Writer. Editor. Film Scholar. Script Consultant
I have written about Jean Rollin's virgins and vampires for The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies (Issue 18, Autumn 2020), looking at the way in which they develop the subversive aspects of the persecuted maidens and fatal women of 18th- and 19th-century Anglo-Irish Gothic novels into the 1960s-70s. Pic credit: Le viol du... Continue Reading →
I have written about the enduring influence of 1970s cinema on horror film of the past decade for the November 2020 issue of Sight & Sound. Pic credit: Color Out of Space (2020)
I contributed an essay on Fando y Lis and surrealism to the new monumental Alejandro Jodorowsky box set from Arrow. Jodorowsky's first feature Fando y Lis (1968), an infernal adaptation of Fernando Arrabal's Panic play, psychedelic Western El Topo (1970) and delirious spiritual initiation The Holy Mountain (1973) are presented in new 4K restorations, and... Continue Reading →
I contributed a video profile of the fascinating Irish-Italian actress Lisa Gastoni for Hammer Volume 5: Death and Deceit, which includes Visa to Canton/Passport to China (1961), starring Gastoni as a beautiful, mercenary spy. Gastoni is best known for the roles of seductively transgressive women she played in Italian films such as Wake Up and... Continue Reading →
I have written an essay on 'Witchfinders and Sorcerers: Sorcery and Counterculture in the Work of Michael Reeves', published in the new book Sixties British Cinema Reconsidered, just out from Edinburgh University Press. Picture credit: The Sorcerers (Dir. Michael Reeves, 1967)
Pavel Juráček was a key figure of the 1960s Czech New Wave whose work has been steadily re-evaluated in recent years. Although he directed only two features, he co-scripted some major films of the period, notably Karel Zeman’s A Jester’s Tale (1964) and Jindřich Polák’s Ikarie XB 1 (1963), and supported the work of Vera... Continue Reading →
In an essay written for the limited edition Blu-ray of Jörg Buttgereit's Schramm released by Arrow Video, I trace the continuity from Fritz Lang's M to Schramm in relation to themes of guilt and death and the historical past of Germany.
Despite living only to the age of 39, Marie-Louise Iribe was a dynamic film pioneer who crammed multiple achievements into her short life, as an actor as well as director and producer. Ambitious and cultured, she formed her own production company, directed two features and was one of the few women directors who made the... Continue Reading →
Underappreciated Spanish director José Larraz made his first five films in Britain, and his best-known and most reputable, the psychological mystery Symptoms, even represented the UK at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974. The isolated mansion of Symptoms, where obsessive passions dangerously brew, the surrounding damp, leaf-littered woods and the murky river hiding buried secrets,... Continue Reading →
Despite creating one of the most wonderfully strange films of 1970s Italian cinema, Footprints (Le orme, 1975), director Luigi Bazzoni remains little known. His output may be scarce, five features concentrated over a 10-year period, but his intelligence and visual sophistication are unquestionable. Skirting the dominant genres of the time, two of his films are... Continue Reading →
Virginie Sélavy 