Category Features

August 23, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

Mike Mort’s infectiously fun mash-up of 80s action clichés and horror tropes has been a pet-project years in the making. Chuck Steel himself (imagine Dirty Harry without the sensitivity training) has been percolating with the writer/director since his teens.

The 14-minute short Chuck Steel: Raging Balls of Steel Justice played the festival circuit in 2013 and set the template for Steel’s feature debut. Lovingly detailed Claymation style stop-motion animation, violent splatter, unabashedly un-PC jokes broad enough that no-one should take to Twitter…!

We sat down with Mort to discuss the making of his glorious mash-up of Wallace and Gromit and Stallone’s Cobra. 

Rob Daniel: I had a blast with Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires...

August 22, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: One comment

Perhaps the most unusual film playing at FrightFest 2018 is Sam Ashurst’s singular directorial debut, Frankenstein’s Creature. Based on a one-man play by the film’s star James Swanton, it is a breathtaking experience.

Set in the ruins of an unnamed house and shot in a single, fixed take, this is the Frankenstein story as told exclusively from the Creature’s point of view.

Ashurst was good enough to give up a chunk of one Saturday afternoon to discuss his memorable creation. Being a working film critic, this meant a conversation steeped in movie knowledge. And if you like the below, we recommend you check out the Arrow Video podcast the director co-hosts with special effects artist Dan Martin.

It was a lengthy, rewarding conversation, ranging from the practicalities of shooting l...

August 20, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

Currently making an impact on the festival circuit, Jenn Wexler’s The Ranger is a horror home-run. When a gang of punks run foul of the law they flee to a cabin in the nearby woods. But soon discover the laws of nature are governed by a terrifying park ranger with a lethal zero tolerance policy on infractions.

Deftly working in elements of Green Room, The Blair Witch Project and Friday the 13^th, it rises above mere pastiche due to Wexler’s deft direction and great performances from Chloe Levine as the troubled Chelsea and Jeremy Holm, larger than life as the titular park official.

A horror movie producer for Glass Eye Pix, The Ranger is Wexler’s directorial debut...

July 25, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: One comment

The biggest monster in 2018 is my dear friend who has chosen to get married abroad this August Bank Holiday weekend.

Ahem, I jest. It is, of course, a privilege to be invited to his wedding. Plus, it means I shall spend the next 12 months catching up with the fantastic films listed below. An all-year-round FrightFest? There’s an idea…

Arrow Video FrightFest 2018 sees the festival entering a remarkable 19^th year, and showing no sign of easing up on the shocks, surprises, special guests and treats.

Located at Leicester Square’s Cineworld and Prince Charles Cinema, the celebration of shivers runs from Thursday 23^rd to Monday 27^th August.

Over these five days FrightFest will showcase a record breaking seventy movies from eighteen countries...

June 13, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

Pink Flamingos. Society. Ichi the Killer. The Sound of Music. Sometimes a film comes along so wild, weird, whacked-out and debauched, it sears itself into the brain forever.

Attack of the Adult Babies is such a cinematic experience.

A suburban family stumbles upon a world of privileged perversion in a palatial country manor house. Here they discover elite middle-aged men indulging in infantalised fetishism, and it’s all about to get murderously messy. Yet, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Wait until they get to the bottom of things.

The brain child (or baby) of Dominic Brunt and Joanne Mitchell, the team behind British horror flicks Before Dawn and Bait, and scriptwriter Paul Shrimpton, Attack of the Adult Babies is a film to witness in mouth-open disbelief...

June 10, 2018, Posted in  Features Comments: 2 comments

Watching Die Hard today could not be easier. Simply add it to your digital basket and chances are you’ll be watching it in under 24 hours. Or the very same day. In 4K Ultra-HD if you are so set-up.

But, things were different for us UK action junkies who were teenagers when the film was released. First up, as was the fashion of the time, despite a US release date of July 1988, we had to wait until February ’89.

Now it is a BBFC certificate 15 (although DVD extras push it to 18). Back then the film was an 18, meaning another wait for video later in the year and then persuading a parent the film was worth renting. The final hurdle, if you lived in rural Northamptonshire as I did, was that 10 VHS copies of Die Hard had to cater for a town of 10,000 people...

December 29, 2017, Posted in  Features Comments: One comment

Another year, another 10 movies that define why we love cinema. 2017 was such a strong year for film releases that many excellent movies failed to make our Top 10.

Honorary shout-outs then to such must-sees as Wind River, IT, Mother!, Una, A Silent Voice and Wonder Woman. Great movies all, all pipped to the post by the titles below.

Whatever brow-furrowing misbehaviour 2018 brings, one sliver of good news is that cinema should remain in fine shape. From what we saw at the London Film Festival in October, at least three five-star movies will be released next year.

But, without further ado, here is Electric Shadows’ 10 Best Films of 2017…

10. Brawl in Cell Block 99

Writer/director S...

October 11, 2017, Posted in  Features Comments: 2 comments

From Monday 16^th October to Wednesday 29^th November, the BFI Southbank will be showcasing the Sight and Sound Deep Focus season, Tears and Laughter: Women in Japanese Melodrama.

Exploring Japanese cinema’s Golden Age with a distinctly female focus, across thirteen films it features the great Japanese actresses from the 1940s to the early ‘60s and the emerging New Wave.

Audiences will be familiar with some of the directors included in the season, such as Yasujiro Ozu, Mikio Naruse and Kenji Mizoguchi. But, Tears and Laughter highlights the work of such legendary actresses as Setsuko Hara, Machiko Kyô, Hideko Takamine and the extraordinary Kinuyo Tanaka, the only woman who also directed films during the Golden Age.

As with other Sight and Sound Deep Focus seasons, this is an opportunit...

October 1, 2017, Posted in  Features Comments: No comments

For movie lovers, October is London Film Festival time. Specifically, Wednesday 4^th to Sunday 15^th October this year.

Now in its 61^st year, organisers have ditched including the number in the name, favouring the trendier sounding BFI London Film Festival 2017.

Whatever the moniker, the festival is guaranteed to deliver first rate films over 12 celluloid (and digital format) stuffed days.

While there are big hitters amongst the 242 films screening from a whopping 67 different countries, this year we’re most excited by the darker end of the festival.

Still present are the typical galas and strands. Andy Serkis’ directorial debut, Breathe, is the Opening Night Gala...

September 3, 2017, Posted in  Features Comments: 3 comments

Horror Channel FrightFest 2017 has come and gone. Like any good horror icon, it will be back. But, let us take time to reflect upon a suitably wild eighteenth year for the festival. For the first time we have decided to round-up FrightFest with a series of awards. Awards which we hope will provide a flavour of what FF 2017 was like. So, until FrightFest 2018…

BEST “INTRO & Q&A” AWARD– Jennifer Tilly, Cult of Chucky

“I’m here now, bitches!” If we learnt one thing at FrightFest 2017, it’s that an intro to a movie and said movie’s Q&A will go insane if Jennifer Tilly is in the room. A force of nature, when director Don Mancini was late announcing her she burst onstage with, “I have a thing about people starting without me. But, I’m here now, so continue Don, I would love ...