Visit Dejan's site The Cult of Ghoul for more horror movie news and reviews.

Book Review: Draculas, Vampires, and Other Undead Forms – Essays on Gender, Race, and Culture

Not yet another book on vampires! You may be excused for reacting like this upon seeing this title: vampires have been done to death – in movies, in comics, in fiction, in non-fiction, in criticism… The only trouble is, there’s no real ‘death’ when you’re talking about...

September 12th, 2009 | Read More

Interview: Ruggero Deodato

The main guest at this year’s Grossmann Film and Wine Festival (Ljutomer, Slovenia) was the great Italian director Ruggero Deodato. Last year Roger Corman and Brian Yuzna were there and interviews with them can be found at Beyond Hollywood. Now, exclusive to this site, comes a talk with the director...

August 30th, 2009 | Read More

Parasomnia (2008) Movie Review

PARASOMNIA is one of this year’s most exciting horror films. It’s directed by William Malone, whose previous credits have not fully prepared us for this fine and original little horror. His THE CREATURE (aka THE TITAN FIND) was a watchable, but derivative rip-off of ALIEN starring two exciting...

June 24th, 2009 | Read More

Book Review: The Cinema of David Cronenberg

David Cronenberg rose from the gutter of the Canadian backwater exploitation cinema (his “Baron of Blood” phase) to the red carpets of the most prestigious film festivals in the world (his “cultural hero” phase). As he started moving away from the former, almost imperceptibly,...

February 1st, 2009 | Read More

Book Review: Bad Taste by Jim Barratt

The guys of the ‘Cultographies’ series are back at it again, with some new titles! We’ve already presented their first three books on this site: THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW, DONNIE DARKO and THIS IS SPINAL TAP. You’ll remember them as the slightly more accessible variety of...

December 21st, 2008 | Read More

Book Review: German Expressionist Cinema – The World of Light and Shadow

Before there were genres, before there was Hollywood in its full glory, the cinema as art (but also as entertainment) flourished in Europe. The results were nowhere more astounding, groundbreaking nor more influential than in the war-torn Germany in the second and third decades of the XX century. The...

November 5th, 2008 | Read More

Interview: Brian Yuzna

Brian Yuzna was a special guest at this year’s Grossmann Festival of Film and Wine in Ljutomer, Slovenia, where he was given the newly established ReanimaCat award for special achievements in Horror/Fantasy cinema. He turned out to be a warm, kind, friendly person, always ready to talk to fans...

September 28th, 2008 | Read More

Interview: Roger Corman

Roger Corman was a special guest at this year’s Grossmann Festival of Film and Wine in Ljutomer, Slovenia, where he was given the Vicious Cat award for life achievement. Still vital at 82 and enthusiastic about his films and the fresh DEATH RACE remake (which he co-produced), Corman talked to the...

August 27th, 2008 | Read More

Let the Right One In (2008) Movie Review

There are special effects that no Hollywood blockbuster can create, and magic that no money can buy. It is the magic of humanity that no CGI can recreate or substitute – the magic of perfectly cast actors whose alchemy transcends (and renders laughable) the puerile “special effects” of...

July 18th, 2008 | Read More

Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology (2007) Book Review

This book is another one in the long and precious series ‘Short Cuts’ by Wallflower, made up of short guides to various aspects of cinema. The series includes titles like CRIME FILM: Investigating The Scene, SHAKESPEARE ON FILM: Such Things as Dreams Are Made Of, WAR CINEMA: Hollywood on...

June 17th, 2008 | Read More

The Cinema of John Carpenter: The Technique of Terror (2004) Book Review

John Carpenter has been variously labelled a “maverick”, a “horror director”, an “auteur”, even “the last genre filmmaker in America.” Unlike some of his more talkative and self-reflective colleagues like David Cronenberg or George Romero, he has always...

May 1st, 2008 | Read More

Book Review: Donnie Darko (by Geoff King)

I guess I was subconsciously expecting this book to be a letdown. The first two in the Cultographies series were excellent and very much to the point: so, at least one had to be somewhat behind, right? Rarely does one find a series made up entirely, and with no exception, of excellent books. And yet,...

March 23rd, 2008 | Read More

TCM International Film Guide 2008 Book Review

Ever since 1963, when it was first published, the International Film Guide has enjoyed the unrivalled reputation as the most authoritative and trusted source of information on world cinema. For a good while Variety stood behind it, then Guardian briefly, and now, after one year’s pause (there was...

March 1st, 2008 | Read More

Book Review: This is Spinal Tap (by Ethan de Seife)

Here’s another volume in the Wallflower’s Cultographies series of books devoted to cult movies. Of course, the book market is clogged by all kinds of picturebooks and ‘guides’ through the highs and lows of cinema, including the despised (but commercially viable) cult, genre, ‘grindhouse’,...

February 16th, 2008 | Read More

Book Review: The Rocky Horror Picture Show (by Jeffrey Weinstock)

‘Cultographies’ is a new series of books, devoted (as you might guess) to ”the weird and wonderful world of cult cinema”. In format and approach they are very much reminiscent of the acclaimed British Film Institute’s series ‘BFI’s Modern Classics’. Small...

February 9th, 2008 | Read More

Craig (2007) Movie Review

Craig is a pathethic schlob whom we first encounter in a police station, questioned about the unconvincing digital ‘fire’ effects which we saw during the opening credits. Turns out the fire in his house killed both of his parents and a sister. He’s mad at the investigators for inquiring...

October 27th, 2007 | Read More

On Evil Grounds (2007) Movie Review

Romeo and Juliet — a couple that has a very odd perception of their relationship — decide to buy a loft situated in a remote and run-down factory. Don’t we all dream of just such places for ourselves? Unfortunately, the secret owner of the factory, and his buddy, the real-estate agent,...

October 6th, 2007 | Read More

Ballad of Narayama (1958) Movie Review

Here comes a classic: “a beautiful and meditative tale of love and humanity that explores traditional Japanese cultural values,” as the DVD cover informs us. Sadly, it’s one of those ‘classics’ that are more digestible to film students and film historians than to the regular...

September 16th, 2007 | Read More

Interview with Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman

The King of schlock and president of Troma, Lloyd Kaufman, was the special guest of the GROSSMANN FILM FESTIVAL in a small Slovenian town Ljutomer. Slovenia is one of the small countries that came about after the breakdown of Yugoslavia, and the GROSSMANN Film and Wine Festival is one of the rare festivals...

August 17th, 2007 | Read More

Shikoku (1999) Movie Review

“Shikoku” could easily be discarded as ‘yet another long black haired ghost story from Japan’, but please bear with me, because it is much more than a derivative attempt to cash-in on the J-horror craze. While it was one of the first ghost stories to follow “Ring”...

May 26th, 2007 | Read More