latest horror movie to put a gory twist on beloved pop culture icon Popeye is Shiver Me Timbers, and director Paul Mann’s bloody slasher is Now Available on digital at home.

Blending classic slasher thrills with off-the-wall comedy, Shiver Me Timbers pays homage to 1980s horror classics while bringing Popeye into “his most terrifying adventure yet.”

Here’s the synopsis: “In Northern California during the summer of 1986, Olive Oyl, along with her cinema- obsessed friends and brother Castor, embark on a once-in-a-lifetime camping trip to witness the dazzling meteor shower accompanying the arrival of Halley’s comet. But what starts as a serene evening of stargazing quickly turns into a harrowing nightmare when a meteor from the comet transforms Popeye, into a terrifying and unstoppable killing machine.”

With Shiver Me Timbers now available from all major VOD retailers, Bloody Disgusting caught up with Paul Mann to talk about...

The BBC’s new comedy drama Video Nasty is a wonderfully nostalgic ode to an era of banned horror on VHS. Here’s our episode 1 review.

Remember the good old days of strolling into a video store and spending at least an hour picking a film? Or getting your big brother or an older friend to rent one of the classic horror films for you before you were old enough to do it yourself? It’s an era I often look back on and miss. Browsing on Netflix just isn’t the same, but BBC’s new 6-part comedy horror series Video Nasty lets us relive those good old days, with a side of murder mystery.

As you likely already know, several horror films – most of them brilliantly deranged and gory – were banned and/or branded as a video nasty in the 1980s in the UK. Naturally, illegal copies of...

There are some stories in the history of film that end up being repeated over and over again. Some of these are just simple categories like vampire, werewolf, and zombie films. Some of them get a little more granular and specific like the story of Dracula or Frankenstein’s monster. Finally, we can get even more granular and look at a specific title that has made the rounds a few times. I Am Legend by the wonderful and prolific Richard Matheson was made into three different movies with Last Man on Earth, The Omega Man, and finally I Am Legend. While King Kong and Phantom of the Opera probably have the most, Invasion of the Body Snatchers has the most consistent offerings. The 2007 iteration was a bust but the other 3 are all incredibly solid. With the 90s version turning 30 we thought it was worth seeing if it was a generic...

The saga of writer-director Damien Leone’s signature horror character Art the Clown began with The 9th Circle, a 2008 short which was recycled with other mini-movies (including a 2011 first draft of Terrifier) into a 2013 anthology film, All Hallows’ Eve. David Howard Thornton didn’t take over the role of the clown until the breakout feature version of Terrifier (2016). His exceptionally committed evil mime performance — imagine Harpo Marx possessed by the Driller Killer — remains the centrepiece of an ongoing series which shows no signs of winding down.

Thornton’s Art — a deceptively simple black-and-white clown costume and make-up, complete with silly miniature hat and rotten-tooth grin — stands out as perhaps the most hateful franchise fiend in contemporary horror, mocking victims as he rips them to gory chunks and taking the time to add petty humiliations like slaps to the back of the head to the grosser, gut-exposing atrocities which are his stock-in-trade.

Aaron Schimberg programmed a film series at the Brooklyn Academy of Music that he was hardly able to see. “The whole reason I programmed them in 35 [millimeter] is so that I could go see it,” he laughs. But instead of watching Opening Night or The Elephant Man or The Driller Killer,...

Timothée Chalamet’s ping pong movie is adding a few more players.

Odessa A’zion has joined the cast of “Marty Supreme,” from A24 and director Josh Safdie. Rounding out the cast are magician Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller), investor and “Shark Tank” personality Kevin O’Leary (aka Mr. Wonderful) and “Bad Lieutenant” filmmaker Abel Ferrara.

Specifics about their roles are kept under wraps, but this motley crew joins previously announced cast members Gwyneth Paltrow and Tyler, the Creator in the film, which is said to be about a professional table tennis player. Plot details are unknown, but A24 posted an image of a ping pong ball with the words “coming soon” after Variety broke news of the project in July.

Safdie and Ronald Bronstein wrote the original screenplay for “Marty Supreme” and produce alongside Eli Bush, Anthony Katagas, Chalamet and A24. Production kicks off in the fall.

A’zion’s...

The year that brought us the classic Alien also gave us dozens of other horror movies – some great, others less so. We head back to 1979:

“The horror… the horror,” a shadowy Marlon Brando intoned in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, finally released in 1979 after an infamously protracted shoot. Brando’s Colonel Kurtz was referring to the haunting fallout from the Vietnam war in those final, whispered words, but he could just as well have been reading off a newspaper listing of the numerous genre movies released that year.

Among 1979’s biggest hits was, of course, Alien, Ridley Scott’s prowling space horror that elevated its monster-on-a-ship premise into something unforgettably visceral and disturbing. So disturbing that it launched a franchise that is still going 45 years later; as these words are being typed, Fede Alvarez’s sidequel Alien: Romulus is about to hatch in cinemas.

Alien was a huge hit for 20th Century Fox,...

Exclusive: Alongside prepping to shoot his next feature, veteran filmmaker Abel Ferrara is working on a book, he tells Deadline. Entitled Scene, Ferrara doesn’t categorize it exactly as a memoir, saying, “I’m trying to focus it more on the people that I’ve met and all the crazy sh*t in this business and around this business, than on myself. I got some crazy sh*t that’s happened to me for sure.”

Scene is due for release around the middle of next year, in Italy and the U.S. Ferrara wouldn’t be led as to who the American publisher is, but mused, “I can’t believe I actually got a book (deal).”

Ferrara should have plenty of fun material to expound on. Known for his provocative, neo-noir and often controversial content, the versatile indie stalwart has made films including The Driller Killer, King Of New York,...

In the late 1970s, two subgenres of horror began to take off, with both slashers and grindhouse pictures marking a change in the genre. Thanks to films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Black Christmas, and Halloween, movies about knife (and chainsaw) wielding killers gave audiences a more realistic type of fear, after the domination of fear fests like The Exorcist and The Omen. The '70s also marked the rise of grindhouse, low budget movies which might have been campy and filled with bad acting, but which were effective thanks to their gritty rawness. In 1979, director Abel Ferrara found a way to tap into both subgenres with The Driller Killer. Ferrara had made his name as a director of adult films, but with The Driller Killer, the future mastermind behind critically acclaimed films such as King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, and Body Snatchers, got to tell a story about madness,...

Creep director Christopher Smith will direct episodes of horror comedy series Video Nasty for BBC Three. Here are the first details:

British director Christopher Smith has made an eclectic range of films, from the tube tunnel terror of Creep to the mind bending time loop thriller Triangle, the historical horror of Black Death to the family fun of Get Santa (an opportune moment to point out that Get Santa is a hugely underappreciated British festive movie). He returned to horror with 2020’s The Banishing, and his next film, Spider Island, looks like it will have a similarly irreverent mix of horror and comedy to his 2006 hit Severance.

According to British Comedy Guide, Smith is also set to direct episodes of Video Nasty, a new horror comedy series for BBC Three.

The story is “set in 1985, with the home video revolution in full analogue swing, Video Nasty’s six 30-minute episodes...

Nunsploitation appears to be alive and well in 2024 with this week’s arrival of Immaculate, a convent-set horror movie that borrows heavily from ’70s Italian horror, the peak era of the exploitation film. Nunsploitation, a subgenre of exploitation films that hit its prime in the late ’70s and early ’80s, often features nuns behaving badly. More importantly, nunsploitation films explore themes of sexual or religious repression, frequently unleashing scathing critiques of the Church through blasphemous imagery and nuns behaving badly.

This week’s streaming picks are dedicated to nunsploitation horror. These taboo-shattering horror movies have more on their mind than their low-budget exploitation origins suggest.

Here’s where you can stream them this week.

For more Stay Home, Watch Horror picks, click here.

Alucarda – Cultpix

Directed and co-written by Juan López Moctezuma, this English-language Mexican horror film stars Tina Romero as Alucarda, who was raised by nuns at a repressive Catholic convent.

Abel Ferrara has made a career out of staring unflinchingly into the abyss, interrogating man’s weakness and depravity and daring his audiences to look away. Faced with the catastrophic violence of the war in Ukraine, however, which he chronicles in the Berlin-premiering documentary “Turn in the Wound,” even the iconoclastic director finds himself at a loss — for words, and for easy answers.

“Why is the violence — that’s what it’s about,” Ferrara tells Variety. “Whether it’s there, whether it’s happening in Gaza and Israel — it’s happening all over the world. It has happened, it is happening, and it’s going to happen, and the question is, Why?”

Ferrara returns to Berlin four years after competing for the Golden Bear with “Siberia,” which starred Willem Dafoe in what Variety’s Guy Lodge described as a “beautiful, unhinged, sometimes hilarious trek into geographical and psychological wilderness.” The...

The last time our writer interviewed him, the drugged up director dozed off then asked for coke. Now sober, he reflects on #MeToo, Italian fascism and his fight for the final cut

The last time I met Abel Ferrara, he dozed off in the middle of our interview then woke up and asked me to score him some coke. It was 1996, and he was in the UK promoting his gangster drama The Funeral – which the actor Vincent Gallo alleged Ferrara had been too blitzed on crack to direct properly – and his vampire horror The Addiction. He was on a roll, his reputation fortified by King of New York, starring Christopher Walken as a flamboyant crime boss, and the gruelling Bad Lieutenant, with Harvey Keitel as a bent junkie cop. Ferrara was the scuzzball Scorsese: no matter how celebrated he became, he never shed the patina of grime from his...

Ken Kelsch, the hard-charging cinematographer and Vietnam War veteran who shot the down-and-dirty classic Bad Lieutenant and 11 other features for iconoclastic director Abel Ferrara, has died. He was 76.

Kelsch died Monday at Hackettstown Medical Center in New Jersey after a battle with Covid and pneumonia, his son, Chris Kelsch, told The Hollywood Reporter.

“If you knew him, you probably have a story about him,” Chris wrote on Facebook. “He really was a great man, loved by many. A war hero who filled every room with his presence. An artist who never stopped being himself. A caring father who would do anything for his kids and grandkids. Shared his experience, wisdom and love with all. Our family will deeply miss him and always love him, as I’m sure many of you will as well.”

Kelsch also was the director of photography on Big Night (1996), co-directed, co-written and starring Stanley Tucci,...

On paper, the action and horror genres seem like they'd be strange bedfellows. After all, the general aim of action films is to provide adrenaline-fueled thrills, while horror movies are intended to disturb, scare, and unnerve.

Yet in practice, the genres blend far better and far more often than may be expected. I can still remember schoolyard chums excitedly recounting the ways in which Bruce Willis' John McClane dispatched terrorists in "Die Hard 2" (such as when he shoves an icicle into a baddie's eye), kills that would be wholly appropriate in a "Friday the 13th" or "A Nightmare on Elm Street" film. Hollywood producers certainly saw the connections; Renny Harlin, who directed "Die Hard 2," won the gig after making horror films like "Prison" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master."

In 2023, the action and horror genres have long been considered an excellent peanut-butter-and-chocolate combo, with much cross-pollination happening within them.

A full Free Movie of the Day is posted on the JoBlo Movies YouTube channel every day of the week – but on Fridays things get a little freakier and a little more fun. Get your weekend started the right way by indulging in Friday Fright Nights! Every Friday, we’ll be taking a look at another genre movie you can watch in its entirety, free of charge, either on the YouTube channel linked above or in the video embed here.

This week’s Friday Fright Night feature is a slasher movie, but it’s not your average slasher. The masked maniac in this one isn’t targeting victims in a remote location or in a small and sleepy Midwestern town. This killer gets up to their bloody business on city streets and in apartment buildings – which makes the movie so unique, they even had to mention the setting in the title.

Exclusive: BayView Entertainment today announced its acquisition of Vipco, a famed UK genre production and distribution company that launched in the 1970s, with a specialty in cult and obscure horror films, which it will be bringing stateside.

Vipco cuts its teeth in Britain’s video nasty era with titles like The Driller Killer, Zombie Flesh Eaters and The Slayer, more recently garnering success with such films as Devil in the Woods and Zombie Lover. The UK distributor is currently run by Terrence Elliott and Peter Goddard, who will remain as part of the company, with BayView Entertainment and Vipco working together to acquire and distribute horror titles across North America and the UK.

“Famed for its cult and horror genre releases, Vipco delivered numerous films to the shores of the UK and has always caught my attention and admiration,” said BayView’s VP of Acquisitions, Peter Castro. “Older horror fans...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Censor (Prano Bailey-Bond)

It is hard to think of a recent horror film––or a film of any genre, really––in which the main character is tasked with a job as original and ingenious as Enid Baines, the protagonist of Prano Bailey-Bond’s riveting Censor. She is, yes, the titular censor. It is 1980s England, the time of “video nasties” that drew parental consternation and tabloid outrage. These were the low-budget, ultra-violent VHS cassettes that earned their own category in the collective consciousness. Not all were UK productions––I Spit On Your Grave and Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer made the list. In Censor, however, the nasties are homegrown, in more ways than one. – Chris S. (full review)

Where to Stream: Hulu...

Abel Ferrara has made a career as one of the industry’s leading provocateurs.

While his latest film, “Zeros and Ones,” may not shock quite like “Driller Killer” or “Ms .45,” it still stands out for being very deliberately set during the pandemic.

“Zeros and Ones” stars Ethan Hawke as an American soldier stationed in Rome, caught in the midst of an apocalyptic siege, wandering empty streets that feel eerily familiar. In between the action, sex and drug deals, Hawke’s JJ sanitizes his hands, changes masks, and seems far from amused when two other characters reassure him, “Don’t worry, we’re negative.”

Variety sat down with the maverick director ahead of the film’s world premiere at the Locarno Film Festival to discuss taking a Willem Dafoe break in working with Hawke, and his “need” to make a film during the pandemic.

Ethan introduced the film as “Abel...

Stars: Niamh Algar, Nicholas Burns, Vincent Franklin, Sophia La Porta, Adrian Schiller, Michael Smiley | Written by Prano Bailey-Bond, Anthony Fletcher | Directed by Prano Bailey-Bond

Debut director Prano Bailey-Bond adapts her acclaimed short film Nasty into this feature length British horror set at the height of the panic over “video nasties”. Stylish and richly atmospheric, Censor represents a strong calling card for Bailey-Bond, who also co-wrote the script with Anthony Fletcher.

Rising star Niamh Algar plays Enid, a censor working at the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) in 1985, whose days are spent watching gory horror films and arguing with her colleagues over what needs to be cut out. When she watches a film called Don’t Go Into the Church, Enid becomes increasingly unsettled, because certain scenes trigger memories of her own repressed trauma, when her younger sister Nina suddenly disappeared while they were playing in a forest as children.

Stars: Asia Argento, Franco Nero, Jonathan Caouette, Nick Daly, Ninetto Davoli, Giulia Di Quilio, Monica Guerritore, Rade Serbedzija | Written by Michele Civetta, Joseph Schuman | Directed by Michele Civetta

Sometimes I feel a little sorry for low budget horror film makers today. Dial it back 30 years, you could make an incompetent piece of cinema, but put in enough hokey bloodletting, regardless of how laughably unrealistic those sausage string guts were, and you might well have a money-spinning film on your hands. Even objectively poor films like Driller Killer managed to (very deliberately) whip up enough conservative anger to ensure that a poorly made, dull film became widely seen, and naturally far more successful as a result.

Today, blood is not nearly enough. Some of the films I see today with a 15 certificate would have faced heavy censure back in the Mary Whitehouse days of video nasties. A time when films would...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Kinuyo Tanaka. Courtesy of Nikkatsu / Carlotta. The Cannes Film Festival has announced the titles of its Cannes Classics section, which includes restored films by Kinuyo Tanaka, Bill Duke, Peter Wollen, and Oscar Micheaux. Maggie Gyllenhaal, Mélanie Laurent, Mati Diop, Jessica Hausner, Mylene Farmer, Tahar Rahim, Song Kang-ho and Kleber Mendonça Filho will join director Spike Lee on the Cannes 2021 Competition jury.The Toronto International Film Festival is starting to announce its lineup for this year's edition, from an Alanis Morissette documentary and Kenneth Branagh's Belfast to Edgar Wright's Last Night in Soho and Denis Villeneuve's Dune.In a special episode of New Beverly's Pure Cinema Podcast, Quentin Tarantino has announced he will work with Sony on a new, boutique Blu-Ray label "Tarantino Archives," taking inspiration from Twilight Time and reissuing films from their catalogue.

There’s a nice quote in Abel Ferrara’s 2014 film Pasolini: “The meaning of this parable is precisely the relationship of an author to the form he creates.” It’s an idea I’ve been quite taken with in the years since, and unsurprisingly Ferrara has only expanded upon it in his most recent two feature films, Tommaso and Siberia. I’ve been lucky enough to ask Mr. Ferrara about this, and while the films themselves offer a clarity that only art can provide, there are still things—not loose ends, but rather tangents and streams—one can gain a little perspective on through the nature of correspondence itself. Mr. Ferrara—a congenial, gentle, and kindly man—gives us a little insight on this relationship between art and the artist, how it’s informed what he’s doing now as opposed to what he used to do, and where he’s going next.

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Alice (Josephine Mackerras)

It makes no sense. The night before saw Alice Ferrand’s (Emilie Piponnier) husband François (Martin Swabey) going out of his way to passionately make-out with her in front of their friends at a dinner party and now he won’t answer her calls. Despite his running out of the house earlier than usual without any explanation, however, there’s nothing to make her think something is wrong until a trip to the drugstore exposes a freeze on their finances. One credit card won’t work. Then another. The Atm won’t accept her sign-in and François still isn’t picking up his phone. Alice has no other option but to set a meeting with the bank and figure...

They were called “video nasties” — those 1980s slasher flicks and splatter films filled with sexual violence, graphic depictions of murder and gallons of Caro syrup that, for a brief moment, were considered the root of all evil in Thatcher-era Britain. For years, some of the genre’s most extreme examples, whether homegrown or imported, were considered cinema non grata by U.K. censors. When videotapes hit the market, however, a number of horror movies considered too dangerous for the general public found their way into folks’ VCRs, and suddenly, you...

Stars: Isabella Gomez, Lindsay Lavanchy, Froy Gutierrez, James Berardo, Gattlin Griffith, Adin Kolansky, Shireen Lai, Patrick R. Walker, Maxwell Hamilton, Bart Johnson, Jon Huertas, Kent Faulcon, Yancy Butler, Lochlyn Munro | Written by John Berardo, Lindsay Lavanchy, Brian Frager | Directed by John Berardo

During a university’s pledge week, the carefree partying turns deadly serious when a star athlete is found impaled in his dorm. The murder ignites a spree of sinister social-media messages, sweeping the students and police into a race against time to uncover the truth behind the school’s dark secrets and the horrifying meaning of a recurring symbol: a single exclamation mark…

From that generic slasher movie-like DVD cover audiences will probably be expecting your typical paint-by-numbers slasher movie. You know the type: masked killer hunts teens and offs them in grisly ways. In this case the teens are college students and yes, the killer does follow...

A horror stand-out at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, Prano Bailey-Bond’s debut feature Censor follows a film censor Enid (Niamh Algar), who discovers an eerie horror video that speaks directly to her sister’s mysterious disappearance and unravels a haunting puzzle. Now set for a release next month, specifically on June 11 (in theaters) and June 18 (digitally), the first trailer and poster have arrived.

Christopher Schobert said in his review, “It is hard to think of a recent horror film––or a film of any genre, really––in which the main character is tasked with a job as original and ingenious as Enid Baines, the protagonist of Prano Bailey-Bond’s riveting Censor. She is, yes, the titular censor. It is 1980s England, the time of “video nasties” that drew parental consternation and tabloid outrage. These were the low-budget, ultra-violent VHS cassettes that earned their own category in the collective consciousness.

Illustration by Jeff CashvanMovie-lovers!Welcome back to The Deuce Notebook, a collaboration between Mubi Notebook and The Deuce Film Series, our monthly event at Nitehawk Williamsburg that excavates the facts and fantasies of cinema's most infamous block in the world: 42nd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues. For each screening, my co-hosts and I pick a flick that we think embodies the era of all-night moviegoing down the “Flamboyant Floodway,” and present the theater at which it premiered.Back in October 2013, for our second screening at Nitehawk, we presented Abel Ferrara’s second feature—so, we thought for our second Mubi column we would feature the film a second time. You dig?Every screening concludes with our 'famous' raffle, the grand prize of which is always an original poster by the 'Maestro’ Jeff Cashvan. Enter for your chance to win Jeff’s one-sheet above by shooting us an email and saying ciao: thedeucefilmseries@gmail.

With nearly every feature film at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival reviewed, it’s time to wrap up the first major cinema event of the year. We already got the official jury and audience winners here, and now it’s time to highlight our favorites.

One will find our picks (in alphabetical order) to keep on your radar, followed by the rest of our reviews. Check out everything below and stay tuned to our site, and specifically Twitter, for acquisition and release date news on the below films in the coming months.

Ailey (Jamila Wignot)

Has any choreographer mattered more to American dance than Alvin Ailey? The documentary Ailey, directed by Jamila Wignot, makes a good case that there has not. Comprised of amazing archival footage, peer interviews, and choreographer Rennie Harris prepping a modern-day performance in honor of the artist, Wignot paints a full picture of a complicated man. Born...

It is hard to think of a recent horror film––or a film of any genre, really––in which the main character is tasked with a job as original and ingenious as Enid Baines, the protagonist of Prano Bailey-Bond’s riveting Censor. She is, yes, the titular censor. It is 1980s England, the time of “video nasties” that drew parental consternation and tabloid outrage. These were the low-budget, ultra-violent VHS cassettes that earned their own category in the collective consciousness. Not all were UK productions––I Spit On Your Grave and Abel Ferrara’s Driller Killer made the list. In Censor, however, the nasties are homegrown, in more ways than one.

Given the climate, the job of a censor is a tricky one. As Censor begins, a quiet, by-the-book young woman, Enid (Niamh Algar), watches a rather typical, fuzzy-screened entry with a colleague. This one features a girl on the...

In his latest interview/podcast, host and screenwriter Stuart Wright speaks to prolific UK horror filmmaker Jason Impey about his documentary Vipco: The Untold Story and picks for 5 Great Vipco releases.

Vipco was the British distributor, who brought a wide and wild range of genre/horror films – video nasties as the tabloids tagged them – during the 1980s and 1990s. Founded and run by Michael Lee. Jason Impey’s documentary brings Micheal, Mike to his friends, to fore to tell the story from his point of view with help from a plethora of cult film experts and academics who lend the work of Vipco a 21st century importance the gutter press of the 1980s would be shocked to discover they helped create.

Vipco: The Untold Story is out now via Vimeo and Amazon Prime

Jason’s picks inculde:

Driller Killer (1979) Dir Abel Ferrera Zombie Flesher Eaters (1979) Dir Lucio Fulci Cannibal Holocaust...

Greetings, everyone! We’re nearly at the finish line of another week, and the last few days of Daily Dead’s 2020 Holiday Gift Guide are upon us. For today’s installment, we’re hosting our third annual Enamel Pin Extravaganza, where we celebrate all the kitschy and killer pin designs out there, and all the phan-tastic companies behind them.

Enamel pins not only make for a great way to show off your horror fandom, but they are also stocking stuffers for the horror fan in your life. Check out this amazing collection of pins below and be sure to head back here tomorrow for our final Hgg entry.

Happy Shopping!

Pixel Elixir:

Krampus Enamel Pin

Dimensions of Fear – Crystal Lake Enamel Pin (Retro Nes)

Vintage Halloween Hobo Jack

Slay-Puft Marshmallow Man

Super Santa Claus

Trick or Treat Enamel Pin w/Magnetic Mask

Mondo:

Jaws 2-Pin Set

The Shining:...

If you put a big red button in front of someone and tell them not to push the button, all that person is going to want to do is push the damn thing.

So then to the strange case of Megan is Missing, a low budget exploitation movie shot in 2006, given a limited release in 2011 which is now suddenly trending due to some high profile TikTok users talking about how utterly horrible it is and apparently warning others off with hyperbolic statements such as:

@bella.clare

please watch this film at your own risk. It is something i will never watch again . i am forever traumatized.

@lilnutmegg

If you are thinking of watching Megan is Missing, please don’t. I love horror/thriller/murder mysteries and I can watch them very easily, but this one I will never ever forget. I couldn’t even finish it.

Not to miss a trick,...

With a seemingly endless amount of streaming options—not only the titles at our disposal, but services themselves–each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit platforms. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

’70s Horror

A horror lineup perfectly timed for Halloween, The Criterion Channel is spotlighting ’70s classics and underseen gems, including Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer, Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, early films by David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, and Brian De Palma, Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, and more. It’s an epic collection of essentials and the ideal way to kick off an unprecedented Halloween that should be spent in isolation. – Jordan R.

Where to Stream: The Criterion Channel

Downhill (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash)

Even though Faxon and Rash pay their respects to the original—sometimes mimicking specific scenes and capturing the claustrophobic...

Arrow Video is excited to announce the bow of their new subscription-based Arrow platform, available in the US and Canada beginning October 1. Building on the success of the Arrow Video Channel and expanding its availability across multiple devices and countries, Arrow boasts a selection of cult classics, hidden gems and iconic horror films, all curated by the Arrow Video team.

Arrow Video Channel begins streaming this October with headliners The Deeper You Dig, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Crumbs, The Hatred, Cold Light of Day, Videoman and The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast. Also immediately available are perennial Halloween hits Hellraiser 1 & 2, Elvira, Ringu, tthe complete Gamera series, as well as full collections from the Arrow archives packed with exclusive extras, rarely seen interviews and documentaries.

The Deeper You Dig, the latest feature written, directed by and starring filmmaking family The Adams Family, leads the lineup of Arrow's launch, joined by The Adams Family's The Hatred,...

It’s a great time to be a horror fan. Not only are Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and Shudder awash with all kinds of horror movies old and new, but the Criterion Channel is getting in on the gruesome action with a month’s worth of horror titles from the 1970s.

The subscription service is the digital offshoot of the Criterion Collection, which for more than 35 years has been providing definitive archival home video versions of classic and contemporary films from around the world. Criterion launched its streaming service last year as a way to offer a curated cross-section of its library of films online.

Horror has always had a respectful home at Criterion, with the company publishing definitive editions of a number of the genre’s landmark films. The October rollout of horror movies for the Halloween season is similar to what other companies are doing, but the focus is the difference here.

Horror fans, specifically those interested in classic horror, have just been handed a gift by The Criterion Channel. The streaming service has announced a massive collection of 70s horror classics will be arriving on the service just in time for the Halloween season. This includes a wide range of selections from some of the most iconic filmmakers to ever tackle the genre, including Tobe Hooper, George A. Romero, Wes Craven and David Cronenberg, just to name a few.

The Criterion Channel recently released a trailer detailing what the collection contains. Per Criterion, "This tour through the 1970s nightmare realm is a veritable blood feast of perverse pleasures from a time when gore, grime, and sleaze found a permanent home in horror." The trailer offers but a small taste of the tour, which includes a total of 29 classics, rarities and oddities from the decade.

Some bonafide horror classics are included in the collection,...

Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSDisney has announced that Barry Jenkins will helm the live-action The Lion King sequel, which reportedly includes "Mufasa's origin story."Speaking of sequels, Chinese authorities have approved the production of a project written by Wong Kar-wai, curiously titled Chungking Express 2020. The synopsis states that at least a portion of the film will take place in 2036, where "young Xiao Qian and May are unwilling to be held back by genetic partnerings, and insist on finding their own ‘destiny’.”Festival season persists: The Cannes Film Festival will be hosting a three-day "Special Cannes" event in October that will feature the screening of four Official Selections, in-competition short films, and the Cinéfondation’s school films. This year's San Sebastian Film Festival concluded with the sweep of Georgian filmmaker Dea Kulumbegashvili’s debut feature Beginning, which received four of seven jury prizes.

The Criterion Channel’s stellar offerings are continuing next month with a selection of new releases, retrospective, series, and more. Leading the pack is, of course, a horror lineup perfectly timed for Halloween, featuring ’70s classics and underseen gems, including Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer (pictured above), Tobe Hopper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, early films by David Cronenberg, Wes Craven, and Brian De Palma, Bill Gunn’s Ganja & Hess, and more.

Also of note is a New Korean Cinema retrospective, featuring a new introduction by critic Grady Hendrix and a conversation between directors Bong Joon Ho and Park Chan-wook, whose Barking Dogs Never Bite, The Host, Mother, Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and Lady Vengeance are part of the lineup, as well as Lee Myung-se’s Nowhere to Hide, and more titles to be announced. Bong’s short Influenza will also arrive, paired with Michael Haneke’s Caché.

In today's edition of Horror Highlights, we have details on the Arrow streaming platform, the trailer for Expulsion, and a Q&a with Jacob Bloomfield-Misrach to discuss his work on 12 Hour Shift:

Arrow Launches New Streaming Platform in North America in Time for Halloween: "London, UK - Arrow Video is excited to announce the bow of their new subscription-based Arrow platform, available in the US and Canada beginning October 1. Building on the success of the Arrow Video Channel and expanding its availability across multiple devices and countries, Arrow boasts a selection of cult classics, hidden gems and iconic horror films, all curated by the Arrow Video team.

Arrow begins streaming with headliners The Deeper You Dig, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Crumbs, The Hatred, Cold Light of Day, Videoman and The Herschell Gordon Lewis Feast. Also immediately available are perennial Halloween hits Hellraiser 1 & 2, Elvira, Ringu, tthe complete Gamera series,...

The 1973 Bruce Lee classic was a genuine education for a white suburban boy growing up in the north of England. Nothing was the same again

It was the summer of 1984 and while most of my friends were engaged in the bitter culture war that was Duran Duran v Culture Club, I was obsessed with a dead movie star called Bruce Lee. Our video store in Bramhall, Cheshire, was a classic early 80s den of rental iniquity, crammed with unclassified horror and martial arts flicks, and I wanted to see all of these morbid and violent treats before someone came along and banned them. My parents weren’t quite irresponsible enough to let me rent Last House on the Left or Driller Killer, but they had an open-door policy on kung fu, so one afternoon I went home with Enter the Dragon and nothing was the same again.

Everything about Bruce...

Stars: Dora Madison, Tru Collins, Rhys Wakefield, Jeremy Gardner, Graham Skipper, Chris McKenna, Rachel Avery, George Wendt, Abraham Benrubi, Mark Beltzman | Written and Directed by Joe Begos

f ever there was a filmmaker I felt made films especially for me it’s Joe Begos. Almost Human, The Minds Eye and now Bliss. Three films that take on different cinematic horror tropes: alien invasion, telekinesis and vampirism repectively but also three films that harken back to the 80s, in both style and substance. In this reviewers opinion the 80s is an era where ideas where allowed to run rampant, mainly in part due to the explosion if the direct-to-vhs market and a burgeoning, if not rabid, fan base for horror movies on tape who would watch literally Anything they could get their eager hands on.

Begos’ latest, Bliss, tells the story of a brilliant painter facing the worst creative block of...

"You know what's wrong. You don't give it up. You can't... forever." In her Tribeca review, Daily Dead Managing Editor Heather Wixson called Joe Begos' Bliss a "gruesome and nightmarishly gritty descent into madness," and ahead of its southeast Us premiere at Popcorn Frights Film Festival in Fort Lauderdale, Dark Sky Films has unveiled the official trailer for Begos' latest film.

Dark Sky Films will release Bliss in theaters and on digital platforms on September 27th, and you can get an idea of what to expect in the official trailer and synopsis:

"Known for her dark and macabre artwork, painter Dezzy Donahue (Dora Madison) is in a professional rut. Unable to finish her newest commissioned work, Dezzy looks to reignite her creative juices by letting loose-as in, taking every drug in sight and tearing through raucous house parties and heavy metal bars. After a few nights spent with her...

With his previous films, Almost Human (2013) and The Mind’s Eye (2015), filmmaker Joe Begos tapped into a nostalgia for 80s genre cinema that touched me like no other and now he’s back with Bliss – a film that reportedly ups the ante of his previous work, with searing visuals, kinetic energy, an endearing nastiness, and a ferociously all-in lead performance from actress Dora Madison. And this time Begos takes us back to the grimy days of New York City grindhouse cinema, when films like Abel Ferrara’s The Driller Killer and Bill Lustig’s Maniac were the norm!

Known for her dark and macabre artwork, painter Dezzy Donahue (Dora Madison) is in a professional rut. Unable to finish her newest commissioned work, Dezzy looks to reignite her creative juices by letting loose-as in, taking every drug in sight and tearing through raucous house parties and heavy metal bars. After a...

Abel Ferrara's King of New York (1990) and 4:44 Last Day on Earth (2011) are playing April – May, 2019 on Mubi in the United States.In Bad Lieutenant—arguably Abel Ferrara’s most notorious film—Harvey Keitel refers to Jesus Christ as a “rat fuck.” This may be the most glaring instance of something that is blatantly littered across Ferrara’s forty-plus year career: a cockeyed and knowingly sacrilegious approach to his Catholic faith. A nun is brutally raped in Bad Lieutenant (1992) and Keitel is the man sent to find her assailants. Yet he himself is not free of sin—in his own way, he is deeply morally compromised. In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, he lies prostate at the altar of a church, throwing himself on the mercy of a God he feels has abandoned him. He’s far from an outlier among Ferrara’s protagonists, but he...