In 1997, just a few weeks after its release, I can remember walking into a packed theater by myself, crammed between two loudmouthed teenage girls expecting to see another mediocre horror film. I was surprised that the theater was sold out. It was the middle of...

Unjustly cast alongside John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, the only similarities that Jörg Buttgereit’s Schramm shares with its genre counterpart is that both pictures are, as NcNaughton’s subtitle succinctly states, intimate portraits of mass...

When I first started talking about horror films on message boards, the first board I ever joined was the Burnout-Central Message Board, that site is now no longer around, but the remnants of the board and site are still up on the web. One of the first filmmakers I...

As a teenager, Angela Bettis was abducted by a sadistic nut job known as “The Bishop”, was strapped to a gurney and tortured while being forced to make the decision as to whether to continue suffering or request that her friend (bound to a gurney opposite) be killed....

OH hell, someone help me out here for once. I mean some of these direct to video films have so much potential story wise but always fall short halfway though the film. Thus; this can be said for "Scarred" a new video release from MTI Video. Now "Scarred" has some...

Perhaps the most iconographic film in his oeuvre, Scanners is Canadian director David Cronenberg’s first steadfast effort as the work serves as his first transitional film in many, many respects: Its anticipates his shift to his mature, middle period by foregoing a...

Savage Harvest 2? I had no clue there was a Savage Harvest 1! Seriously though folks in a word of independent horror and digital video it's no wonder a film like Savage Harvest 2 can be made and released on DVD by a distributor like Elite. My thing is this though; am...

One of the most successful franchises on the past ten years, and of all time, is about to come full circle, or so they allege. The Saw franchise has been a big hit since the first film hit theaters in 2004. Since then, it spawned six sequels, including the latest...

The Saw franchise is, without a doubt, the most successful horror franchise of the past decade. The first film is a modern day horror classic. I didn’t care much for the second and third films, but I really enjoyed the fourth. I skipped the fifth in theaters and have...

In box office terms, after an unprecedented run of five major international hits in five years, the SAW franchise appears to have finally grown tired : this film’s opening weekend (while still rendering the film instantly profitable) halved the initial take of its...

The fifth SAW movie in five consecutive years - with a now-expected $30million opening weekend confirming the series as the genre’s most successful franchise ever - is all too clearly the work of an ongoing franchise that wishes its third entry (evidently designed to...

Although blessed with the kind of show-stopping splatter set pieces that dominated its immediate predecessor, the fourth SAW film in four years (with at least two more to come, ye gods!) feels a lot like a film too far. SAW III, with its operatic gore and elaborate...

At the close of the Saw trilogy, none of the key players behind the franchise were set to return. However, return they did as Darren Lynn Bousman takes his seat for a third time behind the camera. Yet co-creator Leigh Whannell finally gets to rest his weary hand as he...

As Halloween night approaches and whispers it’s final BOO of the season, Lionsgate Films and Twisted Pictures leads us like lambs to the slaughter as they unleash Saw 3 upon us. Being a folklore enthusiast and horror film aficionado, I am reluctant to praise any type...