Girl Meets Freak
U.K. Horror
Movie Discussion: Robin Hardy’s The Wicker Man (1973)
Girl Meets Context: Throughout the month of May we will be watching 1970s films about cults and conspiracies – from covens of witches to New Age self-help groups to neo-Pagans. This week we visit with one of the most notorious British horror films of all time. Sgt. Howie (Edward Woodward) arrives at the remote Scottish island … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Ken Russell’s The Devils (1971)
Girl Meets Context: Throughout the month of May we will be watching 1970s films about cults and conspiracies – from covens of witches to New Age self-help groups to neo-Pagans. This week we watched Ken Russell’s controversial art film. Based both on Aldous Huxley’s 1952 book The Devils of Loudun and the subsequent John Whiting play from … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Neil Marshall’s The Descent (2005)
Girl Meets Context: It’s Indie Horror Month, where we cover some of the best original and independent horror movies to be released in the last few years. The Descent is the second feature by British director Neil Marshall (after 2002′s Dog Soldiers). In the film, a group of six friends (most of them Brits) go on a caving … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Faye Jackson’s Strigoi (2009)
Girl Meets Context: It’s Indie Horror Month, where we cover some of the best original and independent horror movies to be released in the last few years. Strigoi is British director Faye Jackson’s feature-length debut. It concerns Vlad (Cătălin Paraschiv), a med school dropout who has returned to the Romanian village of his childhood after spending time … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961)
Girl Meets Context: This is the best known and most critically lauded adaptation of Henry James’ novella The Turn of the Screw. It was not a commercial success at the time of its release, but the film has gone on to have a long life as a “classic” psychological thriller (Scorsese included it on his “11 … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Roman Polanski’s Repulsion (1965)
Girl Meets Context: I’ve read that Roman Polanski and his collaborator Gérard Brach quickly wrote the screenplay to Repulsion and made the movie only so they could secure funding for the project they really cared about: the 1966 thriller Cul-de-sac. Ironically, Repulsion is considered one of Polanski’s masterworks and a classic of psychological horror, while Cul-de-sac has faded to … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Michael Reeves’ Witchfinder General (1968)
Girl Meets Context: Witchfinder General was the third and final film made by Michael Reeves before his tragic death-by-overdose. He was only 25 when he died, and at the time he was considered to be one of the most promising and exciting young genre directors in the U.K. Now considered his masterpiece, and one of … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy (1972)
Girl Meets Context: On February 9, 2012 we queued up Alfred Hitchcock’s penultimate movie, a serial killer shocker about a rash of sex murders in London. The movie stars Jon Finch as Richard Blaney, a retired RAF serviceman who finds himself on the run from the police after he’s implicated in the serial stranglings when his … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Richard Stanley’s Hardware (1990)
Girl Meets Context: On January 20, 2012 we queued up Richard Stanley’s 1990 cult film Hardware, a low-budget blend of science fiction and horror. The movie takes place during a Christmas Eve cease-fire in a dystopian, post-apocalyptic future. A soldier, Mo, is home on leave and brings his girlfriend Jill – an agoraphobic welder who … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987)
Girl Meets Context: On December 20, 2011 Kristine and I queued up the horror/dark fantasy film Hellraiser, the directorial debut of horror novelist Clive Barker, adapted from his own novella. Barker burst onto the scene in the ’80s with his beloved Books of Blood, a series of story collections that were marketed with a pull quote from … Continue reading
