Writer. Film Scholar. Journalist. Editor.
Listen to the annual podcast round-up of the Arrow FrightFest festival with Kim Newman, Anton Bitel and me: This year's themes were: Influencers Religious cults Unwelcome guests New women Tight spots Films mentioned include: Deadstream Follow Her Sissy Something in the Dirt Candy Land New Religion The Leech Who Invited Them Torn Hearts Piggy Family... Continue Reading →
ORCHESTRATOR OF STORMS : THE FANTASTIQUE WORLD OF JEAN ROLLIN will have its European premiere at ArrowFrightFest on Friday 26 August 2022 at 3:50pm. There will be a Q&A after the film with the formidable Brigitte Lahaie and me. Directed by Kat Ellinger and Dima Ballin, produced by Kier-and Jonathan Zaurin. Book tickets: http://frightfest.nuwebgroup.com/events/21472
I will be speaking at the Suspirias symposium on Saturday 11th June at Queen Mary University. Tickets are free, registration essential. This symposium considers Dario Argento’s 1977 giallo horror Suspiria alongside Luca Guadagnino’s 2018 film of the same name. The 2018 film has been positioned in a cycle of ‘serious’ horror films, an arthouse spin... Continue Reading →
In a radio show broadcast on Monday 6 September 2021 at 8pm on Resonance 104.4FM, I discuss the Arrow Video FrightFest festival (26 August - 5 September) with Kim Newman, author of Nightmare Movies and co-writer of Mark Kermode’s Secrets of Cinema, and film critic Anton Bitel. Repeated on Tuesday 7 September, 10am. Podcast on... 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)
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 →
In this essay for Sight & Sound, I trace the fantastique tradition of French cinema, from A Trip to the Moon (1902) to Raw (2016). Over the last two decades, some of the most notable films to come out of France have shunned realism, choosing instead to challenge the boundaries of the tangible and the... Continue Reading →
It is possible to see in the frightening “watching” camera of Peeping Tom an echo of one of the most archaic figures of terror in Western culture: the ancient Greek monster Medusa. Not only does Medusa embody “the most primitive fears of the kind that men have dreaded since earliest times” (Feldman, 1965: 490), it... Continue Reading →
Italian director Sergio Martino worked in a wide variety of film genres, starting with Mondo-type documentaries in the late 1960s, followed by the obligatory Western, before moving on to giallo, for which he is best known, and later, poliziottesco. The 1960s-70s were an ebullient time for the Italian film industry, which rapidly moved from one... Continue Reading →
Virginie Sélavy 