• Avery Crounse – Eyes of Fire (1983)

    1981-1990Avery CrounseFantasyUSAWestern

    This is a story of Protestant pioneers, a single family that travels into the wilderness following the prophetic misguidance of a single man whose desires outweigh his prudence. At the height of the witch terrors, this historical horror is more accurate than many another film, and does not overstretch its portrayals to suit audience expectation.Read More »

  • Paul Morrissey – Blood for Dracula (1974)

    1971-1980CultHorrorItalyPaul MorrisseyQueer Cinema(s)

    Synopsis:
    Udo Kier is without a doubt the sickliest of vampires in any director’s interpretation of the Bram Stoker tale. Count Dracula knows that if he fails to drink a required amount of pure virgin’s [pronounced “wirgin’s”] blood, it’s time to move into a permanent coffin. His assistant (Renfield?) suggests that the Count and he pick up his coffin and take a road trip to Italy, where families are known to be particularly religious, and therefore should be an excellent place to search for a virgin bride. They do, only to encounter a family with not one, but FOUR virgins, ready for marriage. The Count discovers one-by-one that the girls are not as pure as they say they are, meanwhile a handsome servant/Communist begins to observe strange behaviour from the girls who do spend the night with the Count. It’s a race for Dracula to discover who’s the real virgin, before he either dies from malnourishment or from the wooden stake of the Communist!Read More »

  • David Lean – Blithe Spirit (1945)

    1941-1950ComedyDavid LeanFantasyScrewball ComedyUnited Kingdom

    Synopsis:
    An English mystery novelist invites a medium to his home, so she may conduct a séance for a small gathering. The writer hopes to gather enough material for the book he’s working on, as well as to expose the medium as a charlatan. However, proceedings take an unexpected turn, resulting in a chain of supernatural events being set into motion that wreak havoc on the man’s present marriage.Read More »

  • Tun Fei Mou – Hei tai yang: Nan Jing da tu sha AKA Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre (1995)

    1991-2000Hong KongHorrorTun Fei MouWar

    Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre is an uncompromising portrayal of the war crimes perpetrated by the Japanese Imperial Army upon the Chinese military and civilian population of Nanking during the occupation of the city. Hailed by critics as one of the most disturbing films ever released, Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre is unflinching in its depiction of the barbaric cruelty with which the occupying army raped, pillaged and terrorized the defeated populace.Read More »

  • Rollan Sergiyenko – Belye tuchi AKA Bili Khmary AKA White Clouds (1968)

    1961-1970DramaRollan SergienkoUkraine

    Quote:
    THE LOST MASTERPIECE OF SOVIET CINEMA

    Belye Tuchi – or as it should be called, Bili Khmary – is a movie that has somehow got lost and is now all but forgotten. The title is usually translated into English as White Clouds but it’s really closer to something like “the dark clouds are coming” but any translation will be miss the correct subtle meaning. The movie was directed by the Ukrainian Rollan Serhiienko, although IMDb mistakenly lists him as Sergiyenko. He was better known as a documentary film maker and later made the award winning Bell of Chernobyl. His career as a feature film director only produced two movies of which this is the best.Read More »

  • Svetla Tsotsorkova – Sestra AKA Sister (2019)

    2011-2020BulgariaDramaSvetla Tsotsorkova

    Quote:
    In a small town in present-day Bulgaria, a mother and her two daughters are struggling to survive. The dreamy and distracted younger daughter often invents stories to make life more interesting. Unwittingly, she eventually gets caught in a web of her own lies and destroys her older sister’s well-ordered materialistic world. While struggling to get to the facts, the two sisters find out the truth about their mother.Read More »

  • Robert A. Stemmle – Berliner Ballade AKA The Berliner (1948)

    Comedy1941-1950GermanyMusicalRobert A. Stemmle

    In Berliner Ballade, Gert Froebe makes his screen debut as Otto, a feckless Everyman who tries to adjust to the postwar travails of his defeated nation. Stymied by black-market profiteers and government bureaucrats, Otto begins fantasizing about a happier life at the end of that ever-elusive rainbow.Read More »

  • Dan Curtis – Trilogy of Terror (1975)

    1971-1980Dan CurtisHorrorTVUSA

    Synopsis:
    Three horror anthology stories of tormented women. In the first story, Julie Eldridge is a sexually-repressed college teacher who is blackmailed by one of her students for a past indiscretion in which she played an unwilling part. But the student is unaware that Julie plots to turn the tables on him the first chance she gets. In the second story, Millicent Larimore is a plain-looking, almost reclusive woman who lives with her amoral twin sister Therese whom delights in tormenting her. However, only their doctor who visits from time to time knows the real thing behind the scene. In the final story, Amelia in a solo horror story monologue is a mother-dominated woman who buys an African Zuni fetish doll for her latest boyfriend in which the doll comes to life and terrorizes her in her own apartment.Read More »

  • Zivojin Pavlovic – Neprijatelj (1965)

    1961-1970DramaYugoslaviaYugoslavian Cinema under TitoZivojin Pavlovic

    Quote:
    At the time when Sovražnik (1965) was filmed , Živojin Pavlović had only two omnibuses that he made with colleagues from the Belgrade Cinema Club, Kapi, vode, ratnici and Grad . The latter was banned by the court, as the only Yugoslav film of that period (produced by the Sarajevo Sutjeska film) to suffer such a fate. It was much more common for a controversial film to end up in the producer’s “bunker” and for permission to be shown at all. This is how Pavlović’s first feature film Return (1964), produced in Belgrade’s Avala Film, went through , and in the meantime he received an offer to direct in Slovenia: he and writer Bora Ćosić adapted FM Dostoevsky’s story, but adapted it to modern times.Read More »

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