Horror anthologies, and anthologies in general, are by their very nature doomed to be uneven. It’s a rare thing to watch one all the way through and unconditionally love every single chapter. Their multi-narrative structure, often bound together by a common theme/concept (the found footage of V/H/S) or an established brand (Tales from the Crypt: EC Comics), usually means fluctuations in tone, style – and yes quality – are expected, something even more pronounced when you have different writers and directors tackling each story.

On the bright side though, they’re a pretty damn cool format for a number of reasons:

1. More Bang For Your Buck
For the price of one movie, you get THREE or FOUR mini-movies!

2. Variety & Brevity
You get bored with one story, there’s another one around the corner soon.

3. Element of Surprise
Like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get etc.

And while I don’t predict a resurgence of omnibus films at the level of popularity they were in the ‘60s and ‘70s, if more filmmakers decide to take advantage of the format to package horror stories, I definitely wouldn’t complain.

Following on the bloody footsteps of last year’s V/H/S, the upcoming The ABCs of Death has the most morbidly fun anthorrorlogy idea we’ve had in a while: using the English alphabet as a jumping-off point for 26 death-themed tales. To get you amped for its screenings in Auckland and Wellington (see: NZFF’s Autumn Events), here are several older films you should seek out if you’ve never seen an anthology horror before (they’re not necessarily the best, but ones I have a soft spot for):

TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE

There’s a lot of irrevocable hate associated with Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983), mainly for the awful on-set tragedy that killed Vic Morrow and two child actors, and also the fact that it didn’t successfully capture the feel of Rod Serling’s beloved TV series (1959-1964) that it’s based on. To enjoy the film, you really need to push aside the two opening acts – John Landis’ half-baked “Time Out” (which starred Morrow), and Steven Spielberg’s nostalgic schmaltz “Kick the Can” – as mediocre starters, then relish in the main course double of Joe Dante’s “It’s a Good Life” and George Miller’s “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet”. Awesome creature effects by Rob Bottin (The Thing) grace Dante’s trippy eye-popper about schoolteacher Kathleen Quinlan meeting a boy with an extremely strange family in an even stranger house; Miller’s wildly entertaining entry is powered by John Lithgow’s panicky, bugged-out performance as an aviophobic airline passenger who flips out upon seeing a goblin perched on the plane’s wing. This one nauseated me as a kid.

TRILOGY OF TERROR

Three short stories by the prolific Richard Matheson (Duel, The Twilight Zone), directed by Dan Curtis (Dark Shadows, The Night Stalker), all starring Karen Black (Five Easy Pieces): what’s not to like? This 1975 made-for-TV anthology provides a tour de force acting showcase for Black, who plays four different characters with zesty aplomb. In the opening “Julie”, she’s an English lit teacher who gets romantically involved with a student, only to find herself blackmailed; “Millicent and Therese” gives her dual sister roles in a perverse tale of incest, voodoo and sibling rivalry; the humdinger of a finale, “Amelia”, pits her against a Zuni fetish doll come to life. At a brisk 72 minutes, Trilogy of Terror is a tidy, well-crafted little set, the restraint of its first two segments easily upstaged the spine-chilling third, which remains a classic of its kind. That final shot: Holy crap! I wonder how many people shat their pants in front of the tube back then.

SPIRITS OF THE DEAD

A mixed bag of Edgar Allan Poe stories interpreted by three top-flight European directors of the era: Roger Vadim, Louis Malle, Federico Fellini. Featuring self-destructive characters going off their rails, it’s a collection that goes for psychological headgames rather than gruesome shocks. “Metzengerstein” is a limp start, allowing Vadim (Barbarella) another chance to listlessly ogle at Jane Fonda, who plays a power-mad 16th century countess who lusts after her cousin (Fonda’s real-life bro, Peter!). Malle’s “William Wilson” picks up the macabre intrigue a bit, with Alain Delon as a sadistic Austrian soldier who faces his doppelganger. But again, as with most anthologies, the most striking is saved for last: Fellini’s “Toby Dammit”, which teems with the director’s trademark visual excess, is an experience as messed-up and drug-smashed as its protagonist, an English actor (Terence Stamp) in Rome to shoot the “first Catholic western”. I actually find myself preferring Malle’s as a piece of Poe narrative, but Fellini has the upper hand as far as arresting imagery goes.

BLACK SABBATH

With no duds, and one masterpiece, Italian horror maestro Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963) is one of the best horror anthologies out there, and arguably the most stylishly beautiful. “The Telephone” is a suspenseful proto-giallo with a creepy stalker/caller plot that plays like a blueprint for When a Stranger Calls, which in turn inspired Scream. Based on an Aleksey Tolstoy story, the atmospheric, Gothically charged “The Wurdulak” stars Boris Karloff (who also introduces the film) as a patriarch of a family who returns from a vampire-hunting trip a noticeably changed man. Now “A Drop of Water” is quite something. I’m not easily spooked but this third segment, about a nurse (Jacqueline Pierreux) who steals a ring from a dead medium, scares the shit out of me – it’s probably the most perfectly eerie short film ever made. Black Sabbath is an ideal entry point into Bava’s cinema, a masterful demonstration of the sort of otherworldly magic the guy can produce on a soundstage with creative splashes of light and colour.

DEAD OF NIGHT

No anthology list would be complete without a mention of Dead of Night (1945), the great granddaddy of all omnibus films. This was notable for being an uncharacteristic horror effort from Britain’s Ealing Studios, who were primarily known for their comedies, but it’s among their stellar achievements, a supremely consistent, enormously influential vision brought together by regulars from their stable: Basil Dearden, Alberto Calvacanti, Charles Chricton, Robert Hamer. The Chinese box-like framing story – an architect (Mervyn Jones) visiting a country house and sensing he’s already met all the guests there – contains a superb sting which wraps everything up in a satisfactorily bonkers manner. “The Haunted Mirror” and “The Ventriloquist”, the third and fifth tales, stand out for creepiness; “Golfing Story” is an obligatory goof, wedged between the latter two for relief; the first two shorter films are fine warm-ups. A chilling, smart, textbook example of supernatural storytelling.

BODY BAGS

Including this as a bonus pick. A failed pilot for a Showtime series, this 1993 throwback to Tales from the Crypt et al was somewhat out of fashion when it came out, but hangs together agreeably and is irresistibly stacked with horror royalty. John Carpenter’s campy intros – as a rather corpse-like coroner – are lame and terribly unfunny, but his segments are the strongest: “The Gas Station” is nothing new, but a sharply directed slice of slasher excitement, and “Hair”, which stars a hilarious Stacy Keach trying to cure his hair loss with alternative means, is likeably goofy, its satirical touches reminiscent of Carpenter’s They Live. Tobe Hooper ratchets up the gore factor with “Eye”, a descent-into-madness thriller that sees Mark Hamill giving the most over-the-top performance of his career playing a baseball player who loses his eye in a car accident and receives a transplant whose previous owner was a psycho killer. Look out for cameos from Sam Raimi, Wes Craven, and Hooper. Surprised at how much fun I had revisiting this, which I remember as being one of the first laser discs I ever watched.

We haven’t heard from Aaron Yap and his collection of back-catalogue rocks and diamonds for a while –  but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been watching ‘em! Read on for what sound like one of the best, one of the worst, and perhaps one of the badass-est Shelf Life titles yet… As well as the screen debut of one Christina Applegate.

JAWS OF SATAN

If you’re going to make a hybrid genre movie, why not fuse the best of the best right? That’s what Jaws of Satan, aka King Cobra, did, or at least tried to. As the title blatantly suggests, this rare theatrical outing from TV vet Bob Claver (The Partridge Family, Love Boat) merges two red-hot commodities of the era: Jaws and The Exorcist. But it does too little, a little too late (it was shot in ‘79 but didn’t make it out until ‘81), thus no one noticed, and has since been buried in history books as a cinematic footnote known for being Christina Applegate’s screen debut.

Even seasoned shlock fans might snooze through this thing; it lacks the solid stream of amusement that comes from technically inept trash, yet there isn’t much by way of sensational genre thrills to be had anywhere. One is left to sit there stupefied by its utterly perplexing plot about the return of Lucifer as a cobra wreaking havoc on a town in Alabama whose people are gearing up for the opening of a new dog track (!).

It’s all somehow connected to local priest Father Tom Farrow (Fritz Weaver), whose ancestors are Druids whom Satan has a beef with or something. Meanwhile, hospital doctor Maggie Sheridan (Gretchen Corbett), dumbstruck by the sudden rise of snake-bite victims, enlists the expertise of an out-to-town herpetologist (Jon Korkes) to figure out what the hell is happening.

Neither shocking nor scary, Jaws of Satan is at its most entertaining trying to engineer suspense from set-ups that are frankly, astoundingly stupid, like having priests outrun a cobra in a graveyard, or chucking in a random biker who’s been hired by the oily dog track developer (Bob Hannah) to knock off Dr. Sheridan because she’s causing too much noise. The snake action, largely shot (by Halloween DP Dean Cundey) in crash-zooms and close-ups, utilises both animatronic (or rubber/puppet?) and real snakes; considering the budgetary limitations, it works okay, bar the hilarious early goof where we can see, and hear, a snake bumping into a protective plate of glass placed in front of a character.

There are better snakesploitation movies out there, but if you’re a completist of the nature-run-amok subgenre, Jaws of Satan is worth hunting down for its narrative bizarreness and general idiocy.

THE LONELY LADY

The Lonely Lady might be my new favourite “Shelfie”. Directed by Brit Hammer horror guy Peter Sasdy, who’s clearly out of his element, this gut-busting, pleasurably stinky adaptation of Harold Robbins’ bestseller gave Pia Zadora her second Razzie in a row after 1982’s notorious, calamitous incest-fest Butterfly. And boy is she terrible, oscillating between doll-eyed precociousness and unchecked hysteria without a single moment which can be realistically deemed as “subtle”. She plays Jerilee Randall, an aspiring Valley Girl screenwriter who ultimately serves to expose the not-so-revolutionary revelation that Hollywood is a rotten, sexist cesspool. First she’s shacking up with her much, much older award-winning idol Walter Thornton (Lloyd Bochner), then hopping into bed with arrogant actors, sleazy nightclub owners and aging swingers, because this is what it takes to get her script produced.

I’ll give Sasdy this: he knows how to move things along, minimising any dull downtime for contemplation. Incidents happen quickly; 10 minutes in, and there’s young Ray Liotta, showing us an early example of the beastly creep he’s so chillingly good at portraying over the course of his career, ripping Zadora’s blouse and doing something cruel with a garden nose that will make your face pale. Jammed with awful, ear-bleeding songs, queasy lovemaking scenes and schmucky characters, The Lonely Lady is an absolutely staggering train wreck, a Tinseltown soap opera that makes Showgirls look perfectly sane in comparison.

TOP OF THE HEAP

Deserving of a spot among the best African-American cinema of the ‘70s, this amazing, little-seen one-shot wonder by actor Christopher St. John (Shaft) isn’t like any blaxploitation film ever made. I even hesitate to call it that at all. A personal project for St. John — who wrote, directed, produced and starred in it — Top of the Heap is the angriest movie I’ve seen in a while, so angry that I felt like I did something to piss him off after it ended. Aiming higher than lurid genre satisfaction, the film is charged with a feverish, unpolished immediacy that feels like the result of hammering away on a typewriter one night every racial ill he’s ever experienced. It makes for an incendiary, powder keg of a character exam, with St. John unleashing a volcanic performance as George Lattimer, a cop who’s struggling to keep it together amid an unhappy domestic situation (his 13-year-old daughter is having sex in the garage!), his mother’s passing, being looked over for promotion, and dealing with racist assholes on a daily basis.

Shot on chump change, almost guerilla-style, with lots of hand-held camerawork and wide angles, Top of the Heap alleviates its impassioned, overwrought voice with surreal Walter Mitty-esque daydreams in which Lattimer imagines himself as a respected NASA astronaut. These sequences are a distinct departure from the gritty blaxploitation action of the time, and demonstrate that St. John’s vision, as indignant as it may be, can also be inventive and free-wheeling. Top of the Heap communicates volumes about black identity, white privilege, racial profiling, and sacrificing your soul to The Machine — and resonates even louder in the wake of Michael Brown’s recent shooting and the Ferguson riots. Click here for an LA Times interview with St. John where he talks about getting the film off the ground.

(Note: viewed on VHS, but there’s a limited edition DVD available from Code Red now… if you can find away to purchase from them)

Last month film critic Leonard Maltin announced that the 2015 edition of his annual Movie Guide would be the last. As far as I’m concerned, this is as significant as the death of 35mm film projection and the death of video stores. It’s yet another signpost announcing the changing ways we consume and search for information on movies in the 21st century. You can’t deny Maltin’s importance: he’s been in the game for 45 years, and like the late Roger Ebert, he’s that rare, widely recognisable film guru who was able to penetrate the everyday household. I definitely knew Maltin’s name long before I came across Ebert, and I still regularly read the 1996 edition of his Movie Guide which I’ve never upgraded.

Granted, my copy looks like it shouldn’t be around anymore. It’s tattered, completely split right down the middle. Pages are slowly coming off. It’s possibly the most miserable-looking thing I own. And it resides in my toilet. I do have Mick Martin and Marsha Porter’s guide in there too, but I don’t pick it up nearly as much — it’s always Maltin I reach for when I take a shit.

Even though the internet’s vast, varied depth of knowledge has long eclipsed Maltin as a voice of authority on film, the guide remains incredibly useful to me:

Call me crazy, but for a quick look, sometimes I find it easier to just open a book and find what you’re looking for by flicking through pages.

In this age of waffle-prone blogging, Maltin’s brevity is refreshing. The clipped style has in some way influenced my writing too.

The layout — screeds of tightly packed copy, with no line breaks — makes “digging” fun. It does one thing the internet can’t emulate as well: allow me to open up to a page and randomly find a movie. The guide functions, now more than ever, as a treasure trove of movies I’ve yet to discover.

Film is dead. Long live film. After the industry hubbub preceding the release of Interstellar a few months ago who knows for sure anymore. It appears, however, the future isn’t as grim as initially feared. For those who haven’t been following this winding, unending, fascinating journey of the film vs. digital war, here’s a little catch-up of what transpired recently.

Interstellar did something unprecedented in the post-digital switchover era: it prompted some exhibitors in the States to re-install their 35mm projectors after chucking them out. This is because staunch celluloid lover Christopher Nolan decided to debut the film, shot on both 35mm and 65mm, two days early only on film. Boon for theatres who could, but the others who couldn’t were up in arms, accusing studios — who made them trash their film projectors and spend thousands converting to digital — of delivering “mixed messages”.

Of course, only a box office force-of-nature like Nolan could have pulled this off, so I’m not hopeful this will be the norm, but the strategy is an interesting development because it brings back into light the opportunity for both film and digital exhibition to co-exist harmoniously and also be a profitable venture. And hats off to Nolan and Paramount for including in the promo materials a detailed breakdown of Interstellar‘s multiple viewing formats:

It’s more than likely the average multiplex goer won’t really care — generally audiences are about what’s happening on screen rather than what it was shot on — but it’s heartening to know there is at least a conscious move to promote this sort of technical awareness to those who may be interested.

It’s looking okay-ish in the film stock production side of things too. Studios like Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Universal and The Weinstein Company have formed an alliance to continue buying stock from Kodak; filmmakers like Nolan, J.J. Abrams, Judd Apatow, Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino still shoot on film while Martin Scorsese continues to support film as a reliable means of preservation.

Excitingly, Tarantino’s next film, The Hateful Eight, will potentially be the widest release of a 70mm film in 20 years (whether we’ll get to enjoy that here is another matter). Maybe the most vocal, and some might say arrogant, pro-film guy in the business, Tarantino has been nothing if not bold in his stance, from repeatedly writing off digital as “television in public” to yanking out the DCP projectors from Los Angeles revival theatre the New Beverly – which he’s taken over complete ownership of — to make it strictly 35mm-only.

But even though Tarantino swooping in to take over the New Beverly would seem to be a positive thing, a less rosy saga has spun off the circumstances surrounding the new ownership. In mid-October, long-time employee Julia Marchese took to her blog to write about her falling out with the new management and eventual parting of ways. It’s a long piece, and I won’t go into detail, but her bitterness and frustration, whatever the “truth” behind the events may be (it smells very he said/she said), seems understandable. Marchese, after all, poured her heart into making a Kickstarter-funded documentary called Out of Print, a gushing love letter to the New Beverly and revival cinema culture. The doco’s fate was cruelly ironic: Marchese intended to premiere the film at the New Beverly on 35mm, but with everything that has happened, simply ended up sharing it on Vimeo for free (watch it here).

Though a fitting companion piece to Christopher Kenneally’s digitally-leaning 2012 doco Side by Side, Marchese’s film definitely has a “let’s make a doco on how great the New Bev is” kind of vibe, making its title somewhat of a curious misnomer. The first two thirds is an hour’s worth of praising the New Bev experience: the programming is wonderfully eclectic, its communal, family atmosphere is worlds away from your local multiplex, the patrons are respectful, appreciative, like-minded film nerds. Filmmakers such as Joe Dante, Joe Carnahan and Rian Johnson are on hand to lend credence and champion its repertory ethos, happily admitting they’re also just one of those nerds who grew up frequenting the New Beverly. It’s only the last third that Out of Print goes into a bit of depth on the “print” part of the title, observing the consequences of the digital changeover and how it has endangered the existence of these rep houses as studios refuse to loan out their 35mm prints.

Marchese’s passion is undeniable — her heart is in the right place — and Out of Print is, for the most part, entertainingly candid (especially if you’ve ever worked in a cinema before), and contains the odd touching moment (veteran actor Clu Gulager’s story). But there is also occasionally a superior-than-thou stink to some of the talking heads, and I just can’t get behind Marchese being the director and interviewing herself too.

Still, reservations aside, I watched with envy all those incredible double bills the New Bev patrons have access to — since we do not currently have a rep movie house culture in New Zealand. We lack the population that would make it a viable business of any financial longevity. Auckland Film Society might be the closest thing we have, but the members-only exclusivity and its regular use of Blu-ray for projection are less attractive propositions for me. In my wildest dreams, I’d love to see the charmingly crumbly Crystal Palace in Mt Eden transformed into a theatre like Melbourne’s uncannily out-of-time Astor, where I’ve been able to catch retro screenings of films like The Train, Point Blank and The Wall in the past.

The longer I’ve been following the whole film vs. digital debate the more it seems ridiculous and unnecessarily polarising. Ultimately arguments from each side stem from the same love of cinema. It irks me when pro-digital campers can’t fathom why cigarette burns or scratches would appeal to celluloid lovers. In Out of Print, Paul Vickery, programmer at London’s rep house Princes Charles, speaks about the “romanticism” of the film aesthetic: it is a deeply romantic medium, and its associated qualities — such as having an inner life of its own — are romantic notions. I’m not saying films should look scratched up — they should look as good as they can possibly be — and I detest fake grindhousey effects as much as the next person. But what’s often lost in all the technical hooha is the consideration for the intrinsic emotional quality of film. It’s the little flaws, not the perfection, that makes it a profoundly magical and beautifully human thing.

For the last couple of years when I’ve come to do this end-of-year list thing, I overcame the struggle of compiling one list as a definitive statement on My Year of Film by doing an “alternative list”, alongside the list of discoveries of older films. This year, I’m going to combat the struggle of doing an alternative list by flagging it altogether for an expanded list of discoveries. What constitutes a “discovery”? The films without fanfare, the better-than-expected surprises, the underrated, the retro, and anything that wouldn’t fit into the main end-of-year list. Here we go, in no particular order (of course):

Rembetiko – Stunning historical drama about early 20th century Greek folk music, loosely based on the life of singer Marika Ninou. A long but transfixing journey, filled with trance-inducing musical performances.

Simon Killer – A genuinely unsettling, hard-to-shake experience burrows deep into the head of an American sociopath in Paris. Maybe the best character study I’ve seen of its type since Keane. Campos’ first film Afterschool well worth checking out too, plays like prequel.

Deathrow Gameshow – One-joke premise, moronic, tasteless, tries too hard to be funny, but would be lying if I didn’t have a swell time with this campy ‘80s black comedy.

Hell Bound – Amazing B-noir find! Caper gone wrong plot, crams hardboiled swagger, bleak worldview and jolting brutality into a brisk, lively 69 minutes.

The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears - Those who were left cold by Cattet and Forzani’s previous giallo homage Amer probably won’t get much out of this style-drenched exercise either, but for me, some of the most heady, visually intoxicating, beautifully disorienting images I’ve seen all year.

Myth of the American Sleepover - I was compelled to watch this earlier film by David Robert Mitchell after being bowled over by It Follows at the fest and it didn’t disappoint. Nothing ground-breaking but the languid, out-of-time vibe is hypnotic.

A Quiet Place in the Country - Pop art meets gothic in this trippy 1968 Italian psychological reality-bender starring Franco Nero as painter losing his mind in an Italian villa. Great off-kilter Morricone score.

The Cheshire Murders – Utterly grim and compelling HBO doco about 2007 home invasion killings in Connecticut. Had me glued to the screen but feeling completely drained and crappy after.

In the City of Sylvia - What if those scenes in Vertigo where Scottie shadows Madeleine were an entire film? It might resemble something like José Luis Guerín’s masterpiece — the elegant last word on people watching and stalking. Pure cinema. I want to see more from this guy.

Proxy – Impressive attempt to ape Hitchcock/DePalma shockers on a budget. Nothing as is it seems, layered, sharp twists and just demented enough to stand out.

This Ain’t No Mouse Music – I’m fairly partial to docos about obsessive music people (and obsessive people in general) and this one on Arhoolie Records founder Chris Strachwitz ticks all the boxes. Far from the most polished documentary around, but the vibrant music, invaluable anecdotes and general warmth make up for it.

The Secret of the Grain – Another “I gotta check out this director’s earlier film” viewing. Abdellatif Kechiche’s Blue is the Warmest Color was powerful stuff, and this 2007 film, following the lives of an Arab immigrant family in a French port town, similarly so. Running at two-and-half-hours, this is richly portrayed human drama at its best, with a final hour-long stretch that’s as nail-biting as any thriller.

Missing – True story about the search for a missing American writer during harrowing 1973 military coup of Chile. Nightmarish, absolutely chilling political mystery-drama from Costa-Gavras, with Sissy Spacek and Jack Lemmon in outstanding form.

The Eclipse – Totally underseen, underrated film. One of the best romantic ghost stories in recent memory — an exquisite example of “melancholy horror”. Ciaran Hinds has never been this good.

Sands of the Kalahari – Simply awesome ‘60s survival-of-the-fittest adventure. Plane crash survivors duke it out in a remote desert part of Namibia. Rousing tale, well-drawn characters, glorious Technicolor scope cinematography. Like Flight of the Phoenix with vicious baboons.

Bound for Glory – Hal Ashby’s Woody Guthrie biopic is a vivid, beautiful, marvelously textured story of the Great Depression. Maybe the best Dust Bowl depiction on film. Haskell Wexler’s work here is just transcendent.

Wrong – I wasn’t a fan of Quentin Dupieux’s killer tire flick Rubber but this follow-up somehow hit the right notes of weird and absurd. A dog lover’s movie.

How I Live Now – Smaller-scaled but the most subtly evocative and interesting of the recent crop of young adult-dystopia films. Saoirse Ronan gives a typically committed performance. Not quite When the Wind Blows for teens, but sometimes it comes close and it’s much better than it looks.

The International - I remember critics shitting on this Tom Tywker corporate espionage thriller but found it pretty engaging. I love Tywker’s feel for architecture and holy shit, that Guggenheim shootout is killer.

Hummingbird – It would be really easy to dismiss this as yet another Jason Statham action vehicle but I was taken aback by how un-action-centric it was. The PTSD-suffering ex-soldier is a Statham-ready role but the film around him is a whole lot more restrained, moodier and character-focused. He gets to romance a nun!

The Devil’s Business – British indie, Kill List-style crime-horror hybrid. Admittedly slight, but likably offbeat, tightly directed, with a gob-smacking WTF ending. Fantastic turn by Billy Clarke as a weary, hardened hitman.

The last time I saw a David Lynch film an uncanny thing happened — “Lynchian” I guess you could say. About 5 years ago, I held a 35mm screening of Blue Velvet at the Academy Cinemas to raise funds for my dad’s cancer treatment (still eternally grateful to everyone who helped make it happen!). Everything went swimmingly — that was until a reel change, maybe just over halfway into the film, the image flipped, and suddenly we were watching Blue Velvet UPSIDE DOWN! And it wasn’t just flipped, the image was reversed, as was the soundtrack. 20 minutes of dead screen later, the film was back up and running as per norm, the sorcerous technical anomaly nowhere to be seen again for the remaining duration.

I guess this is kind of an unintentionally meta, real-life analog to the heart of Lynch’s work: those momentary fissures in reality that allow the surreal and the inexplicable to erupt to the surface. Like many budding film buffs growing up in the ‘90s, I was drawn to these slippery qualities of his dark and beautiful universe. Cinema’s enduring, consummate “weird guy”, Lynch transformed us into clue-hunting detectives obsessed with unlocking the key to his oneiric, impenetrable narratives. Sitting down with a Lynch film was a matter of entering a world, not passively watching a film to be entertained. It wasn’t always pretty or easy, but it held you there in a trance, unable to resist its hypnotic pull.

The funny thing is, once I’ve grown older, devoured more films and absorbed more experiences, those bizarre elements have become gradually muted. It’s not that his films are any less weird, it’s just that I’m less fixated on those head-scratching details — what’s in the Blue Box? where’s Agent Chester Desmond? who is the Mystery Man? — and more inclined to be emotionally engaged with the work in a direct, non-cerebral manner than I was as a young‘un.

For the record, here’s where I stand on Lynch’s films at this stage: I rate Eraserhead up top. There’s a pure, ripped-from-the-Id rawness to that film that’s absolutely, and uniquely, timeless; if he never made another movie after that I don’t think I’d complain. Blue Velvet is a stone-cold masterpiece. I’m just cold on Wild at Heart. The jury is still out on Inland Empire (still yet to find three hours I can appropriately devote for a rewatch). I definitely have time for his “outlier”-type work like The Elephant Man, Dune and The Straight Story. Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive: as a body of work, these three films, for my money, showcase Lynch at the height of his powers, easily comparable to say, Hitchcock’s stellar run from Vertigo to The Birds.

Seen in quick succession, there’s an interlocking neatness — in themes, visual motifs and characters — to this trio that’s attractive and satisfying. I love how they seemingly collapse into each other like one fluid extended dream. While Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire are usually lumped together as an “L.A. Trilogy”, I prefer assigning the trilogy reading to Fire Walk with Me, Lost Highway and Mulholland Drive as Lynch’s set of “psychogenic fugue” films. They’re all tighter, aesthetically cohesive than Inland, which, let’s face it, is a fucking hot mess.

Lynch first embraced the term — a mental disorder in which an individual suffers from memory loss and imagines another identity for themselves — during the making of Lost Highway, but FWWM had already been exploring similar psychological splintering and doublings of its characters, and not to mention, featured the sort of jarring bifurcate narrative that would perplex many viewers of Highway and Mulholland too. (note: spoilers follow)

In FWWM, Twin Peaks’ whodunit queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) is seen as a high school sweetheart by day, a drug-snorting prostitute by night. Her dad Leland is possessed by and wrestling with the demonic, supernatural figure/alter ego Bob, who’s sexually abusing Laura. Halfway into Lost Highway, Lynch switches its protagonist Fred Madison (Bill Pullman), a troubled jazz musician who’s arrested for the murder of his wife Renee (Patricia Arquette), for Pete Dayton (Balthazar Getty), a mechanic who’s like a younger, cooler, more virile version of Fred. Likewise, albeit inverted, Mulholland Drive’s fresh-faced, aspiring Hollywood starlet Betty (Naomi Watts) is generally interpreted as the idealised death-dream fantasy of the strung out, failed actress/jilted lover Diane Selwyn. And one doesn’t have to be a genius to find parallels between the blonde/brunette dynamic of Betty and Rita (Laura Elena Harring), Renee/Alice in Highway and Laura/Donna in FWWM (or Laura/Maddy in Twin Peaks). Bob, Mystery Man and The Cowboy? They’re all members of the same Sinister Guy Club.

Maybe more than any other weird Lynch film, FWWM is the one I’ve grown to respect and adore over the years. Considering the bad buzz that it weathered upon release — the Cannes booing, the subsequent critical drubbing, the disappointment of fans (even Tarantino swore off Lynch) — this prequel to Twin Peaks, retracing the final days of Laura Palmer’s life, is largely deserving of its underrated status. The radical tone-shift, needless to say, polarised anyone who religiously tuned into the show. Although a recognisably quirky opening half and a host of returning cast members indicate that we’re in the same world of Peaks, it’s also quite clear that FWWM isn’t that world — it’s Laura’s, and it’s downbeat, confused, heart-breaking, relentlessly nightmarish, constantly on the brink of falling into the proverbial abyss.

Not to rob Lynch of his meticulous vision, but so much of FWWM is powered by the sheer ethereal presence of Sheryl Lee as Laura. We’ve come to know her as the plastic-wrapped corpse who whipped the TV world into a frenzy in 1990, so it’s something of a wonder — almost a privilege — to see her alive and breathing before our eyes. Lee gathers an enormous amount of sympathy for the character — we’re bewitched by her in the way that her suitors like James or Bobby were — and her eventual departure, scored to Angelo Badalamenti’s transcendent theme, produces arguably the most moving, haunting, startlingly graceful ending — hell, sequence — of Lynch’s career thus far.

Faced with the hostile response towards FWWM, Lynch could’ve easily pandered to the mainstream for his next work, but being Lynch, devised a battier, more alienating thing called Lost Highway. Co-written with Wild at Heart author Barry Gifford, this tenebrous neo-noir puzzle, in some ways, is the film you’d want to recommend when someone asks where to start with Lynch. It boasts a narrative deviation that’s extreme and enigmatic even by his standards, and I still find the first 40 or so minutes some of the creepiest, druggiest shit Lynch has ever committed to film, a mesmerising lesson in unsettling an audience simply with a fuzzy video tape, shadowy corridors, a few pot plants and Robert Blake’s kabuki-fied face. This portion is so masterful and intensely charged, there’s a tendency for viewers to undervalue the Pete Dayton story, which, with its gangster’s moll/lovers-on-the-lam tropes, seems comparatively straightforward.

But the relative placidity shouldn’t be mistaken for a slackening of directorial grip. Here Lynch’s interrogation of male anxiety is just played in a different register: looser, freer — jazzier — a waking dream of bright L.A. exteriors and coital ecstasy tempered by Robert Loggia’s seething rage and slabs of Rammstein’s industrial grind. In the loopy, Mobius strip-like ending, Lost Highway suggests the impossibility of exit for this unhinged mind: Fred is trapped in a purgatory of his own making, destined to repeat the same nightmare all over again.

My relationship with Mulholland Drive is strangely minimal: though I dig it, I haven’t seen it since in its initial release in 2001. Revisiting it now however, especially alongside FWWM and Lost Highway, it’s even clearer that it represents Lynch’s dream logic filmmaking at its most refined and lucid. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons why, among all his weird films, it seems to hold the widest cross-over appeal. That, and maybe because it doesn’t involve incest, abuse or male insecurities, but is instead wired into our endless collective fascination with the glamour and artifice of Hollywood.

It’s Lynch’s Sunset Blvd., both profoundly affecting in its belief in the transport of performance (see Naomi Watts’ stunningly acted audition centrepiece, the Club Silencio sequence) and corrosively cynical in its confrontation of the industry’s rotten core (the behind-the-scenes puppeteering of moguls, the influence of drugs, money). Mulholland’s final bug-out might be the easiest to decode of his films — a “meaning” of sorts can be found within the skillfully re-purposed clues if you wish to — but it’s just shy of a definitive answer. In true Lynch fashion, he grants us something even better: the opportunity to continue dreaming, long after the screen has faded to black.

Continuing to excavate buried cinematic goodies, Aaron Yap dusts off three very different films here, all boasting familiar faces, but traversing territory ranging from nuke phobia to damaged war vets and a private dick tale. Read on to have your appetite piqued for these particular pearlers, and set off on a trip of bummed out vibes culminating in something a little more lighthearted.

TESTAMENT

The ‘80s were quite the time for depressing post-nuke movies. At the height of Cold War paranoia, TV viewers were treated to ultra-grim what-if shockers like The Day After (1983) and Threads (1984), the latter perhaps still the final word on approximating the horrific aftermath of a nuclear war. Lost somewhere in there is Lynne Littman’s Testament (‘83), which was initially produced for PBS’ American Playhouse series but ended up releasing theatrically. Based on Carol Amen’s short story The Last Testament, the film may not contain the in-you-face graphic content of either The Day After or Threads, but it’s doubtful that anyone who sees it will be left unaffected.

Littman’s background as a documentarian lends itself naturally to the material, stripping a devastating event of its sensationalism and melodrama, instead confining the perspective to one family and intimately cataloging their trials. It’s set in the small fictional Californian town of Hamlin, where the Whetherly family are left to their own devices during a nuclear fallout. As the deterioration of social order sets in, mom Carol (Jane Alexander, in a heart-wrenching, rightfully Oscar-nominated performance) has to keep things together with the kids — it’s soon painfully clear that dad Tom (William Devane), off at work in San Francisco, won’t be returning anytime soon.

Suggesting rather than explicitly depicting the physical effects of radiation, Testament gathers impact through the pervading sense of unease resulting from the characters’ feelings of abandonment and resignation. It unspools with a quiet mundanity that highlights the helplessness of their predicament. Watching them respond to the situation is moving: the youngest, six-year-old Scottie (Lukas Haas) buries his toys, reasoning that there’s not enough food left to feed them, while fourteen-year-old Brad (Rossie Harris), in the absence of a father figure, assumes a newfound responsibility, offering assistance where he can.

It’s not hard to see why Testament would’ve worked equally well on the big screen. Though composed for tele, Littman’s images are cinematically powerful in their capacity to chill and disturb: Carol blankly sewing up a makeshift body bag; empty swings creaking in a playground-turned-graveyard; the family huddling in the car preparing to gas themselves. All these haunting moments that add up to one grueling bummer of a flick that’s also arguably one of the best of its kind. James Horner’s score is a work of aching, poignant beauty that’ll hit you hard once the credits come up. Look out for a young Kevin Costner and Rebecca DeMornay.

MY OLD MAN’S PLACE

Since we’re on a William Devane tip, here’s another one of his lesser known films, a fairly obscure, pre-Taxi Driver/Rolling Thunder entry in the post-Vietnam cinema cycle of the ‘70s (it’s obscure enough that I can’t seem to log it on Letterboxd). Plot-wise not too dissimilar to Elia Kazan’s The Visitors which came a year later, My Old Man’s Place (1971) stars Devane and screen-debuting Michael Moriarty as Jimmy and Trubee, soldiers coming home from ‘Nam, obviously in the throes of PTSD. Things don’t get any easier upon meeting another vet, Sgt. Martin Flood (Mitchell Ryan), whom they first find beating the crap out of a transvestite hooker but then decide to invite to Trubee’s father’s home in the country for some R&R anyway.

A sobering account of irrevocably damaged individuals unable to foster functional relationships away from the battlefield, My Old Man’s Place is a totally seedy and grimy item that could only have crawled out of the era’s gutter. In his second feature after the offbeat Burt Lancaster western Valdez is Coming, Edwin Sherin directs with low-key intensity, sharply establishing the eroding dynamics, simmering tensions and oscillating allegiances within the group. There’s the unresolved estrangement between Trubee and his grizzled, also-war-scarred father Walter (Arthur Kennedy), the escalating power struggles between Jimmy and Sgt. Flood, and the realisation by everyone that Flood’s just a psychopathic rapist time bomb waiting to go off. Strong, memorable performances — Ryan is downright scary — and a downbeat gut-puncher of an ending will ensure those partial to this particular subgenre won’t be disappointed. Worth snatching up Code Red’s DVD before it disappears forever and goes for three figures on ebay.

THE LATE SHOW

Now for something a little lighter… I’ve been meaning to scratch off writer/director Robert Benton’s The Late Show (1977) from the watchlist for a long time now, and I’m happy to say I dug every minute of it. Ostensibly belonging to the company of esteemed ‘70s detective noirs like Chinatown, The Long Goodbye and Night Moves, this delightful, nostalgia-laced throwback stars Art Carney (Harry and Tonto) in a wonderful performance as Ira Wells, an aging, bum-legged private eye who’s brought back on the job by hippy-dippy New-Agey client Margo (Lily Tomlin). What begins as a simple case of a missing cat snowballs into a convoluted plot involving murder, blackmail, adultery, stolen goods and an assortment of low-life characters.

The Late Show is a breeze from start to finish. Benton (Kramer vs Kramer) displays a good ear for the chewy dialogue (“You were born dumb and you’re gonna die dumb”), and successfully straddles the generally tricky line between a snappy hard-boiled thriller and a more wistful character study. Channeling the ghosts of Sam Spade and Philip Marlowe, Carney plays up Ira’s craggy over-the-hill condition — he often looks like he’s going to keel over at any second — but make no mistake, this is one tough-as-nails survivor, world-weary, cynical and ready to whack you around when push comes to shove. Tomlin is so hopped-up that she verges on insufferable but she’s always brought back a notch whenever Carney’s around, and they do have an enjoyable odd-couple rapport. A gem!

Here at the B-Roll I’ve probably, on more than one occasion, expressed my fondness for the “Maxploitation” genre. Films like 1990: The Bronx Warriors, After the Fall of New York and Endgame — those cheesy, largely Italian rip-offs and imitators that rode on the success of George Miller’s 1979 dystopian classic Mad Max. In eager anticipation of his return to the world with the forthcoming, gloriously insane-looking Mad Max: Fury Road, I binged out on a marathon of five Maxsploiters I previously missed…

EXTERMINATORS OF THE YEAR 3000

I used to see this one gathering cobwebs on the shelves of Video Ezy but never bothered to pick it up for whatever reason. It’s actually pretty good. Directed by journeyman Giuliano Carnimeo, Exterminators of the Year 3000 (1983) fulfills all the requirements of a respectable Mad Max clone: there are sloppily modified vehicles with junky armour and missile launchers, the costumes, to quote Fury Road star Tom Hardy, look like “Cirque du Soleil meets fucking Slipknot”, and the entire chase scene from The Road Warrior is shamelessly replicated (Carnimeo is no Miller, but good try!).

Instead of an oil-deprived future, water is lacking, and the only hope for mankind is a drifter who calls himself Alien and his harmonica-playing bionic-armed sidekick-kid Tommy. Propulsive synth score, cool slow-mo car stunts that don’t cut away and laughable dubbing make this beer-worthy post-nuke fun.

MAX FACTOR:

THE NEW GLADIATORS

Horror maestro Lucio Fulci couldn’t resist dabbling in dystopia either, as seen in this atypical, somewhat underrated film. The death-as-televised-entertainment premise, in which a band of dangerous criminals are forced into combat at Rome’s Colosseum by a Fascist ratings-hungry global TV network, predates The Running Man and The Hunger Games, and riffs closer to the likes of Rollerball and Logan’s Run than Mad Max.

But Fulci was definitely hoping to Maxploit his way to the bank with The New Gladiators (1984), which features plenty of strobing lights and lens flares, chintzy Blade Runner-on-a-budget models, bikes kitted out with butterfly wing-shaped shields and a sweet New Wave score by Riz Ortolani. Not as gory as Fulci’s other work, but it wouldn’t be Fulci without a bit of eye violence and a couple of decapitations.

MAX FACTOR:

HANDS OF STEEL

Set in a polluted, acid-rain-plagued future, this 1986 actioner combines The Terminator and Over The Top in a heart-warming story about Paco Queruak (Daniel Greene, hilariously wooden), a beefcake cyborg who goes on the run from his evil boss John Saxon after fumbling a job to assassinate a blind eco-leader. Janet Agren plays Linda, a motel/diner/brothel owner who gives him a place to hide, and naturally falls for him amongst all the mayhem.

Highlights include Paco arm-wrestling greasy macho truck drivers, karate-chopping a rattlesnake’s head off and fighting a lethal female cyborg. Fast-paced direction by giallo master Sergio Martino (All the Colours of the Dark), who crams the last third with so much ridiculous action you won’t care how dumb it all is.

MAX FACTOR:

WORLD GONE WILD

Here’s a curious American stab at Maxploitation, which funnily enough, shares the virtually same plot and western feel of Exterminators of the Year 3000. It’s 2087, and there’s been no rain for 50 years. The remaining source of water is in Lost Wells, a peaceful little junkyard-turned-village run by hallucinogen-abusing hippie Ethan (Bruce Dern). When cult leader Derek Abernathy (an over-the-top performance by Adam Ant) discovers this water haven, Ethan enlists the help of his former partner-in-crime George (Michael Paré) and a few other motley types to protect their community.

World Gone Wild (1987) is more tongue-in-cheek than others of its type — the sort of film where you’ll find hubcaps used like ninja stars and Julius Carry (The Last Dragon) prancing around in a purple lycra suit screaming “motherf-cker” while shooting a machine gun in each hand. Wacky, completely nutty and the theme song is a hair metal number that sounds as bad/awesome as you think it is.

MAX FACTOR:

TURKISH MAD MAX

Bless those Turks. They have a notorious history of ripping off Hollywood blockbusters in their own inimitably primitive way that makes the least capable Italian shlock-meisters look like David Lean. Turkish Exorcist, Turkish Superman, Turkish First Blood — you name it, they’ve done it. Turkish Mad Max (1983) is a little different though, in that it doesn’t resemble anything like its namesake. There’s nothing dystopian or post-apocalyptic about it. The only real connection is star Cüneyt Arkin’s wardrobe, which cribs Max’s iconic leather jacket-and-sawn-off-shotgun combo. Titled Ölüme son adim in Turkish (“Last Step to Death”), the movie has a threadbare plot involving a trio of mercenaries hired by pharmaceuticals magnate to rescue a kidnapped professor.

If you’ve seen any of director Çetin Inanç’s works like The Biggest Fist and the infamous Turkish Star Wars, this one is pretty much on par: a barrage of amateurish fight scenes, bad foley work and slipshod editing delivered in an ADD-afflicted style that won’t allow five minutes to go by without an explosion or someone getting punched in the face. Sleazy, wildly entertaining, zapped-in-from-another-dimension stuff, but nothing remotely Mad Max-y.

MAX FACTOR:

Here’s the latest trailer for Mad Max: Fury Road, opening May 14:

Revisiting movies from our childhood can often be an awfully disillusioning thing. Those movies tend to be half-remembered, held frozen in a corner of one’s mind prone to misplaced nostalgia. For many years, we think they somehow serve as crucial developments in our consumption and appreciation of cinema. However, once re-absorbed into the (one hopes) fully developed adult brain and all its irreversible jadedness, they turn out to be misbegotten, malformed creatures that are nothing but affronts to present-day critical faculties.

This is definitely the case with Bill L. Norton’s Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend, a supposedly children’s dino-adventure flick from 1985 that I had the bewildering experience of rewatching for the first time since I was a young ‘un. Made during Disney’s attempt to widen their audience to “young adults” and “mature audiences” via their subsidiary Touchstone Pictures, the film was neither box office nor critical success. In a year that also gave us a dazzling, inventive, pop-culture juggernaut in Back to the Future, Baby looks like, well, a fossilised dinosaur. It’s very much of another era: creaky, old-fashioned and politically incorrect. The only thing legendary about it today is how terrible it actually is.

If anything, Baby showed that the industry was still in the grips of E.T.’s blockbuster success. Here was Disney trying in earnest to make a more adult-oriented pic, but unable to resist shamelessly replicating the child-like wonder of Spielberg’s hit. It’s no surprise that the results are as ill-conceived as they are tonally schizophrenic. Baby has all the saccharine heart-tuggery of E.T. — courtesy of a brontosaurus hatchling of the title — grafted on to somewhat violent adventure set in a civil-war-torn country where we see multiple people getting shot, stabbed, electrocuted and falling out of helicopters.

At its core, the story, adapted from David Lee Miller’s novel by Clifford and Ellen Green (of SpaceCamp and Bless the Child fame), is formulaic King Kong-style pulp that could have easily originated from the ‘30s. Exotic travelogue-ready location of West Africa: check. Husband-and-wife lead protagonists (William Katt, Sean Young) caught up in the action: check. An evil, bearded, delusional baddie (Patrick McGoohan) doing Bad Things for Science Reasons: check. A family of elusive brontosauri, based on Africa’s own Loch Ness legend, the “mokele-mbembe”: check. Not that you couldn’t make a decent throwback adventure in those days — see Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Goonies, Romancing the Stone — but Baby’s tone-deaf combo of the cute and the ugly is harder to swallow.

Viewers tend to point out the inappropriateness of the extensive tribal nudity for children (Disney just doing the best at realism IMHO), but I feel like that’s less of an issue than the portrayals of the African people in broad, extremely cartoonish strokes. They’re either spear-carrying natives marveling at having their photos taken, anonymous, militant, machine-gun-toting killers or a shady pilot who makes some offhand joke about beating his wife.

The underwritten characters extend to Katt and Young. Both fresh off career highs — Katt  for TV’s The Greatest American Hero, Young for Blade Runner — they’re unable to forge much chemistry together here. Young’s Susan is meant to be a hotshot paleontologist of some sort, but there’s barely any recognition of this. Instead she gets to play the requisite dame to Katt’s sportswriter George, who is a completely charmless, perfunctory tag-a-long type who comes alive only when the script calls for him to be kicked in the nuts or transform into a bike-riding Indiana Jones-aping hero. Horrible characters. (Interesting to compare this dynamic to the Jurassic World clip Joss Whedon recently called out for sexism; Hollywood, progressive as ever!).

It’s likely that anyone who has seen Baby will remember the movie most for its use of animatronics, along with miniatures and composite shots, to create the brontos. There are probably theme parks out there now with more convincing dinos than the ones here, but it helps to remember that this was well before Jurassic Park and CGI came along. The quality of the work, by Isidoro Raponi and Roland Tantin, varies. The wider shots fare better, whereas the mid-to-close-ups of Baby expose the penguin-waddling stiffness of its movements, the dead inexpressiveness of its eyes and the dull, paper-mache-like coat of its skin. That said, the animatronics, simply by being three-dimensional, make suspending disbelief much easier the uncanny valley eeriness of ropey CGI.

Oddly, the two sequences that stuck with me over the years aren’t the most traumatic. The latter occurs when Papa Bronto is shot down in bloody fashion by the African revolutionaries assisting McGoohan. It’s a death shocker on par with Bambi’s mum, upsetting to watch at any age. But the bits I recall fondly are played for easy laughs. The first features George’s awkward bonding moment with a tribe leader, who offers him something to drink. “This is absolute crap-o-ramma. Dead ants, live ants. I think I’m going to die!”, the culturally sensitive George blurts out. In return, George gives him a granola bar, which the leader then spits out sneakily, away from George’s view. The second is a goofy E.T.-influenced slapstick scene where Baby gets his head trapped in underpants, then yanks a tent through a stream with George and Susan giving chase. LOL, I guess.

Not even the presence of skilled veteran pros like DP John Alcott (2001: A Space Odyssey) and composer Jerry Goldsmith (whose punchy score is one of the best things about the film) on board can salvage this mess. Maybe profound stuff for anyone between the ages of 1 and 10, Baby: Secret of the Lost Legend is just a stale, curious, magnificent misfire, a valuable textbook lesson on how not to make a dinosaur movie.

Stan Winston. Dick Smith. Tom Savini. Rob Bottin. There’s a reason why these names are recognisable to you movie geeks out there. It’s because they’re artists. Undisputed masters of the special effects makeup field. These guys are responsible for some of the most unforgettable, influential scenes and creations in cinema.

Today you’d be hard-pressed to reel off a similar list of names for digital effects. Who are the rock stars of contemporary CGI? WETA? Yep — just large companies who employ hundreds of anonymous drones to click copy + paste all day. I’m exaggerating of course, and yes I know, CGI can be a fantastic, brilliantly useful tool. But what the current over-reliance on digital effects means is that the painstaking artistry of these seasoned craftsmen is a thing of the past.

The most recent casualty of this “industry standard” is Rick Baker, who announced last month that he would be retiring. “I like to do things right, and they wanted cheap and fast,” he said. “That is not what I want to do, so I just decided it is basically time to get out.” For the 64-year-old makeup artist — who’s worked on everything from Star Wars to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” music video to Men in Black — to throw his hands up, as if in defeat, is a bummer for fans of practical effects (and ironic too, given the current spotlight around the non-CGI effects work of Mad Max: Fury Road).

Baker’s achievements are wide-ranging and consistently stellar, even in abysmal movies like Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake. But here are five films he worked on that I’d consider both as favourites and key to appreciating his art…

AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON

Baker would return to the werewolf several times in his career (the short-lived TV series Werewolf, Wolf, The Wolfman), thanks to his ground-breaking work on John Landis’ enduring 1981 horror-comedy classic An American Werewolf in London. Brought to life by 30 technicians over a torturous 6-day shoot, the sequence in which star David Naughton first metamorphoses into the hairy beast of the title lavished Baker with attention (he received his first Oscar) and holds up astonishingly well today. It still looks bloody agonising. The hair growth. The stretching of the limbs and torso. The sprouting of the snout. Baker told Naughton, “I feel sorry for you”, and you can see why all up there on screen. Griffin Dunne’s deep facial and jugular gashes are pretty good too.

VIDEODROME

David Cronenberg’s staggeringly prescient 1983 sci-fi horror masterpiece Videodrome is still perhaps Baker’s most unusual project to date. For a tale that posits how images can alter the mind and body, it’s only fitting that the effects would too convey an intense, organic physicality. It’s the perfect marriage of form and content. CGI, a non-tactile discipline, would not have been as effective. Despite a tight budget and schedule, Cronenberg gave Baker plenty of freedom to come up with what would eventually become iconic imagery in the Canadian auteur’s filmography: throbbing videotapes, vein-popping television sets, the “cancer gun”, the vaginal cavity in James Woods’ stomach. Absolutely visceral stuff all round, a major contribution to the film’s hallucinatory vibe.

HARRY AND THE HENDERSONS

This goofy family-friendly take on Bigfoot may not be a particularly great movie, but of all his designs, Baker has called Harry his “proudest”. It’s an interesting word, in that it speaks to practical effects as a process almost akin to giving birth to a baby. It’s easier to be emotionally invested in a character you’ve created when you can actually see it in the flesh. Likewise, the three-dimensional presence has an immediacy that helps communicate Harry’s endearing personality to the actors, who have something real to play off on set rather than a green screen nothing that’ll be filled in later. Predator actor Kevin Peter Hall, who donned the Harry suit, is blessed with expressive eyes, but Baker and his team add spectacular dimension to the creature with their skillful, radio-controlled lip-and-brow movements. Another Oscar winner.

GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH

Baker initially turned down the offer to work on this, seeing as he wasn’t the creatures’ original creator, but came on board when writer/director Joe Dante said he could design a whole bunch of new gremlins. And many new gremlins there were. Mutant spider gremlins, bat gremlins, a brain-hormone-enhanced gremlin, a gremlin bride. It looked like Baker had a blast making this, pulling out all the stops in the goo department. The thing that strikes me about Gremlins 2 now — other than the fact that Dante made of the most deranged sequels of all time — is that when you see the hundreds of rubber latex gremlins packing the frame during the climax, it’s a hell of a lot more impressive than those large scale CGI battle/disaster scenes that are the norm for modern blockbusters.

ED WOOD

There’s something moving and beautifully personal about Baker’s transformation of Martin Landau into Bela Lugosi for Tim Burton’s affectionate biopic of legendary bad film director Ed Wood. As a child who grew up idolising Jack Pierce, the makeup artist best known for his work on the classic Universal monster movies, Baker considered this job a labor of love he would’ve worked on for free. Landau’s performance is an uncanny delight, and Baker’s subtle facial augmentations — larger ears, a cleft chin, bushy eyebrows — no doubt emboldened the actor to deliver the best portrayal of Lugosi he could. A rare example of ageing make-up that isn’t too overdone and looks just “right”.

Boxing movies, by design, are some of the dramatically predictable movies around. They tend to follow the same narrative arcs, drumming up conflict through rivalries, hardships, physical trauma, mentor/protege relationships and crime elements such as match-fixing. Unlike the martial arts genre, which has the benefit of varying fight styles and applying itself to other non-tournament-based scenarios, a boxing movie will almost always end with two sets of fists duking it out in the ring. That said, all these limitations do actually make the genre somewhat endearing to me. I just can’t resist an underdog boxing his way to the top, over and over and over again. To mark the forthcoming release of the Jake Gyllenhaal bash-fest Southpaw, here are five boxing flicks that might have slipped your radar and definitely should be better known (I’ve gone for “pure” boxing, so no MMA stuff included):

CHAMPION

The ‘40s produced at least three similar noir-inflected boxing movies: Body and Soul, The Set-Up, and my personal favourite, Champion. Starring the then-rising Kirk Douglas in a powerful, breakthrough Oscar-nominated performance, this 1949 Stanley Kramer production is a classic rags-to-riches tale, charting the ascent of an impoverished drifter named Midge Kelly to prizefighting star. In the process, he screws everyone around him, including his gimp-legged brother (Arthur Kennedy), former manager (Paul Stewart) and three (!) prospective love interests (Ruth Roman, Marilyn Maxwell, Lola Albright). The boxing scenes might not pack as hefty a punch anymore, but the film’s real power comes from its cautionary, uncompromising depiction of a soul tragically consumed by money and fame. The scene where Douglas reveals his true greedy nature to Albright is quite horrifying to watch. Expertly directed by Val Lewton vet Mark Robson, with ace cinematography by Franz Planer, who bathes the film in an patina of fatalistic, German-expressionist gloom.

STREETS OF GOLD

Here’s a boxing pic that probably no one remembers. Okay, Streets of Gold (1986) is no life-changing classic; it was the first directorial effort for producer Joe Roth, who went on to do by-the-numbers pablum like Revenge of the Nerds II and Christmas with the Kranks. But it’s a modest and very likeable movie, driven by Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer’s terrific, magnetic turn as Alek Neuman, an ex-Soviet boxing legend who’s now washing dishes in Brooklyn when he’s not coaching a pair of brash, hot-headed amateur boxers (Adrian Pasdar, Wesley Snipes).

The film doesn’t give the latter two enough room to develop their relationship, which goes from hostile enemies to training buddies far too quickly. But Streets of Gold is still one of the more enjoyable entries from the sub-Rocky pile, distinguishing itself whenever it spends time with Neuman’s Russian immigrant community. Great uplifting synth score by Jack Nitzsche.

KIDS RETURN

Kids Return (1996) doesn’t seem to get as much attention as Takeshi Kitano’s other works like Sonatine and Hana-Bi, but there’s no reason why it shouldn’t — it’s a real gem. The first film he made after his near-fatal motorcycle accident, it’s a beautiful coming-of-age story that marries boxing and yakuza genres, although there’s visibly more focus on the boxing side. Masanobu Ando and Ken Kaneko play two high school pranksters who end up forging different career paths: one as a boxer, the other as a gangster.

Kids Return might be of interest to boxing movie fans because of Kitano’s deadpan, stripped-down approach, which results in a film that doesn’t feel quite like any other in the genre. He allows those static wide shots play out in longer takes than normal, and while viewers seeking fist-pumping excitement may not be served well, his style manages to convey the gripping experience of being in the ring. A boxer’s journey packaged in a nostalgic, rueful, ambling look at the pressures and disappointments of impending adulthood.

DIGGSTOWN

James Woods at his wheelin’-and-dealin’ oily best as a conman. Louis Gossett Jr. completely badass as an over-the-hill boxer brought out of retirement. Bruce Dern being an utter no-good scumbag. An awesome twist ending. There’s little not to love about Michael Ritchie’s Diggstown (1992), maybe one of the most under-appreciated movies of the ‘90s. Part caper, part boxing flick, this fast-paced, rousing film hinges on a ridiculous scam: a 48-year-old boxer taking on 10 younger contenders in a span of 24 hours.

Ritchie balances a lightly comic touch and pulp grittiness that’s not always easy to pull off; there are some moments when small-town bigotry rears its ugly head to surprisingly nasty consequences. Solid fun watching Woods and Dern trying to outsmart each other, and of course, Gossett Jr. pummeling a bunch of dudes. If not for the way Heather Graham’s character vanishes without a trace in the last third, Diggstown would be a knockout.

HOMEBOY

Revisiting Homeboy (1988) today, it’s revealing to see how much it has informed Mickey Rourke’s comeback role in The Wrestler. Penned by Rourke — a boxing enthusiast — under the pseudonym “Eddie Cook”, this atmospheric downer captures Fat City’s broken-down milieu more than any other boxing film. Rourke’s stardom was on the decline by the time this came out, and his role as Johnny Walker, a shy, slow-witted misfit who’s too old to be boxing, plays to that faded, bruised aura wonderfully. Christopher Walken is typically excellent as a flamboyant, bright-suited promoter who befriends Walker in the hopes of employing him in a heist subplot that’s a little silly.

Occasionally, Homeboy, with its melancholy Eric Clapton/Michael Kamen score, evokes a lost Walter Hill/Ry Cooder collaboration — and that’s a good thing. A one-film wonder from Wellington-born cinematographer Michael Seresin (Sleeping Dogs, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes).

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is just around the corner, and we know quite a few of you are planning your own Star Wars marathons before seeing Episode VII. But why bother watching the movies you’ve probably already seen when you can dive into an unseen galaxy of enjoyable Star Wars knock-offs? Our expert movie gem-finder Aaron Yap has dusted off five outstanding wannabes to watch.

Sure, some of these Star Wars clones reach a whole new universe of terrible, but they are all far more entertaining than a re-watch of Attack of the Clones.

MESSAGE FROM SPACE

The idea of a “Star Wars rip-off” is kinda ironic, given that it’s no secret that George Lucas himself has borrowed plenty from masters like Akira Kurosawa and John Ford for his iconic blockbuster space opera. But when you watch something like Kinji Fukasaku’s bald-faced 1978 imitation Message from Space, there’s really no other way to put it.

This film might not be my favourite of all the knock-offs, but definitely leads the trend – and not just because it’s one of the earliest out the gate to steal bits wholesale (the Death Star trench run is practically restaged here). In a move unthinkable today, the producers got the Japanese government to delay the release of Star Wars for a whole year, so that Message from Space could reach local audiences first!

Production-wise, it’s totally inferior to Lucas’ film, mounted with half the budget, as evident in the charmingly unconvincing miniature work. The plot is a bit of mess, about eight “chosen ones” brought together by glowing walnuts to defeat an evil, steel-skinned emperor, or something like that. But Message from Space isn’t without some colourful camp value – it’s impossible to hate a film that has Sonny Chiba as a space samurai and Vic Morrow a whiskey-swilling retired general sporting a pimpin’ fur-collared coat.

STARCRASH

The same year saw B-movie king Roger Corman release the lovably goofy, gloriously bad Starcrash. Directed by Italo hack Luigi Cozzi, who later made the Alien rip-off Contamination, this spaghetti sci-fi cheapie cranks up the pulpy Flash Gordon-esque kitsch.

The cast is amazing: character actor Joe Spinell hamming it up as a villain named Count Zarth Arn, young David Hasselhoff in a shield mask that shoots lasers, Bond girl Caroline Munro prancing around with very little on, former child evangelist Marjoe Gortner playing a clairvoyant, light-saber-wielding alien who can bring back the dead… Then there’s Amazon women on horseback, fugly troglodytes, a stop-motion-animated giant that looks like a Ray Harryhausen cast-off, a C-3PO-type police robot with a Texan accent, plus the whole thing is lit up like a gaudy Christmas tree.

For pure trashy goodness, Starcrash is the Star Wars knock-off to beat.

THE BLACK HOLE

Long, long before Disney acquired Lucasfilm, they wanted their own Star Wars-style hit, so cashed in with this supremely odd duck in 1979.

The Black Hole marked a couple of historical moments for the company: it was their first PG-rated movie and most expensive production to date. Described by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson as the “least scientifically accurate movie of all time”, this one’s a real trip, following a space crew (Anthony Perkins, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Forster, Yvette Mimieux, Joseph Bottoms) who discover mysterious mad scientist Maximilian Schell living with a bunch of creepy robots in a reportedly missing ship near the black hole.

Clunky pacing and dialogue aside, there’s a lot of entertainment here for lovers of weird ‘70s flicks (e.g. Mimieux communicates telepathically with a cute, Roddy McDowall-voiced robot called V.I.N.CENT). The sets are cool, some of the effects, including work by legendary matte artist Peter Ellenshaw, hold up extremely well, and the nightmarish, cryptic, psychedelic finale is actually mind-blowing, especially for a movie aimed towards children. As with Starcash, John Barry does a great John Williams score.

BATTLE BEYOND THE STARS

Feeding back into the Japanese influence of Star Wars, this 1980 Corman flick fashions itself as an interstellar Seven Samurai… or depending how you want to look at it, The Magnificent Seven in outer space.

Although corny as hell, Battle Beyond the Stars stands out from rest of its ilk thanks to the affectionate, sincere tone of John Sayles’ script. The ragtag characterisations of the mercenaries are pretty fun, ranging from recognisably human (Robert Vaughn’s on-the-run assassin, George Peppard’s hot-dog-grilling space cowboy) to extraterrestrial (Morgan Woodward’s lizard mutant, Earl Boen’s all-white third-eye clone) to, um, out-of-time buxom viking (Sybill Danning, with an unbelievable battle-bra). Clearly low-budget in all areas, but also clear that Corman made the most of it. James Cameron built all the ship models.

TURKISH STAR WARS

There’s cheap… and there’s The Man Who Saved the World, otherwise more fondly known to the cult film world as Turkish Star Wars.

From a legal standpoint, this astoundingly inept cine-insanity would give George Lucas a fatal hernia, seeing how much it actually steals. And when I say “steal”, I don’t mean recreating similar scenes – I mean STEAL. John Williams’ score is heard all over the show, and the opening prologue contains FOOTAGE from Star Wars! A typical shot you’ll see is of star Cüneyt Arkın wearing a helmet, and then some projected shots of X-wings flying in the background. This thing is almost home-movie sweded-level.

Okay, the plot doesn’t resemble Star Wars so much – even in English fan-subtitled versions, it’s incomprehensible. But it’s so loaded with crazy WTF action, including a cantina sequence filled with choppy kung fu fighting and furry monsters, it doesn’t matter. Turkish Star Wars feels like it was made in a parallel universe using entirely different cinematic language, and therefore must be seen.

As the year begins to draw to a close, year-end best-of lists are all over the place. We’ve got one coming too (after seeing the seventh instalment of a long-running series. Yes, Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood). Before we get to that, though, here’s Aaron Yap with another round-up of films he discovered this year, spanning genres and decades between ‘em.

Open Season — Another one ticked off the extremely-difficult-to-see-for-years list! This disturbing 1974 exploitation gem from The Italian Job director Peter Collinson combines a The Most Dangerous Game-type premise, rape-revenge Straw Dogs / backwoods Deliverance vibes with post-Vietnam malaise. Peter Fonda, John Phillip Law and Richard Lynch are all perfectly unpleasant as war pals who decide to prey on an adulterous couple (Alberto de Mendoza, Cornelia Sharpe) instead of deer. Not terribly graphic but maintains a queasy tone throughout. Would love to see someone like Vinegar Syndrome give this deluxe Blu-ray treatment.

Haemoo — Missed this Korean pic on the big screen at this year’s film festival but caught up with it on Madman’s DVD. As far as recent nautical thrillers about desperate seafarers driven to extreme measures go, it’s a more interesting effort than Black Sea, and definitely a lot darker and perverse. Didn’t expect all the raw sex and that mad tonal shift. Based on a true human trafficking story.

The Harvest – This 2013 DTV chiller seemed to come out of when I stumbled upon it — a bit of a surprise given the pedigree. Directed by John McNaughton (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer), it’s a slow-burn psychological horror featuring Michael Shannon at his most normal (!) and Samantha Morton at her loopiest as parents going to great lengths to care for their sick child. Uneven but likeably low-key. Natasha Calis and Charlie Tahan give two of the best performances from young actors I’ve seen this year.

SPL 2: A Time for Consequences — In-name-only sequel to the 2005 Donnie Yen movie. Over-plotted, utterly berserk actioner, with an actually decent Tony Jaa performance, a long-take prison riot worth the price of admission alone and plenty of brutal smackdowns. If you need a HK analog for Mad Max: Fury Road, this comes close to matching its wall-to-wall insanity.

Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles — Spurred on by the death of Belgian auteur Chantal Akerman in October, I finally sat down with her near-four-hour seminal feminist masterwork. On paper, it’s always seemed too daunting to casually engage with, not something you’d just want to watch for hell of it. But Akerman’s study of a single mum’s routine over the course of three days revealed itself to be a tremendously hypnotic and rich experience, austere minimalist filmmaking with expansive, deeply emotional layers. Scenes unfold in uninterrupted, real-time takes, and the slightest change in Dielman’s routine often proved seismic, with the power to make one shudder and gasp. Delphine Seyrig is incredible.

The Ice House — A fine piece of cinematic slime from Something Weird’s vaults, and a must for fans of gimmicky movies starring real-life twins. This 1969 sleaze-fest tells the sweet story of an ice factory worker who goes homicidal and murders women every time he SEES booze (he doesn’t even need to drink it). Awesome twist: his twin brother is the cop investigating the murders. Grubby trash best viewed after midnight.

The Seven-Per-Cent Solution — Really wonderful Sherlock Holmes film based on Nicholas Meyer’s novel where the legendary sleuth (Nicol Williamson) is in the throes of coke addiction and Dr. Watson (Robert Duvall) hatches a plan to get him straight with the help of Sigmund Freud (Alan Arkin). Smart script, spirited performances, eye-catching Viennese locations make this a lively, delightful adventure-mystery that deserves to be better known. Duvall and his English accent as Watson is initially a bit off but grew on me. Cool train-top sword fight at the end.

Temple Grandin — This excellent 2010 HBO movie was nominated for a bunch of Emmys, including a Best Actress win for Claire Danes, but it seems all Danes is synonymous with these days is Homeland so I’m giving it a little push. Don’t let the made-for-TV-biopic appearance put you off. She’s so freaking good in this, playing an autistic woman who developed revolutionary humane practices for animal slaughterhouses. Moving and inspirational but not in any sappy way.

The Age of Adaline – Of all the films here, this is the least likely I’d have expected to include. The premise is exceptionally goofy: a woman born in 1908 who is unable to age past age 29 after a freak accident. Director Lee Toland Krieger probably plays it too straight to a fault, but the casting of Blake Lively works. Though no stellar actress, she projects a luminous, ethereal trapped-in-amber presence that ultimately compensates for her lack of range. On the surface the earnest magic-realist elements are comparable to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button but the movie reminded me more of William Dieterle’s haunting 1948 romantic fantasy Portrait of Jennie.

Down in the Valley — Whatever the heck happened to David Jacobson? The guy showed so much promise with Dahmer and this, but he seems to have vanished into DTV land. I was bowled over by his work here; some true chops on display, directed like someone on the verge of becoming the next P.T. Anderson. A better modern-day Badlands riff than David Lowery’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, with an exceptional on-point cast that’ll remind you how good Edward Norton and Evan Rachel Wood can be. There appears to be two cuts around: the longer cut viewed suffers from third-act pacing issues, curious how the shorter one plays.

Gallipoli — Probably needs no introduction… When is Peter Weir going to get his due?? Just loved the affecting, textured, compassionate emphasis on friendship rather than the blood-and-guts of warfare. A beautiful, devastating piece of anti-war cinema.

An Honest Liar – Captivating, compelling story about veteran magician James “The Amazing” Randi and his crusade to expose fake psychics, evangelists etc. The doco itself has a few tricks up its sleeve so I won’t say too much except this ends up way more poignant and special than expected. One hell of a character.

Unfriended — A slasher movie called Unfriended that takes place entirely on Skype, Facebook, Gmail, etc. Sounds crap right? Surprisingly not. Standard plot about dead girl possibly taking revenge on her tormentors, but I found it a fairly creepy, engrossing watch, and was impressed by how much suspense it pulled from the limited spectacle of people exchanging conversations on the internet. Gets bonus points for looking and sounding like an authentic social media world. It feels far more real than the similarly gimmicky Open Windows anyway.

Unbeatable — This HK/Chinese MMA drama about a debt-stricken former champ (Nick Cheung) training up a younger, upcoming fighter (Eddie Peng) has its share of boxing movie cliches (Rocky, Million Dollar Baby et al) but still manages to spin a solid, irresistibly entertaining character-driven tale with strong performances and exciting action. Reminiscent of Warrior.

In Fear — A great example of a low-budget horror maximising its stripped-down set-up for full effect. Sometimes all you need is a car, a couple, and a long, windy dark road in Ireland. The extended stretches of uneventful driving may drive you batty, but it really worked for me, and added to the thickening dread and disorientation. Most effective when writer/director Jeremy Lovering allows the viewer’s imagination to wander as much as possible.

Croupier – Stylish, sharp, super-sleek British gambling noir from Mike Hodges weaves a transfixing mood, with ice-cool, essential performance by Clive Owen as an aspiring writer drawn into casino underworld. A ‘90s sleeper must.

‘Doc’ — Even by the standards of dark ‘70s revisionist westerns, Frank Perry’s deglamourised telling of the O.K. Corral gunfight is unremittingly downbeat and dreary. And, of course, I’m all over it. There’s not a shred of Wild West romanticism to be found here. Slow-boil story stays focused on famed titular gunslinger, superbly played by Stacy Keach; portrayal of his friend Wyatt Earp (Harris Yulin) is less flattering than usually presented in other films.

Murphy’s War — Kind of like a WWII version of Moby Dick. Lean script by Stirling Silliphant, thrilling aerial sequences, Peter O’Toole fantastic as an Irish sailor going a little batshit in a personal mission to kill the German U-boat Nazis who sunk his ship and massacred his crew. Beautiful on-location lensing in Venezuela by ace DP Douglas Slocombe.

Punisher: War Zone — Been aware of this movie’s cult following for quite some time now, and it didn’t disappoint. Absurdly ultra-violent, sublimely over-the-top comic book actioner. Someone needs to give Lexi Alexander more work pronto.

Strange Invaders – Huge fan of Michael Laughlin’s 1981 horror Dead Kids. This underrated follow-up isn’t nearly as good, but still a fun, loving homage to 1950s sci-fi, with a similar gauzy, dream-like feel and neat practical effects.

Man-Trap — Enjoyable late-cycle crime-noir about two Korean war vets (David Janssen, Jeffrey Hunter) involved in caper plot. Notable for being the only film directed by actor Edmond O’Brien. Worth watching for Stella Stevens’ wild, histrionic performance.

Bug — Produced and co-penned by William Castle, this is one of the weirder nature-runs-amok movies of the ‘70s. Starts off an eco-thriller featuring roaches taking over a small town, halfway in shifts gears and turns into descent-into-madness psychodrama with Bradford Dillman cranking up the crazy as entomologist too attached to his creepy crawlies. Some arresting visuals from veteran TV director Jeannot Szwarc, particularly during the stunning bug-pocalyptic finale.

The Search for Weng Weng — Andrew Leavold’s passion project is both a fascinating look into the history of the Filipino film industry and an affectionate quest to unearth its most elusive, enigmatic figure, Weng Weng, a two-and-a-half foot actor who starred in cheap James Bond knock-offs. Highly recommended for anyone who wants to dive into the more obscure corners of world cinema.

Honeymoon – Eerie, overlooked little indie horror starring Harry Treadaway (Penny Dreadful) and Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones) as newlyweds whose marriage goes off the rails in rather squirmy fashion. A great bad first date movie.

A Coffee in Berlin — Evocatively shot black-and-white slacker romp following day in the life of a soul-searching college dropout (Niko Fischer). Clear echoes of Allen, Jarmusch, Baumbach. Sounds more insufferable than it is. Nothing much happens, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like much at all, but stays with you at the end.

Rubberneck — The cranky barista from Girls attempts ‘90s-style stalker thriller. Quietly chilling and creepy, well-done on a micro-budget. Karpovsky knows which buttons to push.

The Secret Fury — Lovers of noirs with convoluted, preposterous plots will dig this 1950 film directed by actor Mel Ferrer. Someone is trying to drive Claudette Colbert crazy by claiming, on her wedding day, that she is already married. Baffling premise gets entertainingly overwrought treatment. Nice change-of-pace role for Robert Ryan.

Life Partners — Engaging performances from Leighton Meester and Gillian Jacobs highlight this unassuming, bittersweet comedy about female friendship slowly drifting apart. Maybe the best of its type since Ghost World? You can be forgiven for thinking it’s just another generic chick flick but there’s definitely more here than meets the eye.

Wetlands — Heartfelt, amusing, totally icky. It has anal fissures, bodily fluids and close-ups of pubes and stuff.

The Haunting of Julia — Beautiful, elegant ‘70s ghost story, dripping with melancholy. On par with Don’t Look Now IMHO. Mia Farrow in top form.

All the Light in the Sky — I went through a brief phase of binging on Joe Swanberg’s films this year. He’s pretty hit-and-miss, unsurprising given his crazily prolific output, but everything he does is interesting. This one stood out. There’s been a lot of talk about the lack of great women’s roles in cinema recently. Just watch the amazing Jane Adams in this delicately human and naturalistic character study. Something for Hollywood to aspire to.

Oculus — A killer mirror movie that actually doesn’t blow. Solid shocks, mind-bending twists. A better-than-average supernatural spooker to rival Robert Hamer’s The Haunted Mirror from the Ealing Studios omnibus classic Dead of Night.

Lawman — Somewhat forgotten Michael Winner western from ‘71 starring Burt Lancaster in an outstanding performance as steely marshal going up against cattle baron Lee J. Cobb and his boys. Gripping, punchy examination of the morally grey areas between law and justice.

We Are What We Are — Haven’t seen the Mexican original but this remake by Jim Mickle is one of the most exquisitely crafted American horror movies of the last few years. Mickle is going places.

Terror at the Mall — HBO doco on the 2013 Westgate shopping mall terrorist attack in Kenya. Footage assembled from 100s of CCTV cameras. Just harrowing and stomach-churning, almost unwatchable. Hands down the most terrifying thing I’ve seen all year.

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg — The perfect post-New Year’s hangover movie. Beguiling, enchanting, gorgeous Jacques Demy masterpiece. It’ll make your heart burst. I might watch this every January 1st from now on.

Black Moon — If you can set aside the indefensible, politically incorrect depictions of natives for a sec, this Columbia Pre-Code curio from 1934 is a Val Lewton-like fever dream wonder. On a purely technical level, it’s marvelous, with taut, pacey direction by Roy William Neill (of the Basil Rathbone/Sherlock Holmes films) and strikingly atmospheric cinematography by Joseph August. Dorothy Burgess is terrific as Juanita Perez Lane, a woman drawn back to the island where she was born by a voodoo curse. Fay Wray plays her secretary who joins her on the trip. The thumping tribal drum score will leave you in a trance.