CategoryReviews
Honest horror reviews of films, series, games and books — no hype, no spoilers, just whether it is worth your time and your nerves.
3,430 stories
MoviesNewsReviews
Today I sat down to watch Climax, a film from Argentinian director Gaspar Noé who was also behind the films Enter the Void and I Stand Alone. The film opens to a young woman covered in blood, running across the snow. I came to learn later on in the film that the woman was fleeing from a dance school where a party had gone terribly wrong. At the party, someone has spiked the punch with a heavy dose of LSD and the dancers go from happy to a drug-filled orgy that causes utter chaos and murder. The way the film was shot and presented is a Suspira-like vision in neon colors. Between the colors, chaos, and strange angles, the film will leave your head spinning. If Noé was aiming to make you feel like you are drugged, he accomplished it. When the credits rolled I felt like I had just stepped off of a tilt-a-whirl. By god, the cast was
Continue reading →
MoviesParanormalReviews
Larissa and Matt Kane (Amanda Crew and Adam Brody) move on down to the bucolic town of Sarasota Springs where the livin’ is easy and nothing could ever possibly go wrong. And they lived a quiet happy life… The fuck they did…you see in among the whole “getting ready to start a family” bullshitery, Larissa meets her creepy as balls neighbor Ann Pelway (Sheila McCarthy) as her even creepier daughter Isabelle (Zoë Belkin) glowers down from a window above, and then immediately has a late-term miscarriage right there in the driveway (following which she sees her dead baby return to demonic life in her fevered dreams…seriously tacky movie, seriously tacky). Time passes, Larissa keeps imagining her baby is alive, and Isabelle keeps playing her staring contest long game…I mean she has fuck-all else to do being a satanic presence confined to a wheelchair…which makes the fact that L-dawg starts seeing her in her own abode pretty damn shocking (those glowing
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviewsThrillerTrue Story
On April 23rd, 1991, former New York Dolls guitarist and notorious heroin addict Johnny Thunders was found dead at the St Peter House in New Orleans. How this happened as long been one of rock n’ roll’s greatest unsolved mysteries, as an autopsy report found only a minimal amount of drugs in his system (he was attempting to get clean at the time)…but murder has always been a strong contender in his demise. Written and directed by The Cordero Brothers, Room 37: The Mysterious Death of Johnny Thunders presents a fictionalized version of the events surrounding Johnny’s (played to razor sharp perfection by Leo Ramsey) exit from this mortal coil. As our protagonist rolls into town he’s a broken man; his wife has left him, he hasn’t seen his kid in ages, and he’s trying to give up chasing the dragon. Johnny manages to continue his career in The Big Easy, and find some small companionship with hotel staffer Iris
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Tycoon John Alexander (the ever sedate and totally sane Klaus Kinski) has found himself in a marriage with the comely Helen (Margaret Lee) who gets the seven year itch five years t early and begins an affair with her friend Liz. John gets wise to this but Helen soon finds herself tits up as her car crashes due to an explosive device planted on the vehicle. How does our hero deal with his never-ending grief at his wife’s demise? Why by attending one of those “hippie parties” that the kids are so into these days, with a chick that decided to take up residence at his pad while he was away. At that soiree John featuring a chick (sporting a veil) with the same ring and scar Helen had! John then attempts a mad quest to find the woman… Since Double Face contains elements of murder and mystery, and was directed by Italian Riccardo Freda, you may expect this flick
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
You know how sex and violence oft times collide in our beloved horror biz? Well, wait until you feast your putrid peepers on A Record of Sweet Murder… Sang-joon (Yeon Je-wook) is a murder machine on the lam for the kill krazy antics he has pulled all over town. Enter journalist So-yeon (Kim Kko-bbi) who takes it upon herself to interview that rascal, in truth a childhood chum who got stabby to right a wrong that has plagued the pair for a damn sight, along with her cameraman (played by Writer/Director Koji Shiraishi) in the loon’s claustrophobic, grungy-ass apartment in the hopes of gleaning a bit of knowledge as to the deadly goings-on. What does our heroine discover? Why that if Sang-joon kills all 27 poor souls on his shit list (he’s on 25 for the record) then all his victims, and the one he is trying to avenge, will magically rejoin the land of the living. Seems reasonable. Soon
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Hey cats n’ creeps, our dear fiends at Severin have got a beastly bounty of new and upcoming exploitation and horror monsterpieces that are going to make your (severed) heads spin…and I’m gonna slap my patented revoltin’ review magic upon each and every one of them! First up we have a sleazy lil’ number called: Emanuelle and Francoise (1975) Francoise (Patrizia Gori) arrives home from her modeling sesh to find her abusive ass of a lover Carlo (the legendary Big George Eastman) chin deep in the crotch of another. This causes ol’ Franny to commit that hoary ol’ chestnut; train assisted suicide. Enter Emanuelle (Rosemarie Lindt), Francoise’s sister who anonymously saunters in to Carlo’s life and begins the ol’ seduction bag (along with drawing unflattering pictures of herself…as one does). Soon she drugs that big ape and the fun really begins as she drags his ass into her torture room (hidden behind a moving wall in her apartment!!) where she
Continue reading →
GamingNewsProductReviews
For a while now, since I first saw the concept art for it, I’ve been really hyped for A Plague Tale: Innocence. I have to give a thousand thanks to Asobo Studio and Focus Home Interactive for giving me an opportunity for seeing if the hype I’ve had was worth the wait. I’m happy to say, this is possibly the best game I have played so far as a Game Reviewer here at Horror Fuel! A Plague Tale: Innocence Follows Amicia De Rune, whose world was flipped upside down one fateful day when Inquisition forces led by Lord Nickolas murder her parents. Before escaping, Amicia is given the task to look after her little brother Hugo, who has been kept indoors since his birth due to an infliction that made their mother, an alchemist, his full-time caregiver which has led to a tense relationship between Amicia and her mother and resentment towards Hugo. The siblings are forced to bond since
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
‘Round this time last year I gave you lot my thoughts on Panther Ridge (which you can read here)…a demented deep dive into the world of BDSM. Well, lo and behold; Writer/Director Ryan Swantek is back with another sinister short, this time featuring a take on legendary real-life vampire Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed! Comprised of a single sequence, Báthory: Virgin Blood shows our vicious vamp (Darryl Sposato) doing what she does best…namely liberating a comely virgin (Kaylee Giza) of her precious life’s blood, and then ensconcing herself in that sweet red sauce in order to maintain her beauty eternally. Lit by sensuous candle light and featuring those glorious ’70’s occultism trappings such as inverted crosses and pentagrams that your’s cruelly just can’t get enough of…along with an aesthetic of beauty being derived from the grotesque; this production easily brings to mind the best qualities of the glory days of the Euro-horror genre…right down to those lesbian vampires! The only
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
The original I Spit on Your Grave (a.k.a. Day of the Woman), Meir Zarchi’s 1978 exploitation masterpiece was a revolution when released. Here was the story of a woman taking control of a male influenced society…and while the flick dealt in metaphor (the debasing rape wasn’t far removed of how a male-dominated society felt about women at the time…a mere object to be dominated and played with; but seldom considered an equal…so you can imagine the liberation the women in the audience felt when Camille Keaton’s Jennifer exacts her vengeance…including castration, on the lethal Lotharios what did her wrong), the message was loud and clear; sisters can indeed do it for themselves! Flash forward to our turbulent times, when women rightfully consider themselves marginalized, and lo and behold Zarchi returns with a direct sequel to his ’70’s masterpiece; I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu. Will it be the vicious voice of a new distaff generation in the horror biz
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Wolfgang (Robert Amstler) is an Austrian mercenary murder machine; a real bad cat who you surely would not want to cross paths with. But as nasty a customer as he is, Wolfgang has an emotional side that comes to the fore as he befriends a sick orphan girl named Maria (Leia Perez) while convalescing in the hospital after receiving some war wounds during an assignment, and becomes the father figure in her life, as well as growing close to the comely local tour guide, Lisa (Nicole Stark), he hires to help plan good times for his pint-sized charge. Of course our “hero” continues carving folks a new asshole for those sweet greenbacks…but soon he must decide between his career and protecting the innocents that need him most. Brought to life by Writer/Director Rene Perez (of Death Kiss fame…which I reviewed right here), The Punished is another fun throwback to cinema the likes of which would fill the shelves in the
Continue reading →
More from Reviews
MoviesNewsReviews
Today I sat down to watch Climax, a film from Argentinian director Gaspar Noé who was also behind the films Enter the Void and I Stand Alone. The film opens to a young woman covered in blood, running across the snow. I came to learn later on in the film that the woman was fleeing from a dance school where a party had gone terribly wrong. At the party, someone has spiked the punch with a heavy dose of LSD and the dancers go from happy to a drug-filled orgy that causes utter chaos and murder. The way the film was shot and presented is a Suspira-like vision in neon colors. Between the colors, chaos, and strange angles, the film will leave your head spinning. If Noé was aiming to make you feel like you are drugged, he accomplished it. When the credits rolled I felt like I had just stepped off of a tilt-a-whirl. By god, the cast was
Continue reading →
MoviesParanormalReviews
Larissa and Matt Kane (Amanda Crew and Adam Brody) move on down to the bucolic town of Sarasota Springs where the livin’ is easy and nothing could ever possibly go wrong. And they lived a quiet happy life… The fuck they did…you see in among the whole “getting ready to start a family” bullshitery, Larissa meets her creepy as balls neighbor Ann Pelway (Sheila McCarthy) as her even creepier daughter Isabelle (Zoë Belkin) glowers down from a window above, and then immediately has a late-term miscarriage right there in the driveway (following which she sees her dead baby return to demonic life in her fevered dreams…seriously tacky movie, seriously tacky). Time passes, Larissa keeps imagining her baby is alive, and Isabelle keeps playing her staring contest long game…I mean she has fuck-all else to do being a satanic presence confined to a wheelchair…which makes the fact that L-dawg starts seeing her in her own abode pretty damn shocking (those glowing
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviewsThrillerTrue Story
On April 23rd, 1991, former New York Dolls guitarist and notorious heroin addict Johnny Thunders was found dead at the St Peter House in New Orleans. How this happened as long been one of rock n’ roll’s greatest unsolved mysteries, as an autopsy report found only a minimal amount of drugs in his system (he was attempting to get clean at the time)…but murder has always been a strong contender in his demise. Written and directed by The Cordero Brothers, Room 37: The Mysterious Death of Johnny Thunders presents a fictionalized version of the events surrounding Johnny’s (played to razor sharp perfection by Leo Ramsey) exit from this mortal coil. As our protagonist rolls into town he’s a broken man; his wife has left him, he hasn’t seen his kid in ages, and he’s trying to give up chasing the dragon. Johnny manages to continue his career in The Big Easy, and find some small companionship with hotel staffer Iris
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviewsThriller
Tycoon John Alexander (the ever sedate and totally sane Klaus Kinski) has found himself in a marriage with the comely Helen (Margaret Lee) who gets the seven year itch five years t early and begins an affair with her friend Liz. John gets wise to this but Helen soon finds herself tits up as her car crashes due to an explosive device planted on the vehicle. How does our hero deal with his never-ending grief at his wife’s demise? Why by attending one of those “hippie parties” that the kids are so into these days, with a chick that decided to take up residence at his pad while he was away. At that soiree John featuring a chick (sporting a veil) with the same ring and scar Helen had! John then attempts a mad quest to find the woman… Since Double Face contains elements of murder and mystery, and was directed by Italian Riccardo Freda, you may expect this flick
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
You know how sex and violence oft times collide in our beloved horror biz? Well, wait until you feast your putrid peepers on A Record of Sweet Murder… Sang-joon (Yeon Je-wook) is a murder machine on the lam for the kill krazy antics he has pulled all over town. Enter journalist So-yeon (Kim Kko-bbi) who takes it upon herself to interview that rascal, in truth a childhood chum who got stabby to right a wrong that has plagued the pair for a damn sight, along with her cameraman (played by Writer/Director Koji Shiraishi) in the loon’s claustrophobic, grungy-ass apartment in the hopes of gleaning a bit of knowledge as to the deadly goings-on. What does our heroine discover? Why that if Sang-joon kills all 27 poor souls on his shit list (he’s on 25 for the record) then all his victims, and the one he is trying to avenge, will magically rejoin the land of the living. Seems reasonable. Soon
Continue reading →
ForeignMoviesReviews
Hey cats n’ creeps, our dear fiends at Severin have got a beastly bounty of new and upcoming exploitation and horror monsterpieces that are going to make your (severed) heads spin…and I’m gonna slap my patented revoltin’ review magic upon each and every one of them! First up we have a sleazy lil’ number called: Emanuelle and Francoise (1975) Francoise (Patrizia Gori) arrives home from her modeling sesh to find her abusive ass of a lover Carlo (the legendary Big George Eastman) chin deep in the crotch of another. This causes ol’ Franny to commit that hoary ol’ chestnut; train assisted suicide. Enter Emanuelle (Rosemarie Lindt), Francoise’s sister who anonymously saunters in to Carlo’s life and begins the ol’ seduction bag (along with drawing unflattering pictures of herself…as one does). Soon she drugs that big ape and the fun really begins as she drags his ass into her torture room (hidden behind a moving wall in her apartment!!) where she
Continue reading →
GamingNewsProductReviews
For a while now, since I first saw the concept art for it, I’ve been really hyped for A Plague Tale: Innocence. I have to give a thousand thanks to Asobo Studio and Focus Home Interactive for giving me an opportunity for seeing if the hype I’ve had was worth the wait. I’m happy to say, this is possibly the best game I have played so far as a Game Reviewer here at Horror Fuel! A Plague Tale: Innocence Follows Amicia De Rune, whose world was flipped upside down one fateful day when Inquisition forces led by Lord Nickolas murder her parents. Before escaping, Amicia is given the task to look after her little brother Hugo, who has been kept indoors since his birth due to an infliction that made their mother, an alchemist, his full-time caregiver which has led to a tense relationship between Amicia and her mother and resentment towards Hugo. The siblings are forced to bond since
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
‘Round this time last year I gave you lot my thoughts on Panther Ridge (which you can read here)…a demented deep dive into the world of BDSM. Well, lo and behold; Writer/Director Ryan Swantek is back with another sinister short, this time featuring a take on legendary real-life vampire Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed! Comprised of a single sequence, Báthory: Virgin Blood shows our vicious vamp (Darryl Sposato) doing what she does best…namely liberating a comely virgin (Kaylee Giza) of her precious life’s blood, and then ensconcing herself in that sweet red sauce in order to maintain her beauty eternally. Lit by sensuous candle light and featuring those glorious ’70’s occultism trappings such as inverted crosses and pentagrams that your’s cruelly just can’t get enough of…along with an aesthetic of beauty being derived from the grotesque; this production easily brings to mind the best qualities of the glory days of the Euro-horror genre…right down to those lesbian vampires! The only
Continue reading →
MoviesReviews
The original I Spit on Your Grave (a.k.a. Day of the Woman), Meir Zarchi’s 1978 exploitation masterpiece was a revolution when released. Here was the story of a woman taking control of a male influenced society…and while the flick dealt in metaphor (the debasing rape wasn’t far removed of how a male-dominated society felt about women at the time…a mere object to be dominated and played with; but seldom considered an equal…so you can imagine the liberation the women in the audience felt when Camille Keaton’s Jennifer exacts her vengeance…including castration, on the lethal Lotharios what did her wrong), the message was loud and clear; sisters can indeed do it for themselves! Flash forward to our turbulent times, when women rightfully consider themselves marginalized, and lo and behold Zarchi returns with a direct sequel to his ’70’s masterpiece; I Spit on Your Grave: Deja Vu. Will it be the vicious voice of a new distaff generation in the horror biz
Continue reading →
IndieMoviesReviews
Wolfgang (Robert Amstler) is an Austrian mercenary murder machine; a real bad cat who you surely would not want to cross paths with. But as nasty a customer as he is, Wolfgang has an emotional side that comes to the fore as he befriends a sick orphan girl named Maria (Leia Perez) while convalescing in the hospital after receiving some war wounds during an assignment, and becomes the father figure in her life, as well as growing close to the comely local tour guide, Lisa (Nicole Stark), he hires to help plan good times for his pint-sized charge. Of course our “hero” continues carving folks a new asshole for those sweet greenbacks…but soon he must decide between his career and protecting the innocents that need him most. Brought to life by Writer/Director Rene Perez (of Death Kiss fame…which I reviewed right here), The Punished is another fun throwback to cinema the likes of which would fill the shelves in the
Continue reading →
