DVD: The Town That Dreaded Sundown

DVD: THE TOWN THAT DREADED SUNDOWN Arch reimagining of a gruesome 1976 proto-slasher film of the same name

Arch reimagining of a gruesome 1976 proto-slasher film of the same name

Any film about a series of real-life unsolved murders is ready to be tagged as exploitation. With The Town That Dreaded Sundown, the waters are muddied as it draws on a 1976 proto-slasher film of the same name which luridly retold the true story of killings which took place in the Arkansas-Texas border-straddling town of Texarkana in 1946. It features a murderer recreating the Seventies film in the present day while also revisiting the 1940's crimes.

Everybody's Gone to the Rapture

EVERYBODY'S GONE TO THE RAPTURE When is a game not a game? When it's better than that

When is a game not a game? When it's better than that

A tidy, English village. Swings hang in the breeze, a bicycle's discarded by a phone box, smoke curls over an ashtray in the pub garden. But no one's here. No one's ever coming back.

DVD: Eyes Without a Face

DVD: EYES WITHOUT A FACE Georges Franju’s 1960 auteur horror feature still disturbs

Georges Franju’s 1960 auteur horror feature remains fresh and still disturbs

A now-canonical film like Eyes Without a Face has the potential to become over familiar. What was once shocking could now seem quotidian. Freshness is a quality which can be blunted. Yet seeing Georges Franju’s 1960 film anew reveals it as still heady, and still unlike any other film.

DVD: Videodrome

DVD: VIDEODROME David Cronenberg's vision of body horror and video sleaze retains its power

David Cronenberg's vision of body horror and video sleaze retains its power

I walked out of Videodrome into Soho’s neon in 1983, and felt the film’s hallucinatory visions had infected the street. It’s one of a handful of times a film has shifted my mind. David Cronenberg’s crowning achievement before, as critic Kim Newman notes in a documentary extra, he diluted his work by adapting others’, it retains a cohesive, grubby surreality.

DVD: It Follows

DVD: IT FOLLOWS Teen horror with a kind but chilling heart

Teen horror with a kind but chilling heart

This is an unusually humane horror film, made more chilling by its warmth towards its characters. After a brief prologue of inexplicable, bone-snapping terror, it lets us live quietly for some time with 19-year-old heroine Jay (Maika Monroe, perfectly natural and poised for stardom), till her naive visions of a date with a sexy city boy end with her drugged, bound, and cursed to be followed by an implacable, shape-shifting thing only she can see.

Christopher Lee: A Career in Clips

CHRISTOPHER LEE: A CAREER IN CLIPS theartsdesk pays tribute to the iconic actor, who died this week

theartsdesk pays tribute to the iconic actor, who died this week

Christopher Lee died this week, aged 93. It’s strange that an actor best known for horror films, for characters that were fiendish and diabolical, should be so cherished a part of the British cultural landscape. That fact speaks volumes for the charisma and charm, as well as craft of Lee’s performances, and for the intelligence, grace and wit of the man in person.

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night

A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT Style over substance in the supposed 'first Iranian vampire Western'

Style over substance in the supposed 'first Iranian vampire Western'

A skateboarding female vampire in a striped Brêton top. A James Dean look-alike with a junkie father. A prostitute as confessor. Spaghetti western-influenced music. The black-and-white A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night is a smorgasbord of attention-grabbing elements brought together in what is being promoted as the “first Iranian vampire Western”.

The accuracy of the geographic tagging will be returned to in a few paragraphs, but one thing is clear about the self-consciously quirky A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night: it’s a unique proposition.

DVD: The Blob

Surprisingly tense monster-from-space film which marked Steve McQueen’s lead debut

Retrospectively, two things help The Blob stand apart from the glut of late-Fifties aliens-invade-small-town-America science fiction films. It gave Steve McQueen his first starring role and its theme tune was an early Burt Bacharach co-write. Either of these – or even both together – are probably not enough to make the 1958 regional independent production into a classic piece of American cinema. But it is pretty good.

Bloodborne

BLOODBORNE Brutally hard, but rewarding action gaming

Brutally hard, but rewarding action gaming

Should games be challenging? One of the perennial design challenges of videogames. Make a game too tough and you'll put people off; make it too easy and you'll offer no interest. And then there's the tricky issue of individuals having vastly different play styles and abilities.

White Night

WHITE NIGHT Beautifully stylish horror adventure shines out

Beautifully stylish horror adventure shines out

The old house seems empty at first. But in the darkness, a flickering match your only light source, it quickly becomes apparent that something terrible is here…

White Night is a classic haunted house tale and a classic adventure game wrapped up in a beautiful, stylised visual feast. Like the Sin City comics and films, this uses stark black and white with just the occasional flicker of colour, mostly the guttering yellow of a match.