Much criticised at the time of its release, Michael Powell’s psychological study of a shy camera technician who films for his home movies the death throes of the women he kills is now widely regarded as a dark classic. Less a straightforward serial-killer thriller than a Freudian meditation on how and why we watch movies, it is rich in its thematic resonance – and in in-jokes about the film world.
This masterful portmanteau British horror laid the foundations for a slew of similarly structured films in the 1960s and 70s. But no imitator could hope to better this superb collection of macabre supernatural tales, which take in haunted mirrors, ghostly children (and golfers), deadly premonitio...
Set in Victorian England, The Nightcomers follows two orphans - Flora and Miles - as they are left by their tutor in a mansion, under the care of the elderly housekeeper Mrs Grose, the governess Miss Jessel, and the groundskeeper Peter Quint. When Grose attempts to have the master of the house fi...
In a remote corner of England's Peak District, a mysterious skull is unearthed. But even weirder is that Lady Sylvia steals the skull for use in worshipping - very erotically - her pagan god, The White Worm, who hungers for the taste of virginal flesh. Ken Russell has great fun revelling in the d...