Asylum blackout (2011)

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Director: Alexandre Courtes
Starring: Rupert Evans, Dave Legeno, Anna Skellern, Richard Brake .USA. 1h 25m

No matter how crazy you can get in one lifetime; there’s one thing that is certain, that’s the fact that you’re going to need nourishment, this simple fact of life seems to be the driving point of this punk rock hop through body horror hell.

Alexandra Courtes has a long history in making music videos including that iconic monochrome dream that is Seven Nation Army by White Stripes, so he can create very stark and stunning aesthetics which he does in two different ways in Asylum blackout. Initially the world is a bleak white world of aesthetically clean halls but once the lights go out it’s an insipid black nightmare. But aesthetics aside there’s a lot of crazy people doing some fucked up shit in the later half of the movie which takes some sudden psychological turns and keeps it’s audience on their toes.

Freakmaker / The Mutations (1970)

Director: Jack Cardiff
Starring: Donald Pleasence, Tom Baker, Brad Harris, Julie Ege. UK. 1h 32m

I’d just like to give a heads up, that I mean no disrespect with my terminology in this review. I am utilizing a lot of the terminology used in the movie, purely to keep it synced.

This movie feels like a mashup between Andy Mulligans insane indie horror Blood (1973) and the early cult classic The Freaks (1932) by Tod Browning. Combining newfangled science fiction ideas with unthinkable genetic splicing with animals and plants. The film is spiced up with trippy psychedelics, a touch of nudity and fascinating stop motion visuals, and it makes for a very interesting psychotropic creature feature that has to be seen to be believed, and all from acclaimed academy awarding winning director Jack Cardiff who gave us such classics as The Red Shoes (1948) and Black Narcissus (1947).

The Perfection (2018)

Director: Richard Shepard
Starring: Allison Williams, Logan Browning, Steven Weber. USA. 1h 30m

There is something surprisingly poetic about, Paul Haslinger’s unabating film, a movie which is pretty easy to fall into and follow despite it constantly throwing the audience a curved ball by rewinding time and showing things from a different perspective, it’s charming but for me there just wasn’t enough obscure strangeness, instead that was reserved until the bitter…. sweet end.

Opening with a somber tone, a woman lays wide eyed on her deathbed, her daughter looking on with a 1000 yard stare, there is a slight sign that something is not quite right , through a montage we see her getting pulled from a prestigious school to return home and look after her mother, scenes of self harming and a girl desperate to escape , but also something much darker from her past. She’s damaged but is hopeful of a better future. She calls her old mentor for help, her mother has gone and now she wants to return to Anton (Webber) the person who was painstakingly training her to be the best cellist in the world but the world has moved on and he has a new best, the stunning Lizzie (Browning) her face plastered all over the streets of Shanghai, China, she’s utter perfection but the hint of jealousy falls into lust when the two virtuoses spend a night on the town then ends up in the bedroom, something pretty strange for rivals but these girls are also striving for the best and see it in each other but this flashy romance won’t last.

Videodrome (1983)

Director:David Cronenberg .
Starring: James Woods, Debbie Harry, David Cronenberg, David Dvorsky, Leslie Carlson, Julie Khaner. Canada. 1h 29m.

Having watched Videodrome at quite a young age the film fascinated me for all the wrong reasons, pulsating VHS tapes, clips of dodgy torture rooms and people morphing into guns and machines really lit my young mind on fire, this was something that really carried on through my teens while lapping up underground comic books and really came to life when I discovered tales of the dark web and Tetsuo Iron Man (1989) which hit home this idea of bio mechanics along with my love of Giger’s artwork but nothing was quite on that level of bizarre as Videodrome, covering so many aspects of the darker side of the human psyche it’s science fiction body horror touches on some worrying habits and disgusting practices but all in such a way that it’s almost too clever for it’s own good.

James Woods takes centre stage as Max, as the CEO of a small UHF television station specialising in sensationalist programming he’s constantly displeased with his current line up which is mostly soft core, while looking  for ways to boost the station, he stumbles on a bizarre broadcast featuring extreme violence and torture which he believes is staged and wants the show known as Videodrome for his station as he perceives it as something that everyone wants to see. While searching for the source of the broadcast, he employs his cameraman Harlan,  to record the shows for him, eventually he deduces that the show is being transmitted from Malaysia, and soon Max orders that Harlan to broadcast the show unlicensed via his network. The more Max watches Videodrome the more he begins to hallucinates the world around him, mechanical items become soft and fluid, pulsating with life and breathing, but this is only the beginning.

The Kindred (1987)

Director:Jeffrey Obrow and Stephen Carpenter.
Starring: Amanda Pays, Talia Balsam, Kim Hunter, Rod Steiger, David Allen Brooks .USA. 1h 32m

80’s horror will always be remembered for being gutsy and it really liked to spill those guts all over the screen, This film is mild i some respects as it tries to build a respectable story but as the monster is slowly revealed there’s healthy lashings of tentacles and slime but without much actual blood, a strange combination that remains interesting but is noticeably lacking all the right ingredients to make it a stand out from all the other films of the era.

A brilliant scientist Amanda Hollins (Hunter) awakes from a coma and informs her equally brilliant son (Brooks) that he must destroy her journals and her final experiment aka his brother, bewildered he arranges to take his research staff and his girlfriend out to his mother’s house to carry out her request but soon she dies, unknown to him she’s killed by a rival (mad) scientist Dr. Phillip Lloyd (Steiger), who can’t be trusted around small animals and to be honest I wouldn’t trust him with kids either, but he’s desperate to find out what Amanda has been up to.

The Thing (2011)

Director:Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
Starring:Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Joel Edgerton, Ulrich Thomsen, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Eric Christian Olsen. USA/Canada. 1h 43m

From the first viewing of the thing I had a love and hate relationship with it, I was about 6 or 7 and it scared the crap outta me but I had to watch it, and i dealt with the sleepless nights and nightmares, but what always inreguided me was the events that happened prior to this cult classic in the Norwegian camp. But after all this hard work I think maybe it should have been left alone or given to someone with more dedication to the horror genre.

It could have gone either way there could have been an equally creepy body horror, on par with what changed the game in the early 80’s or someone could play by the rules and make a move fall into line with all the typical cliches that the Thing tried to break away from. but while the movie didn’t live up to my expectations it was made with all the best intentions.

Slime City (1988)

Director: Greg Lamberson
Starring: Robert Sabin, Mary Hunter, Bunny Levine, Dennis Embry. USA. 1h 28m

Despite being on par with the average Troma movie this imaginative occult gory body horror is strangely fun to watch and gives adequate nods to a number of classic horror movies in a psychotropic manner.

When a young art student, Alex (Devon) moves into a new apartment in a run down area of NYC with the intentions of getting his girlfriend Lori (Hune) to “sleep over”, he tries to be accommodating of his misfit neighbours, but after a supposedly vegetarian meal of Himalayan Yogurt made by Landlady Lizzie (Jane Doniger Reibel) with one of the more poetic tennants Roman (Embry), that’s quickly washed down with a mysterious home brew made by her dead alchemist father Zachary. His timid girlfriend Lori Starts to notice disturbing changes in her boyfriend, especially after he awakens one morning with a new blood lust and dripping with slime.

Faust : Love of the Damned (2000)

Director: Brian Yuzna
Starring: Mark Frost, Isabel Brook, Jeffrey Combs, Andrew Divoff, Monica Vam Campen . Spain . 1h 38m

Based on Tim Vigil and David Quinn (graphic novel) Wolfgang Von Goethe (play)

There’s a magical era of horror which isn’t to be taken too seriously but it is to be thoroughly enjoyed. I haven’t really been able to put a name to it, if one exists then please hit me up on twitter @admitonefilmadd or comment here. But it involves great special effects, a bit cheesy for modern audiences but so very treasured for the community.

It’s not too hard to work out the basis of this gory horror, it’s a modern rendition of a play by Wolfgang Von Goethe known originally as Urfaust dated between 1772-1775, so the story is well known, but there are additional twists so keep new eyes riveted on the action.