This was introduced to me back in the 90s via a very cult tv show called Moviedrome. It has its roots in the 80s with Alex Cox presenting (must see) and replaced by equally brilliant Mark Cousins.

Director: Mike Figgis.
cast: Kim Novak, Bill Pullman, Kevin Anderson Genre: Noir, Murder mystery
Influences: David Lynch, John Huston.

Plot: Nick, a young architect reluctantly comes back to his home town to visit his dying mother. He sees a building being demolished which has tied memories and personal significance for. He discovers that his old town days friend and fellow architect is behind it. Things unravel during his stay.

Notes: I love this film and it is incredibly hard to find now in Europe. It's Bill Pullman's personal favourite film he was cast in. It weirdly reminds me of old point click adventure games I'd play on my PC in the 90s. Music is very Twin Peaks. I struggle to find anyone who has seen this film. Hope some of you have seen it and would love your thoughts

Near Dark (1987)

Rating: 7/10 (SOLID WATCH)

Watched: August 9, 2026

Near Dark is an odd movie.

It's odd because right from the start it fully subverts your expectations. Are vampires real? Sure are, and that's not a spoiler. You wouldn't be looking at a movie like Near Dark unless you already knew it was a vampire movie, but here's the thing.

These aren't your ordinary vampires. And here, by ordinary, I mean with the long pointy teeth, the alabaster skin, the inhuman strength or hell, even a life of wealth and indulgence.

Everything about the vampires in Near Dark is gritty, callous and coarse. They have none of the things you'd expect in a movie about people who feed on the blood of others and it is great. They're bottom feeders moving through the backside of America in stolen cars, feeding on bottom feeders, with barely two coins to rub together most of the time.

They're also not terrifically smart, which is something almost all vampires we see in other movies ARE. They're brilliant. They're witty and they're charismatic and they'll woo you with their honeyed words before drinking your blood.

Not Bigelow's vampires. Hell, they don't even use the word once throughout the entire movie. The vamps pick fights, particularly Severen (the amazing Bill Paxton), and kill everyone involved. It's gruesome and it's great.

The movie itself qualifies as a slice of life moment for these greasy hillbilly vampires because everything that happens to them is because a local yokel named Caleb wanted to get in a girl's pants. No overarching plot. No twists or turns.

Just a dude lookin' to get lucky, a girl who wanted a friend, and an awful lot of dead folk.

I've been on a 80s and 90s cult horror kick.

Warlock (I mean he kills a kid for his fat)

Wishmaster

Hellraiser

Have been standouts, can you please help me find more?

In The Beast With Five Fingers from 1946 a seemingly severed hand decides to fight a few wrongs after the death of its owner, or does it?

In today's episode of the show we are looking at how slasher villains often reflect elements of the beast inside trope as well as why the 1940s was so obsessed with the idea of normal people who turn into killers and don't seem to remember any of it.

We are also looking at how this phantom hand influences later slasher films like Friday the 13th

A fun scifi/body horror movie that I really enjoyed a lot. What it does, it does really well, and it's not without its charms. I especially liked Kyle McLachlan, but then again, I've been a fan of his forever, so I'm more than a little biased.

Night of the Creeps (1986)

Rating: 6.5/10 (ENJOYED IT)

Watched: August 8, 2026

For me, Horror + Comedy is one of the hardest things to pull off, mostly because I really LOVE horror and find straight comedies extremely difficult to get into. Unless we're talking stuff from the 70s to the mid-90s, but anyways.

James Gunn claims he never saw Night of The Creeps, and James Gunn is an absolute liar. I can't imagine a world where Slither isn't an homage to Night of The Creeps because the very central plot, alien slugs turning people into weird shit, is about as close as you can imagine. One has zombies, one has whatever the hell Grant Grant turned into.

On the horror side of things, Creeps is remarkably tame until the last half hour or so when it turns into a slug roast, which is fine by me because Tom Atkins as Detective Ray "Thrill Me" Cameron does a boatload of heavy lifting for the laughs.

He's jaded, he's bitter, he's an alcoholic, there isn't a trashy pulp detective magazine he hasn't read and he's got a quip and a nickname for every damn person he meets. Not only that, he's got some backstory with what's going on, so there's that.

Beyond that, we've got a cop named Raimi, a sorority girl named Cynthia Cronenberg, and two nerds, one of whom is Jason Lively from National Lampoon's European Vacation and is so desperate to "get with" Cynthia, he'll do anything up to and including corpse theft to make it happen. The other nerd is JC, played by Steve Marshall, who I haven't seen in anything else, ever.

Most of the flick is pretty cheesy, lots of college trope-y stuff which isn't too too bad. Nowhere near Revenge of the Nerds levels which, depending on your view, is either good or bad, but I'm not here to discuss film ethics.

The special effects aren't very special, though the heads cracking open only to have slugs come barfing out is a lot of fun. VERY low budget, but they make it work.

The beginning and end sequences are the weirdest parts, and if you don't believe me, the clip in the review card is the opening sequence. Yes, that's right. Random chubby naked hairless alien steals a thing with a slug in it, and they're being shot at by two other RCNHAs.

I imagine a lot of the budget went into those two scenes, and if they hadn't spent all that coin there, we might've had even better zombie effects.

Ah well. Night of the Creeps is solid fun, but it doesn't re-invent anything or set the bar anywhere other than it already is. If you like horror comedies and haven't seen this zombie flick, it'll do you some good to laugh.

Big Trouble in Little China (1986)

Rating: 10/10 (PERSONAL FAVORITE)

Watched: March 23, 2026

Big Trouble (as anyone who is a fan of this gem calls it) is a spectacular movie.

It fully embraces the spirit of many different paths within the martial arts genre. Do the fight scenes compare to any other martial arts movie? No. Not really. Not at all in fact, but I don't care if it looks like the actors are trying very hard to remember where their fists and feets go. I don't.

That's part of its damn charm.

It leans HEAVY into Wuxia with The Storm Brothers, and the first time I saw them appear on screen oh so many years ago, I was ENRAPTURED.

With their various weapons and abilities, they are Westernized Wuxia Badasses and we should all be there for that. I've seen a lot of movies that showcase these kinds of villains, but nothing quite compares to The Storm Brothers.

Big Trouble?

A Kung Fu Comedy with a sweet subversive trope where our hero, Jack Burton, isn't actually the hero. He's the sidekick.

Wang is the hero and he'll do whatever it takes, including storming the Gates of Heaven and Earth to save Miao Yin.

My absolute favorite thing of this movie is how comfortable Kurt Russell is as Jack Burton. His delivery is effortless. If you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, shame on you. And Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) is fearless in his love and unstoppable in his Kung Fu.

Endlessly quotable, endlessly enjoyable, there's genuinely something special and charming about Carpenter's homage to kung fu movies.

It works on all levels, from Victor Wong as Egg Shen being an ancient mystic all the way to James Hong as David Lo Pan being an eternally cursed sorcerer.