VisualCrack

The Directors: John Carpenter (1948 - )

2010-02-04T01:22:00.000Z

John Howard Carpenter (born January 16, 1948) born in Carthage, New York, and raised in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the son of a college music professor, enchanted by movies, particularly Westerns, from a very early age, he enrolled in the University of Southern California's School of Cinema. After winning an Academy Award for his 1970 short subject, THE RESURRECTION OF BRONCO BILLY (completed while

Review: Borderland [2007]

2010-02-01T03:06:00.002Z

Dir. Zev Berman Cast: Brian Presley, Rider Strong, Jake Muxworthy, Beto Cuevas, Martha Higareda I have a dilemma with the genre of so-called "torture porn" that has muscled its devious way into the horror movie limelight in recent years, my primary concern is that countless movies are bypassed or just rejected due to this catch-all tag. Such movies as Hostel and Touristas are essentially

News: Halo Legends Gets London Premiere

2010-01-27T18:50:00.001Z

Free tickets available to see Halo movie on the silver screen at exclusive fans' showcase. 27 January 2010: Warner Bros Home Video is delighted to invite fans to one-off exclusive preview screening of brand new animated movie Halo Legends. Taking place at the Moving Picture Company, Wardour Street, at 6.30pm on 3rd February 2010, this will be the only chance to see Halo Legends on the big screen

Review: Terminator Salvation [2009]

2010-01-24T10:07:00.000Z

Dir. McG Cast: Christian Bale, Sam Worthington, Moon Bloodgood, Helena Bonham Carter, Bryce Dallas Howard When The Halcyon Company (the latest in a lineage of Terminator franchise owners) disclosed they were producing a new Terminator movie, to follow on from the monstrosity that was Terminator: Rise of the Machines, it seemed like the series was destined to be bastardised once again. Then, as

Review: [●REC] [2007]

2010-01-21T03:26:00.000Z

Dir. Jaume Balagueró & Paco Plaza Cast: Manuela Velasco, Pablo Rosso, Ferran Terraza, Carlos Vicente, María Teresa Ortega Sadly [●REC] is interminably and unjustly likened by reviewers to The Blair Witch Project, understandable given its plot, cast of characters and the cinematic mechanisms utilised, but that is undeniably where any similarity ends. Although The Blair Witch Project was a ground

Review: Wilderness [2006]

2010-01-20T12:46:00.000Z

Dir. Michael Bassett Cast: Sean Pertwee, Alex Reid, Stephen Wight, Luke Neal, Toby Kebbell Wilderness is director Michael Bassett’s follow-up to his creepy little World War I horror opus Death Watch and follows a multifarious band of juvenile delinquents and their custodians as they fight for their lives on a remote island against a lone, revenge-driven ex-special forces soldier. Wilderness

Review: Blood Feast 2: All U Can Eat [2002]

2010-01-18T00:36:00.000Z

Dir. Herschell Gordon Lewis Cast: J.P. Delahoussaye, Mark McLachlin, Melissa Morgan, Toni Wynne 39 years to wait for a sequel is a long time. too long some would say. in 1963 Herschell Gordon Lewis bequeathed upon the world the prototypical gore film, Blood Feast, engendering drive-in screens across a whole nation to drip scarlet and interminably altering the face of horror cinema forever.

Review: Reeker [2005]

2010-01-16T10:18:00.000Z

Dir. David Payne Cast: Devon Gummersall, Derek Richardson, Tina Illman, Scott Whyte, Arielle Kebbel, Michael Ironside, Eric Mabius, Marcia Strassman, David Hadinger. It's become increasingly more arduous to formulate something fresh and inventive within the horror genre of late, what with ceaseless remakes and reboots that only succeed in disquieting and piquing real genre fans. So

Interview: Amber Moelter of ALM Talkies

2010-01-15T03:52:00.003Z

Born in Aberdeen, South Dakota, and raised in the northern suburbs of the Twin Cities, Minnesota Amber performed as an actor, dancer, and singer in America, Australia, Asia, and Europe. She trained at the Academy of Arts, QUT in Brisbane, Australia in Contemporary Dance and later at London Studio Centre, attaining a BA Honors in Theatre Dance (Musical Theatre). While in London she acted in

Review: Wes Craven's New Nightmare [1994]

2010-01-03T03:43:00.002Z

Dir. Wes Craven Cast: Heather Langenkamp, Robert Englund, Wes Craven, David Newsom, Miko Hughes, John Saxon New Nightmare is the single most sure-footed entry in the Nightmare series since the original A Nightmare on Elm Street, made prior to that other self-reverential, post-ironic box office favourite Scream, it once again asserts just how authoritative Wes Craven can be at envisioning

Review: The Ring Virus [2000]

2010-01-02T11:42:00.000Z

Dir. Kim Dong-bin Cast: Shin Eun-gyeong, Jeong Jin-yeong, Bae Du-na Originating from Ringu the Japanese horror novel by Koji Suzuki and the eponymous 1998 film by Hideo Nakata, this South Korean take is more or less a facsimile of 2002's US remake The Ring in as much as it is a remake that does little artistically to rationalize its existance at all. The Ring Virus tersely rehashes the

Review: Dead Snow (Død snø) [2009]

2009-12-29T08:56:00.002Z

Dir. Tommy Wirkola Cast: Vegar Hoel, Stig Frode Henrikse, Charlotte Frogner, Lasse Valdal Dead Snow is a film that every self-respecting horror fan should yearn desperately to love, with its miniscule budget, genre referencing, Norwegian roots and it's poetic, snow-blasted mountain locations. Oh, and did I forget to mention... Nazi Zombies. That's right, it's been a long time since we had

Review: Play Misty For Me [1971]

2009-12-29T06:07:00.003Z

Dir. Clint Eastwood Cast: Clint Eastwood, Jessica Walter, Donna Mills Now, many of you will be asking yourselves, why is this film turning up on a site committed to genre movies? Well one of the many ambitions of VisualCrack is re-discovering dispossessed genre titles that may have got lost behind the sofa of mainstream Hollywood. I tenaciously declare this is the case with Clint Eastwood's

Review: Sympathy for Lady Vengeance [2005]

2009-12-27T02:16:00.003Z

Dir. Park Chan-Wook Cast: Lee Young-ae, Choi Min-sek, Byeong-ok Kim, Su-hee Go Park Chan-Wook is most categorically a member of an intimate 'Modern Hollywood' collective, that comprises such cinematic prodigies as Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson and the Coen brothers, thanks to the fact he directed the noughties most prototypical revenge melodrama, Oldboy. This hypnotic, pitch-black drama gave

Review: Boggy Creek II [1981]

2009-12-25T18:35:00.004Z

Dir. Charles Pierce Cast: Charles Pierce, Charles Pierce, Jr., Cindy Butler, Jimmy Clem Charles Pierce follows up on his own, The Legend Of Boggy Creek, what many profess to be the single foremost Bigfoot film of all time, with... this travasty! Disregarding completely 1977’s Return To Boggy Creek, made by another disparate group of low budget psuedo

Review: Friday the 13th [2009]

2009-12-22T03:16:00.037Z

Dir. Marcus Nispel Cast: Jared Padalecki, Danielle Panabaker, Aaron Yoo, Amanda Righetti, Travis Van Winkle It appears that Michael Bay has grown tired of voluminous explosions in recent years and has turned his hand to violating and butchering horror movie mainstays from bygone days (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, The Amityville Horror, The Hitcher), and now has fancied to take

Review: The Cottage [2008]

2009-12-21T14:12:00.003Z

Dir. Paul Andrew Williams Cast: Reece Shearsmith, Andy Serkis, Jennifer Ellison. Steve O'Donnell Peter (Shearsmith) and David (Serkis) are discordant brothers who do something implausibly cretinous: kidnap the step-daughter of David's underworld-connected boss and demand a sizable ransom. More foolishly, they enlist the support of Andrew (O'Donnell), the boss' dimwitted son. Of course, the boss

Review: Dracula - Prince of Darkness [1965]

2009-12-19T20:40:00.002Z

Dir. Terence Fisher Cast: Christopher Lee, Andrew Keir, Francis Matthews, Barbara Shelley Hammer Studios conclusively redefined British horror films in the 50s and 60s with their innovative amalgam of high style, literacy, sophistication, and bloody intensity, commuting the irascible gothic of Universal’s insouciant horror films and the camp sensibilities of the low-budget indies. Dracula,

Review: Prom Night [2008]

2009-12-17T18:49:00.032Z

Dir. Nelson McCormick Cast: Brittany Snow, Scott Porter, Jessica Stroup, Dana Davis, Collins Pennie, Kelly Blatz, Idris Elba, Johnathon Schaech For any genre film to achieve a status of mere competence all it requires is a sympathetic protagonist, some marginally alluring victims, a tenacious killer, some kind of suspense imbued buildup, and (most pivotally) lashings and lashings of gore.

Review: Anima persa [1977]

2009-12-17T02:53:00.003Z

Dir. Dino Risi Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Vittorio Gassman, Danilo Mattei, Anicée Alvina A naive young man studying art in Venice comes to stay with distant relatives, an elderly uncle (Gassman) and a somewhat younger aunt (Deneuve). In "Jane Eyre" fashion he educes that his uncle is apparently keeping his deranged brother in a secret room in an attic. His curiosity is piqued and he begins to

Review: Black Christmas [2006]

2009-12-15T22:13:00.004Z

Dir. Glen Morgan Cast: Katie Cassidy, Michelle Trachtenberg, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Lacey Chabert Black Christmas follows a group of teenage girls who find themselves trapped in their sorority house on Christmas Eve, while a psychopath takes them out one by one – and not for Christmas dinner… In 1974, Bob Clark, the man who brought us the cult favourite Children Shouldn't Play With Dead

Review: Beneath [2007]

2009-12-15T19:18:00.004Z

Dir. Dagen Merrill Cast: Nora Zehetner, Carly Pope, Gabrielle Rose, Matthew Settle There’s been a recent vogue for slower-paced horror, possibly in response to the success of such films as The Ring and its murderous “superghost” cousins. Done well it can show off beautiful camerawork, nuanced emotion and slowly develop unsettling scares that go beyond mere jump moments. Maybe a good parallel

Review: Lake of the Dead [De Dødes Tjern] [1958]

2009-12-14T05:49:00.002Z

Dir. Kåre Bergstrøm Cast: Henki Kolstad, Henny Moan, Bjørg Engh, Georg Richter, André Bjerke Norway hasn't produced many horror films over the years. A few cross-over hits, such as DARK WOODS, NEXT DOOR, and more recently DEAD SNOW and the COLD PREY series, have seen some global recognition, but before that Norway's genre output was nearly nonexistent. As a matter of fact, a Norwegian Horror

Review: Scar 3D

2009-12-13T21:17:00.002Z

Dir. Jed Weintrob Cast: Angela Bettis, Kirby Bliss Blanton, Devon Graye, Ben Cotton, Christopher Titus Scar 3D can only be described as a stab-by-numbers slasher movie, and be warned, that is the first (and last) positive remark I'll probably be able to make in this review. This cinematic abomination is supposedly the first movie to be created in HD-3D, which for all its fancy numbers and

Review: Creep

2009-12-09T13:08:00.005Z

Dir. Christopher Smith Cast: Franka Potente, Sean Harris, Vas Blackwood, Jeremy Sheffield, Ken Campbell, Paul Rattray, Kelly Scot A cross between a slasher flick and a folklore horror, Creep is a British horror movie from writer and director Christopher Smith, taking place in the network of stations, tunnels and sewers that make up the London underground where Kate (German actress Franka