Director: Wes Craven
Writer: Wes Craven
Release Year: 1984

It’s the stuff that dreams are made of.

Teenagers Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp), Tina Gray (Amanda Wyss), Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp), Rod Lane (Nick Corri) and others are having bad dreams. When they compare their dreams, they find that there’s a creepy guy – who turns out to be Fred Krueger (Robert Englund) – in all of their dreams. Their parents get cagey when they start asking questions and, when the deaths start, it’s clear that something is horribly, horribly wrong….

(more…)

Director: Srdjan Spasojevic
Writer: Aleksandar Radivojevic & Srdjan Spasojevic
Release Year: 2010
Serbian title: Srpski Film

Are all East-Europeans sick and twisted perverts?!?

Milos, a former adult movies star down on his luck, excepts a lucrative offer to star once more in a new film. When meeting the alleged director in his secluded mansion, Milos is being told this will be an artistic film project. Needless to say the poor guy has no idea about what he’s getting himself into.

(more…)

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Writer: Hirokazu Koreeda based on a manga by Yoshiie Gouda
Release year: 2009
Japanese title: Kûki Ningyô

Cold hands, warm heart

Hirokazu Koreeda already gained critical acclaim with splendid features like After Life (1998) and Nobody Knows (2004). In his latest, Air Doll, Korean actress Du-Na Bae (Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance & The Host) portrays an inflatable sex doll that grows a heart – technically, it’s something closer to a soul and a conscious – leaves her natural bedroom habitat and sets off into the city to discover what life has to offer (and very much unaware of it all). She finds her way to a video store. By far not the worst place to start with your first job.

(more…)

Director: Fredric Hobbs
Writer: Fredric Hobbs
Release year: 1973

It makes sense, I swear, but where are the luchadores?

Alabama (Christopher Brooks) finds the magician gear formerly owned by Carter the Great (E. Kerrigan Prescott) in the basement of a nightclub and decides to become a magician. He seeks out Granny (Ken Grantham) to find out about Carter, then goes to Moxie (also Ken Grantham) to learn magic and becomes Alabama, King Of The Cosmos. He goes on tour and soon we get vampires, a Nazi mad scientist, and some voodoo, plus a script that looks like it was co-written by Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds….

(more…)

Director: Jack Sholder
Writer: Jack Sholder, Robert Shaye and Michael Harrpster
Release year: 1982

An overlooked early 80′s horror gem

Sometimes films will charm you right off the bat. Sometimes you’ll enjoy them only to later wonder what the hell you were thinking. And sometimes they appeal more to you the more you see them. This is the case for me with writer/director Jack Sholder‘s 1982 film Alone in the Dark. (By the way, confusing it with the 2005 video game adaptation would be doing it a real disservice).

(more…)