• HOME
  • CONTACT / FEATURE
  • FEATURES
  • FICTION REVIEWS
  • FILM REVIEWS
  • INTERVIEWS
  • YOUNG BLOOD
  • MY LIFE IN HORROR
  • FILM GUTTER
  • ARCHIVES
    • SPLASHES OF DARKNESS
    • THE MASTERS OF HORROR
    • THE DEVL'S MUSIC
    • HORROR BOOK REVIEWS
    • Challenge Kayleigh
    • ALICE IN SUMMERLAND
    • 13 FOR HALLOWEEN
    • FILMS THAT MATTER
    • BOOKS THAT MATTER
    • THE SCARLET GOSPELS
GINGER NUTS OF HORROR
  • HOME
  • CONTACT / FEATURE
  • FEATURES
  • FICTION REVIEWS
  • FILM REVIEWS
  • INTERVIEWS
  • YOUNG BLOOD
  • MY LIFE IN HORROR
  • FILM GUTTER
  • ARCHIVES
    • SPLASHES OF DARKNESS
    • THE MASTERS OF HORROR
    • THE DEVL'S MUSIC
    • HORROR BOOK REVIEWS
    • Challenge Kayleigh
    • ALICE IN SUMMERLAND
    • 13 FOR HALLOWEEN
    • FILMS THAT MATTER
    • BOOKS THAT MATTER
    • THE SCARLET GOSPELS
GINGER NUTS OF HORROR
horror review website ginger nuts of horror website

​FILM GUTTER: Nekro (1998)

9/11/2016
By Alex Davis 

COME ON IN, THE WATER'S APPALLING...

Picture
Dir. Vince Roth/Mick Nards, USA, 16 mins

Well how could you go wrong with a title like that? After all, we've had great fun with the likes of Nekromantik and Nekromantik 2 around these parts. There's also a Japanese movie by the very same name, which I will be coming to some time, but this is the cult 1998 short film from the US. And of course the clue is rather in the title...
 

Read More
Comments

FILM GUTTER: HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN (2011)

3/11/2016
BY ALEX DAVIS​

Come on in, the water's roving...


Dir. Jason Eisener, Canada, 86 minutes

Picture
So, today marks the return of Film Gutter from what was – in all honestly – a totally impromptu break. It wasn't a plan to take some time off, but it has been a fraught couple of months that has seen me chair a British Fantasy Convention, run another event here in my native Derby, start and quit one job and start and distinctly like the look of another. So to call September and October eventful kind of sums it up, and there's been precious little time to indulge the extreme horror hobby. I think this is the first time I've missed more than a week in the better part of two years, so it's not been bad going.

Read More
Comments

FILM GUTTER: ROGUE RIVER

8/9/2016


Come on in, the water's constrictive...
 
Rogue River (2012)
​

Jourdan McClure, USA, 81 mins

Picture
Ever had one of those movies you've watched before, but didn't really remember watching until you were about halfway through watching it a second time? That was the kind of filmic deja vu that I found myself experiencing with Rogue River, a kidnapping and torture tale with a little bit more to it than some that I have seen before. The lead looked familiar to me from the get go but when Bill Moseley stepped into the picture I remembered this one, although not in terribly fine detail. So, just what is it all about?
 
Well, Mara is a young lady who goes to the titular Rogue River to scatter her father's ashes. So she parks up and heads to the river, where she meets friendly-looking, middle-aged Jon. They talk a little and when they come back to the road, Mara's car is gone. Jon offers her a lift, stopping off at their house and meeting his wife, Lea. They invite her to stay there rather than going to a motel.
 
Big mistake, of course...

Read More
Comments

FILM GUTTER: SINGAPORE SLING 

8/9/2016
Picture
film review singapore sling  Picture

Singapore Sling (1990)
Dir. Nikos Nikolaidis, Greece, 111 mins

Welcome back to Film Gutter, and we're off to new pastures today with a dip into Greek cinema. This was a movie I half-watched some time ago, and never quite got round to polishing off, so I suppose this one is half rewatch and half first time viewing. Singapore Sling is a movie that has featured on many a top ten most disturbing film list out there, and having watched it I'm still not quite sure where I fall on that argument. Yes, there's plenty I here that is very graphic and very full on, but in places it is a deliberately overblown pastiche of the film noir that you can't help but laugh. Undoubtedly the most twisted comedy movie I've seen since The Human Centipede: Final Sequence, this one is riotous and repellent in equal measure.

Read More
Comments

Film Gutter: Pieces of Talent (2014)

17/8/2016

Film Gutter
Come on in, the water's infamous...

Picture
Dir. Joe Stauffer, USA, 95 mins
It's not all that often we head to American shores here at Film Gutter, but this is a movie I had been looking forward to seeing for some time. And, thanks to the joy that is Vimeo On Demand (well worth investigating for anyone into watching the movies we review) I finally had the chance to see the highly-acclaimed Pieces of Talent. The trailer genuinely looked great, very visually striking, and it seemed to have that anti-Hollywood, broken dreams feel that has been part of the horror scene so much of late (see our reviews of Deadly Famous and Eat for a couple of prime extreme examples).
 
Pieces of Talent follows aspiring actress Charlotte, who is killing time until her dreams can come true by living with her mother and working as a waitress in a strip club. It's a little cliché, sure, but I was willing to let that slide. One night she sees the club bouncer beating the hell out of David, and when she helps nurse him back to health she discovers that he's an aspiring film director. And so the uneasy and uneven relationship between the two can begin.
 
The catch – of course there had to be a catch – is that David is something of a psychopath, and we have a couple of scenes where we get to see his filmic work, which is dark, poetic and sometimes borders snuff. So ultimately Charlotte has no idea what she is getting into by befriending him, or should I say until it's too late...
 
Now that set-up probably sounds a bit hackneyed, but the trailer and the reviews both looked so good for this one that I hope there could be something really fresh and interesting here. However it really isn't much more than the sum of its parts, and for me the more extreme elements get a but lost in a sort of lo-fi indie drama of people pursuing their ultimate dreams and the tough lives they have to endure as they do so. The trailer leans very heavily on a few scenes to give the impression of something more brutal than what it really is, and I suppose that's he overriding impression I came away with – Pieces of Talent isn't a bad movie, it just wasn't really what I was expecting.
 
The performances here are likeable – David Long puts in a good stint as David Long (natch) and captures his quiet side and his mania well, and Kristi Ray is also very good in the role of Charlotte. It's nicely shot and looks good, it had a great soundtrack and has a nice indie quality to it throughout – the production doesn't look cheap or low-budget to me. But it's just not all that extreme, except in a few places, so I suppose that's kind of a note of caution to our readers – check it out, by all means, but if you're looking for something brutal and unremittingly dark this might not be the one for you.
 
RATING: 6/10. One of those movies I wanted to love and I had been looking forward to for a long time, and sometimes that's a hard spot to be in for a film. With that said, films like Baskin and In a Glass Cage have recently hit the mark despite my high expectations so I can't excuse it entirely on those grounds. It's good, but it's just not great. There's enough to warm me to it to make it watchable, but not enough to make it really exciting. So it's a fair enough 6/10 – very good in pieces, but not so wonderful all the way.
Picture
Comments

KIT POWER SPENDS THE NIGHT IN THE GUTTER WITH "FLOWERS"

16/8/2016
Picture
FLOWERS HORROR FILM REVIEW 2015 Phil Stevens Picture
Flowers Dir. Phil Stevens (2015)
In part two of my Blog tour of Ginger Nuts of Horror, I am taking over Alex Davis’ superb column on extreme horror cinema, to talk about a film he made me watch at Edge Lit. Enjoy.
 
So Edge Lit was a lot of fun. I met up with a bunch of smart, lovely people and talked books. I even launched one of my own. Alex, as ever, had put together an amazing bill of events - the kind of event line up that makes you wish you could be in more than one place at once. Following the epic carnage of the Sarah Painborough-led Edge Lit raffle (an event worth the price of admission on its own, frankly), I’d retired to the bar to catch up with a few folk who were heading out to find out what delights Derby town centre could hold on a Saturday night.
 
Not me, though. Oh, no. The evening had something very different on store for me....

Read More
Comments

WAZ (AKA THE KILLING GENE)

16/8/2016
FILM GUTTER HORROR MOVIE AND FILM REVIEW WEBSITE Picture
Picture


WAZ (aka The Killing Gene) (2007)

Dir. Tom Shankland, USA, 104 mins

Not often we touch base in the good old US of A, and probably even less often we have the chance to review a film with a host of well-known actors in it. That's not to say we've not watched and reviewed many well-acted films, but with a cast including Stellan Skarsgaard, Tom Hardy, Selma Blair and Melissa George we are probably swimming in a bigger pond than we are used to. This is a film I watched many years back and remembered liking without necessarily hanging on to the details, so I figured WAZ would be worth a revisit. Strictly the UK title is W-Delta-Z, but it's going to be more trouble than its worth to find the Delta symbol on Word..

Read More
Comments

FILM GUTTER: WOMEN'S FLESH: MY RED GUTS 

11/8/2016

FILM GUTTER Come on in,
​the water's sickening...

Picture

Women's Flesh: My Red Guts (1999)
Dir. Tamakichi Anaru, Japan, 50 minutes

Ah, Japan. Where would Film Gutter be without you? From infamous gore 'classics' such as the Guinea Pig series through to modern offerings such as Grotesque, there seems to be no end of weird, wild and wonderful fodder coming our way from The Land of the Rising Sun. And you can also rest assured that, when it comes to cinema that is truly shocking and disturbing, Japan does not pull any punches.

Read More
Comments

IN A GLASS CAGE (1986) 

14/7/2016

​FILM GUTTER
Come on in, the water's tormented...

Picture

IN A GLASS CAGE (TRAS EL CRISTAL), 1986
Dir. Agustin Villaronga, Spain, 110 mins

 
There's a long – and probably ever-increasing – list of films that I want to watch and want to talk about here at Film Gutter. One film that I have been very aware of for a long time but haven't had the easiest time coming by is the dark Spanish thriller In a Glass Cage. Hugely acclaimed, and featured on a number of most disturbing film lists out there, I have been waiting for my chance to see this for ages. And my recent jaunt to Vimeo's On Demand section gave me just that opportunity.

Read More
Comments

THE SEASONING HOUSE (2012)

14/7/2016

FILM GUTTER

Come on in, the water's claustrophobic

Picture

THE SEASONING HOUSE (2012)

Dir. Paul Hyett, UK, 95 mins

Every now and then, in our weekly quest, we encounter something so distinctly bleak and miserable that is stands out from what – I suppose – must be considered the standard degree of bleak and miserable. Films like Megan is Missing and Thanatomorphose are so hopeless and unpleasant that it was kind of hard to lift myself and cheer up a bit.
 
And so it was with the distinctly grim The Seasoning House.

Read More
Comments
Previous
Forward
    Picture
    Picture

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    February 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015

https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fmybook.to%2Fdarkandlonelywater%3Ffbclid%3DIwAR1f9y1sr9kcIJyMhYqcFxqB6Cli4rZgfK51zja2Jaj6t62LFlKq-KzWKM8&h=AT0xU_MRoj0eOPAHuX5qasqYqb7vOj4TCfqarfJ7LCaFMS2AhU5E4FVfbtBAIg_dd5L96daFa00eim8KbVHfZe9KXoh-Y7wUeoWNYAEyzzSQ7gY32KxxcOkQdfU2xtPirmNbE33ocPAvPSJJcKcTrQ7j-hg
Picture