Foreign

International horror: J-horror, European extremity, Latin American shocks and the films Hollywood keeps remaking.

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Blu-ray Review: Castle of the Creeping Flesh (1968)

Ever-horny Baron Brack (Michel Lemoine), he of the atrocious dubbing and wild hootenannies, leads a group of revelers to the ornate, though dilapidated, home of Count Graf Saxon (Howard Vernon) to continue the party-hardy fracas. What does Saxon think of the swingin’ sumbitches who have invited themselves in? He seems to give not a single fuck… rather, he does the Chatty Cathy bag and fills the gang in on his family history and the fate of his daughter who was recently (like an hour ago) raped and killed in the nearby woods. I’m sure he has no plans for all of the sexy ladies that have fallen into his lap… Naturally he does have a plan… a batshit crazy one too, involving resurrecting his daughter with all of his new found female flesh! Oh, and a bear is involved as is so often the case… If Castle of the Creeping Flesh is anything it’s atmospheric. The sets utilized to bring

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DanXIII

Feb 21, 2021

ForeignIndieMoviesNews

Finland’s New Holiday Horror Film Will Give You ‘The Creeps’ This December

Horror, action, and comedy meet in The Creeps, from writer-director Marko Mäkilaakso (Sorjonen, War of the Dead, It Cape from the Desert) set to begin filming this March in Kajawood, Vuokatti, as well as in Jyväskylä, Finland. Produced by Black Lion Pictures and Frozen Flam Pictures, The Creeps stars Hollywood legend Christopher Lambert (Highlander, Greystoke, Mortal Kombat), and Chris Cavalier (Hidden Figures, Teenage Bounty Hunters) along with Iiro Panula (Teit meistä kauniin, Sorjonen, Veljeni vartija, Valmentaja). Miika J. Norvanto and Timo Puustinen (Rendel movies) produce. “In the film, two young Americans prepare for the celebration of Monsterfest, an event in the skiing center of Vuokatti, but the party is soon interrupted when the Creeps – small but lethal – take over the event.” Inspired by 80-90’s classics like Gremlins, Critters, and Highlander. The Creeps brings in Nordic style to the subgenre. The creatures are designed by Disney veteran Barry Atkinson (The Lion King, Heavy Metal, Pocahontas, An American Tail, The

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Kelli Marchman McNeely

Feb 21, 2021

ForeignMoviesReviews

Blu-ray Review: Shogun’s Joy of Torture (1968)

Presented as an anthology piece, 1968’s Shogun’s Joy of Torture is comprised of three torture tales that I’ll dive into directly! Story one concerns Shinza; a working man who takes a log to the head, and thanks to this being ye olden days where health insurance was as non-existent, winds up shit out of luck and unable to get that shit looked at properly. Enter: Shinza’s sis Mitsu, a loverly lass who tries to appeal to Shinza’s boss, Mino, for a lil’ financial assistance and gets raped for her trouble. As if that didn’t put us square in the “family fun zone”, Shinza is also hot n’ horny for his sister (a decidedly different “family fun zone”), which that ass-hat Mino finds out about and begins a game to make Mitsu eternally his. Okay, story numero deuce should be a bit more cheery… Young nun Reiho arrives at a convent located right next door to a monastery… seriously, what’s the

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DanXIII

Feb 21, 2021

ForeignMoviesReviews

Blu-ray Review: Crazy Samurai 400 vs 1 (2020)

Legendary samurai swordsman Musashi (Tak Sakaguchi of Versus and Battlefield Baseball fame) is all hot and bothered to put the murder on the head of a rival clan… but it turns out the newly elected leader is all of nine years old. Musashi gives that the loudest “fuck it” of all time and kills the tyke with zero hesitation. This causes hundreds upon hundreds of samurai warriors to descend upon Musashi and begin a fight sequence that lasts seventy-seven minutes… and is presented in a single take. And that is the entirety of the plot. How well Crazy Samurai works for you will be your willingness to commit to that conceit, as it’s all sword fighting and nothin’ else for an incredibly long time, and while that may seem like a gimmick… and Satan knows it truly fuckin’ is… it’s damn impressive nevertheless. Gone is the hyper-kinetic, comic book style violence you may expect, and in it’s place we get

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DanXIII

Feb 20, 2021

ForeignIndieMoviesNewsThrillerTrailers

Mexican Horror Thriller ‘Rendez-Vous’ Out Now on Digital And VOD

The award-winning horror-thriller Rendez-Vous from writer-director Pablos Olmos Arrayales is out now on Digital and On Demand, from Level 33 Entertainment. . Filmed in one single take with no cuts, Rendez-Vous is an original Mexican thriller about a couple who meet online with one night, one chance to fall in love. When Lili and Eduardo meet up after connecting online, their first date takes an unexpected and terrifying turn as the evening progresses. In the English subtitled film, “Lili and Eduardo meet for the first time after connecting on a dating app. Eduardo arrives late but with a good reason in a place like Mexico City: he was mugged, and they took his phone so he couldn’t text her to say he was running late. While at first everything seems to be going fine, when Lili finds Eduardo’s phone in his jacket, things take an unexpected and terrifying turn for the worse.” Antonio Alcántara, Helena Puig, Markin López, Axel Zapién,

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Kelli Marchman McNeely

Feb 13, 2021

ForeignGamingIndieNewsProductTrailers

New ‘Paradise Lost’ Trailer Shows Alternative History

ALL in! Games and PolyAmorous have released a new trailer for the upcoming first-person mystery walking sim, Paradise Lost, a game taking place in an alternate timeline where WWII lasted 20 years. In Paradise Lost players take on the role of 12-year-old Szymon. A Polish boy raised in the now post-apocalyptic wasteland that was once Europe till the Nazis in a desperate attempt nuked the entire continent sealing it off from the rest of the world. Its winter in 1980 and Szymon has discovered an old Nazi bunker and begins to explore it and uncover the mystery of the bunker’s former inhabitants where retro-futuristic technology and Slavic mythology collide. The “Alternative History” trailer explains the events leading up to the main story of the game on a historical level while keeping the mystery of the bunker up in the air for us to find out. Paradise Lost is set to be released this year for Steam, Xbox One, and PlayStation

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Capt McNeely

Feb 10, 2021

ClipsForeignMoviesNewsThrillerTrailers

Two New Clips Take Us Into ‘The Night’ – Out Now On VOD And Digital

To celebrate the release of the award-winning Iranian horror film The Night, which HorrorFuel’s Joseph Perry calls “a gripping chiller” in his review, we’ve got two brand new clips to share with you. Directed and co-written by Kourosh Ahari, the film follows an Iranian couple, Babak and Neda, and their one-year-old daughter, Shabnam. Returning home from a friend’s gathering, Babak drives drunkenly, too stubborn to let Neda drive with a suspended license. When Babak’s driving threatens the safety of the family, Neda insists they stay the night at a hotel. Once they check-in, Babak and Neda find themselves imprisoned, forced to face the secrets they’ve kept from each other. And though the clock moves forward, “the night” never ends. The film features a diverse cast and crew made up of predominantly Iranian immigrants or US-born Iranian-Americans, including Shahab Hosseini, Niousha Jafarian, Leah Oganyan, and George Maguire. Shot on location in the US, The Night recently received a license for theatrical

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Kelli Marchman McNeely

Feb 2, 2021

ForeignMoviesNewsStreaming TVThrillerTrailers

Chinese Hit Thriller ‘Sheep Without A Shepherd’ Getting A US Release

Artsploitation Films has acquired the thriller Sheep Without a Shepherd, the Chinese hit film that grossed over $192,000,000 during its theatrical run in 2019. Malaysian director Sam Quah‘s debut feature film is a big-budget noir thriller as well as a remake of the 2013 Indian film, Drishyam. It follows a family man and self-described movie-geek who is thrown into a battle of wits with the law after his daughter accidentally kills a fellow student who was blackmailing her. The dead boy’s mother (Twin Peaks’ Joan Chen) is the morally “flexible” police chief determined to find her son’s killer. Joan Chen, Yang Xiao, Zhuo Tan, Philip Keung, Audrey Hui, Tianyang Bian, Xiran Zhang, Paul Chun, Ming-Shuai Shih, Jerry Chih-Wei Huang, Yang Gu, and Julian Chen star in the film written by Kaihua Fan, Jeethu Joseph, Sheng Lei, Peng Li, Yuqian Qin, Weiwei Yang, and Pei Zhai. This inventive tale of blackmail, murder and corruption, and a quest for justice will be

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Kelli Marchman McNeely

Jan 16, 2021

ForeignMoviesReviews

Movie Review: Hunted

Belgian/French/Irish coproduction Hunted is a revenge thriller that riffs heavily on both Little Red Riding Hood and The Most Dangerous Game, along with a long legacy of exploitation woman-seeking-revenge films. Though the main plot beats in director Vincent Paronnaud’s feature may be quite familiar, Hunted is wonderfully stylized and bolstered by two rip-roaring lead performances. After an opening sequence with a campfire story played out in animation that sets a mythical, mystical tone, viewers are introduced to Eve (Lucie Debay), who is stressed out from her job and her relationship. She’s on the road for a business trip in an unspecified European country and goes out to alleviate some stress at a bar, where she meets The Handsome Guy (Arieh Worthalter), who viewers are tipped off about that he has some bad things on his mind. When he and The Accomplice (Ciaran O’Brien) stuff Eve in the trunk of their car, it’s obvious that they have horrible plans for her,

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Joseph Perry

Jan 15, 2021

ForeignMoviesReviews

Blu-ray Review: Versus (2000)

Two escaped prisoners make their way through the woods, and soon meet up with a gang of over-the-top Yakuza and the woman they have kidnapped. Unbeknownst to them, the forest is home to the 444th portal to hell (the Portal of Resurrection to be precise), but the learn soon enough as a slight misunderstanding leads to some bodies hittin’ the floor… but they sure as shit don’t stay there! Prisoner KSC2-303 (Tak Sakaguchi) and The Girl (Chieko Misaka) escape the initial zombie fracas and flee deeper into those wicked woods but soon that verdant landscape is lousy with the walking dead, and escape may be impossible for our heroes and their gangster pursuers (not mention their occult-minded boss and the assassins he employs)! I’m not going to lie to you cats n’ creeps, Versus is a straight up mother fucking masterpiece! Ryûhei Kitamura (along with co-writer Yudai Yamaguchi) created the “all killer, no filler” (a real miracle considering this film

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DanXIII

Jan 10, 2021

Foreign

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