Liverpool Horror Club (LHC) and Two-Headed Snake Entertainment presented their second The Dead of Night Film Festival – this time in Liverpool – and like all LHC events there was a great club atmosphere where everyone is friendly, and you can chat to the people involved in the festival and the films.
Fright Night Part 2 would only work if its main vampire – following the iconic Jerry Dandrige – was strong. Regine Dandridge, the sister of Jerry, was played wonderfully by Julie Carmen. Sultry, sexy with a huge element of danger, Carmen truly became part of the Fright Night universe with this performance.
The first time I watched Re-Animator was on HBO, late one evening. I had never heard of the film; however 95 minutes later it became one of my favorite movies of all time. Adapted from the H.P. Lovecraft novella “Herbert West, Re-Animator”, this splattery opera is well worth multiple viewings.
Re-Animator is one of the best horror films of the 1980s and of any era. It has an uncommon mix of horror, suspense, humor, sex and splatter to entertain the most jaded of cult and horror fans.
Adapted from H.P. Lovecraft’s short story The Colour Out of Space, David Keith’s 1987 directional debut The Curse is remarkably faithful to the source material; albeit poorly executed.
I must admit that I was unaware that The Curse was a tale of Lovecraftian horror until I realised the thematic similarities to Daniel Haller’s Die, Monster, Die! (1965); wherein a radioactive meteorite hits Earth with horrific consequences.
Canadian writer-director team Steven Kostanski and Jeremy Gillespie are part of the Astron-6 collective, whose work includes the playful retro horrors The Editor and Manborg.
In their feature The Void, they tone down the humour and opt for suspense and full-on Lovecraftian horror. They draw their influences from a number of sources, including Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, Anderson’s Event Horizon, Cronenberg’s The Fly, Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond and Carpenter’s The Thing and Prince of Darkness.
