The co-writer of Julia’s Eyes (2010), Oriol Paulo, makes his feature debut with The Body, a claustrophobic thriller in which a corpse vanishes from its freezer in a morgue without a trace, the only witness being a guard left in a coma cause by indescribable fear. Released in the UK by Kaleidoscope Home Entertainment, The Body is out now on Blu-ray and DVD.
In Kurt Neumann’s The Fly (1958), starring Vincent Price, David Hedison, Patricia Owens and Herbert Marshall, a scientist (Hedison) is obsessed with developing a molecular matter transmitter. When he attempts to test the invention himself, he is unwittingly joined by a companion – a fly that has sneaked into the transportation pod with him. Unchanged in its ability to terrify, Andrew Cheverton revisits the brilliant classic horror/sci-fi thriller, released in the UK on Blu-ray by 20th Century Fox on 16 September 2013.
The first of Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, The Fall of the House of Usher features an iconic performance by Vincent Price in the lead role. A guest arrives at the Usher home, where he finds a house literally crumbling apart, in an echo of the mysterious illness that has infected the home’s inhabitants, including the woman he hopes to marry.
To mark the UK Blu-ray & Steelbook debut of Corman’s chilling classic (released by Arrow Video on 26 August 2013), Jaime Huxtable imagines a conversation between Roger Corman and Edgar Allen Poe.
Featuring a tense script and superb acting, Dial M for Murder (1954) marked a departure from Hitchcock’s man-on-the-run suspense movies in more ways than one. Faithfully adapted from the successful Broadway play, Hitchcock opened up the action by shooting his legendary marriage and murder thriller in 3D, using the stereoscopic Natural Vision method. Sadly, the format fell out of favour just before the film’s original theatrical release, but thanks to Park Circus, Dial M for Murder – 3D now returns to the big screen in a gorgeous, newly restored and remastered version. Below, Paul O’Connell revisits the Hitchcock classic in 3D, released in selected UK cinemas on 26 July 2013, and available on Blu-ray by Warner Home Video.
A gripping, tense follow-up to The Hurt Locker (2009), Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty (2012) dramatises the decade-long hunt for Osama Bin Laden. Based on the taut but strikingly detailed script by her long-term research collaborator and former war reporter Mark Boal, the film generated significant buzz on all fronts around it’s theatrical release earlier this year – and some controversy along with it. Joe Decie revisits the unsettling thriller, released in the UK on DVD/Blu-ray + UV Copy on 10 June 2013.
As part of our exploration of failed expeditions and doomed adventures in cinema, Chris Geary revisits Takashi Shimizu’s Marebito (2004), about a photographer who makes his way deep down into the Tokyo subway system to allay his obsession with fear.
To tie in with the theatrical release of the much anticipated remake of Evil Dead, Patrick Walsh revisits the 1987 follow-up Evil Dead II, re-released on a special edition Blu-ray this month.
As part of our exploration of sleep on film, Muna Al-Jawad, Paul Cheshire, Dickon Harris and Daniel Fennings explore their film dreams.
As part of our exploration of filmic fortresses this month, Jake Rowlinson looks at Terry Gilliam’s time-travelling adventure Time Bandits (1981).
As part of our ‘Repulsion’ theme this month we look at the repellent anti-hero of William Lustig’s Maniac (1980) in anticipation of the release on March 15 of Franck Khalfoun and Alexandre Aja’s revisiting of the story.
