These were my Christmas Eve and Christmas Day viewings, thematically linked by the fact that they are both about human beings eking out a living in marginal conditions on the edges of the habitable world, and beset by Things out there in the darkness.

( 20. Rare Exports (2010), dir. Jalmari Helander )

It's the time of year when, after a demanding term, I traditionally attempt to reconnect with LJ / DW - except, of course, with pandemic-sized bells on. There is so much going on in my own life and all around me which I could and probably should write about, but even in a normal year that usually feels like an overwhelming task, and as for now... ( Read more... )

I haven't been watching very many films recently, as I have simply been too busy, but at least that means it isn't too big an undertaking to catch up on the reviews.

17. The Mummy (1932), dir. Karl Freund

I've seen this one before (LJ / DW), and indeed
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This is a vampire film which treats vampirism as a very direct metaphor for drug addiction, to such a degree that it quite often reminded me of Requiem for a Dream (2000). It sets itself up as challenging and intellectually-driven early on, opening with footage of American atrocities committed in Vietnam combined with a voice-over musing over ( Read more... )

I watched this as a nice treat on the evening of my birthday, because it is one of my favourite of the Hammer Dracula films, and I hadn't seen it for six years. I have reviewed it in these pages twice before: in 2013 ( LJ / DW), when I talked about the contrast between the cheerful inn scenes and the dark Gothic threat drawing in on them, Dracula's ( Read more... )

This is basically the logical end-point of the explosion of lesbian vampire films in the early 1970s. It begins with two women lying naked on a bed and snogging. Suddenly, an intruder whose face we never see bursts in and shoots them both dead. We only learn at the end of the film that this was a kind of flash-back, as an estate agent showing an ( Read more... )

This was both a Christopher Lee and a Hammer film which I hadn't seen before, which is always going to be a pleasure. I've been meaning to watch it for a while, and then Talking Pictures helped by screening it, so I synchro-watched it with
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This is another Hammer film, this time a straightforward murder mystery. I wanted to watch it primarily because Bernard Robinson's set designs for Dracula's castle in the 1958 film, as made available in Peveril Publishing's book Hammer's Grand Designs, show that one of the windows in the main hall set (also reconfigured as the library) was taken ( Read more... )

I'm planning to synchro-watch another Hammer film with the lovely
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I synchro-watched this film with
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