Subway Riders is an epic NoWave/NY noir-melodrama,
in which a nocturnal saxophonist morphs into a bewitching
serial killer. With transcendant performances by John Lurie,
Cookie Mueller, Glenn O’ Brien, Robbie Coltrane, Bill Rice,
Charli Kaleina, Emilio Cubera and Susan Tyrrell, it captures
the colorful junkie landscape of downtown Manhattan in the
late 70’s with fearless bravado.
– Amos Poe-
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Synopsis:
Hidden in the bushes along the river bank, a woman’s body is found severed into six parts. Homicide forensics expert KANG is called into investigation, eventually arresting environmentalist fanatic LEE as the main suspect. Meanwhile, KANG heads to the airport to pick up his daughter who hasn’t been back in Korea for 10 years. A stranger, supposedly ordered by LEE, gives KANG an envelope filled with pictures of his petrified daughter held captive. KANG goes to meet LEE believing the river bank murder case is involved with his daughter’s kidnapping. In order to save his daughter, LEE tells KANG to release him within 3 days, pushing KANG into an impossible fork in the road.Read More »
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This miniseries based on the Fantomas novels of Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, takes the Fantomas character back to his sinister roots. After the comedic Andre Hunabelle films of the 60s, filmmakers Claude Charbrol and Juan Bunuel went back to the original books for their inspiration. The results are magnificent. The series is a reinvestigation of the pulp roots of the character, while infusing the surreal, dreamlike qualities that the original texts inspired in the works of Juan Gris, Rene Magritte and Luis Bunuel (who is referenced, along with Apollinaire, in the first episode.)Read More »
Synopsis: As early as 1937’s Young and Innocent, Alfred Hitchcock was beginning to repeat himself, but audiences didn’t mind so long as they were thoroughly entertaining-which they were, without fail. Derrick De Marney finds himself in a 39 Steps situation when he is wrongly accused of murder. While a fugitive from the law, De Marney is helped by heroine Nova Pilbeam, who three years earlier had played the adolescent kidnap victim in Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much. The obligatory “fish out of water” scene, in which the principals are briefly slowed down by a banal everyday event, occurs during a child’s birthday party. The actual villain, whose identity is never in doubt (Hitchcock made thrillers, not mysteries) is played by George Curzon, who suffers from a twitching eye. Curzon’s revelation during an elaborate nightclub sequence is a Hitchcockian tour de force, the sort of virtuoso sequence taken for granted in these days of flexible cameras and computer enhancement, but which in 1937 took a great deal of time, patience and talent to pull off. — Hal EricksonRead More »
The opening sequence of Zero Kelvin scrolls across a bleak, vast Norwegian wilderness that is virtually inhospitable for men and most beasts. This white, magnificent landscape exudes tremendous beauty, but it also represents death for those foolish enough to fight its dominance. What happens to a civilized human being when he spends enough time is this environment? In this tightly constructed character study, director Hans Petter Moland explores the effect of this land on the fragile human psyche.
Gard Eisvold is a restless, poor young writer living in Oslo who decides to get a little more worldly by joining an Arctic fur-trapping expedition. Leaving behind his girlfriend, Eisvold travels to Greenland, where he’s confronted with the dual harshness of the elements and his profane station-captain, played with brilliant malevolence by the great Stellan Skårsgard. The captain doesn’t take kindly to having a violin-playing, poetry-writing college boy around the cabin, and he begins to torture Eisvold in a cunning if none too subtle fashion. Soon, of course, they’re at each other’s throats despite each needing the other’s help to survive the wilderness.
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Sylvie Rousseau, a scientist working on a cancer vaccine, is informed by her brother Paul of the death of their father, Pierre-André, head of the world-leading armaments company Pax Industries. At first, the cause of death was believed to be an accident, but Sylvie learns that her father was instead pushed off a train by his colleague Walser. Seeking vengeance, she becomes a modern-day Electra, austere and energetic, acting in place of her brother, a weak and unwilling Orestes. But nothing goes according to plan.Read More »
A young mother of a ten month old baby (Sacha Hails) spends much time on her own, with her husband away on the mainland for an unspecified period of time. When a backpacker knocks at her door, asking if she can pitch her tent in the garden as the camping site is full, it provides some welcome relief from her solitude. Pretty soon, however, the backpacker (Marina De Van) is shown to have a sinister side to her…..Read More »
Synopsis/ Plot:
High school teacher Seiji Hasumi (Hideaki Ito) is the most popular teacher at his school with an attractive smile. Yet, Seiji Hasumi is a psychopath. To solve some of his school’s problems, like bullying, and to protect himself, Seiji begins to kill his students one by one.Read More »
synopsis
Oliver Stone’s first directorial effort for a major studio (and his second horror film after the 1974 Seizure) came shortly after the phenomenal success of Midnight Express, which was based on Stone’s Oscar-winning screenplay. The director turned to Mark Brandel’s obscure thriller “The Lizard’s Tail” as source material for what is essentially a silly psychosexual variant on low-budget horror films like The Crawling Hand. The title appendage belongs (for a while, anyway) to smug, conceited artist Joe Lansdale (Michael Caine), who owes his success to a popular comic strip featuring a macho, Conan-type hero. After Lansdale’s drawing hand is sheared off in a grisly car accident, his career, dignity, self-control and even his sanity soon begin to abandon him as well. His tenuous relationship with his wife Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) falls apart as she takes steps to improve her own self-worth — something she had never had the strength to do before the accident. Bitter and paranoid, Joe begins to lash out in anger at everyone around him … and becomes convinced that his severed hand has come back, wandering in fields and dark alleys and squeezing the life out of everyone it comes in contact with.Read More »