High Expectations
The Witch, High-Rise, Goodnight Mommy
March offers a mixed bag of cinema releases, from Ben Wheatley’s eagerly awaited J.G. Ballard adaptation High-Rise, staring Tom Hiddleston as one of the residents of a modern tower block whose lives get out of control, to The Ones Below, a compact psychological thriller from writer-director David Farr. Also out this month are Robert Eggers’s much hyped festival hit The Witch and the Austrian twin chiller Goodnight Mommy, which screened at KVIFF last summer.
In home entertainment, we welcome the releases of Takashi Miike’s brilliantly unsettling psychological power game Audition and William Girdler's Sheba Baby, which sees Pam Grier in another killer role fresh off her appearances in Coffy and Foxy Brown. Plus, also out on Blu-ray is a beautifully remastered version of Luchino Visconti’s Rocco and His Brothers as well as Peter Watkins's chilling 1965 BBC production The War Game, which was banned on TV for 20 years.
Our new theme celebrates the work of Andrzej Żuławski, who died last month and is the focus of a retrospective at the Kinoteka festival, which runs from 7 to 28 April 2016. We start off with reviews of Żuławski's striking directorial debut The Third Part of the Night and the disturbing marital horror-drama Possession, and a podcast of an interview with the director about his film On the Silver Globe – more material to be added over the coming months.■
The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology
The End: An Electric Sheep Anthology (Strange Attractor Press) brings together Bill Morrison's chemical ghosts, 50s bad girls, apocalyptic evangelical cinema, Spanish zombies, Japanese nihilists and David Lynch's soundtracks of decay. 'Superb - a masterly accomplishment. Beautifully produced - and its content and vision could not be more accurate and timely.' - Peter Whitehead. Read the reviews.
Andrzej Żuławski: Strange Births & Spectacular Meltdowns
The great polish director died on 17 February 2016. We celebrate Żuławski's work over the coming months, some of which can also be seen as part of a retrospective at the Kinoteka festival in April, including his last film Cosmos, the dark and moody drama The Most Important Thing: Love and his most popular and brilliantly disturbing work Possession. We also have an interview with the man himself and a feature article exploring the genre implications that stem from Possession.
The Electric Sheep Film Show February 2016
Frankenstein revived, Superman Lives: Virginie Sélavy and Alex Fitch talk to Jasper Sharp, the artistic director of the Asia House Film Festival, which runs from 22 Feb to 5 March. The actor Tony Todd discusses Bernard Rose’s new adaptation of Frankenstein, while director (Jon Schnepp) and producers (Holly Payne, Robert Pierce) talk about their documentary The Death of Superman Lives.
The Electric Sheep Film Show is on every third Wednesday of the month, 8-9pm at Resonance FM 104.4. Next date: 16 March 2016.
Holy Torture - Desire, Cruelty, Power and Religion in 1960s-70s Cinema
The next talk at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies - London will focus on disobedient nuns, persecuted witches, defrocked priests and sadistic inquisitors to show how, beyond the desire to shock and titillate, films such as The Devils, Flavia the Heretic and Alucarda question authority and explore sexuality and alternative forms of worship.
Thursday 14 April, Horse Hospital, London, 7pm
