EOFFTV

I've got notes for a Wrong Turn review. I'll get round to that soon!

Oh yes, do! Any time is good for some Walter Hill!

Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 (1987) Original title: メタルスキンパニック MADOX-01/Metaru Sukin Panikku Madokkusu Zero Wan The directorial debut of Shinji Aramaki, the former designer of popular anime like 機甲創世記モスピーダ/Kikō Sōseiki Mosupīda/Genes…

Metal Skin Panic MADOX-01 (1987) is an underwhelming short Japanese animation about that most ubiquitous of anime themes, giant machines hitting each other. If that's your thing, you might enjoy this nicely designed vignette.

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Octopussy (1983) Sadly, the improvements seen in For Your Eyes Only (1981) proved to be a mere blip in the continuing downwards spiral of the James Bond series. Although the producers again protested that they were…

After a return to the relatively serious, the Bond franchise gets silly again with Octopussy (1983), a film you can easily forget even while you're watching it. It's going to get worse, but an improvement is on the horizon.

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Southern Comfort (1981) Walter Hill’s Southern Comfort (1981) has, like that other borderline horror film John Boorman’s Deliverance (), cast a long shadow over the genre. It makes the swampier depths of off-t…

Walter Hill's brilliant Southern Comfort (1981) is a horror film and we'll brook no argument about that here - a group of National Guardsmen are remorselessly hunted by angry Cajuns through the Louisiana swamp. How could that not be horror?

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Children of the Damned (1963) The success of MGM’s Village of the Damned (1960), an adaptation of John Wyndham’s 1957 novel The Midwich Cuckoos, prompted the company’s British wing to mount a more ambitious se…

And while we're here, let's look at the very different "sequel" Children of the Damned (1963), a very different beast but in some ways a more interesting film, in which the kids move into the city and their origins are given a fascinating twist.

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Village of the Damned (1960) Nicely spoken, wholly unrealistic middle-class English children were endemic in 1950s British cinema. Even the least well behaved of them were merely cheeky scamps who were set back on the straight…

Wolf Rilla's eerie Village of the Damned (1960) is a faithful adaptation of the John Wyndham novel The Midwich Cuckoos, a disturbing tale of alien children implanted in the women of a small English village. One of the greatest of all "creepy kids" films.

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Hope you enjoy it!

The Playbirds (1978) British sex comedies of the 1970s were almost entirely awful, generally devoid of any genuine eroticism and packed full of jokes that were already long in the tooth when the days of music hall fina…

The Playbirds (1978) is one of the grimmest and most depressing British sex/horror films of the 1970s, a tawdry tale of a serial killer stalking glamour models in London's Soho with an ending that will leave you baffled.

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Yes, gets us off to flying start!

Ah, be still my beating heart!

It's Hammer Time! This week Kevin (@eofftv.bsky.social) and I join a bloodsucking cult as we discuss 1963's KISS OF THE VAMPIRE 🧛🏻‍♀️💋 Listen wherever you get your podcasts

Hammer Time's back in more familiar Gothic territory this week. Listen in to hear me make a fool of myself over Isobel Black. The things poor Becky has to put up with... Available in all the usual places including here: Hammer — The Evolution of Horror share.google/Fdd7PweycGKb...

Nothing irrational about it - it's loads of fun!

Island of Terror (1966) Away from Hammer, as he was a few times in the mid-1960s, Terence Fisher threw in his lot with Tom Blakeley and Bill Chalmers’ Planet Film Productions who had picked up a script by Edward And…

Terence Fisher's non-Hammer SF/horror piece Island of Terror (1966) isn't a patch on his work at Bray but it's still a fun, old-fashioned monster film about body-sucking silicon- based creatures loose on a small island.

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😂

The Little Mermaid (1968) Original title: Русалочка/Rusalochka Anyone coming to Ivan Aksenchuk’s short (just under half an hour) animated version of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy story having only been exposed to …

Ivan Aksenchuk's The Little Mermaid (1968) is a typically gorgeous Russian animated take on the Hans Christian Andersen story that retains some of the darker elements of the story. A very far cry from Disney's version(s).

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Excellent choices - you won't go far wrong with those!

He's gorgeous isn't he? Proof positive that dogs really can be expressive!

I'd have to go with The Damned and The Gorgon but it's then a toss up between Revenge of Frankenstein and Captain Clegg. Decisions, decisions... 😁

For Your Eyes Only (1981) After the excesses of Moonraker (1979), everything was drastically scaled back in For Your Eyes Only – originally promised in the end credits of The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) but put on hold wh…

For Your Eyes Only (1981) is an improvement on Moonraker (1979) - almost anything would be - and is mostly pretty good. But there are a couple of scenes that completely ruin it and the series was going to struggle to find its feet for several more years.

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Good Boy (2025) It surely says something, though who knows what, that of all of the horror films about grief that proliferated in the 2020s – and God knows, there are a lot of them, too many perhaps – …

Ben Leonberg's Good Boy (2025) may have been divisive but at heart it's a moving tale of a dog's undying love for his human as he battles eerie supernatural forces that only he can see in the family home in the woods.

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Temple Wood: A Quest for Freedom (2012) Temple Wood: A Quest for Freedom is a film one wishes one could say nicer things about, but it seems to deliberately work extra hard at being unlikable. It’s yet another exercise in “fo…

Temple Wood: A Quest for Freedom (2012) is a very muddled amateurish "folk horror" piece about madness and pagan deities in the Scottish Highlands. It could have been great but... it isn't.

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This is excellent news! Not the imminent bankruptcy, the fact that you're into Hammer now!

It does a bit - nowhere near as good of course!! 😁

Wish we'd thought of that... 😁

Indeed! "Please help us" will haunt you for days. Remarkable stuff for it's time.

Thanks as ever Gareth. Hammer really were at the top of their game at this point, certainly in terms of the diversity of the subjects they were tackling. I think some people are being surprised but just how far they were casting their net in terms of genres and stories!

We were just there at the right time - you did all the hard (but very excellent) work!

It's horrible, isn't it? How the franchise survived this will always be a mystery.