Category: Reviews

Warning – spoilers ahead!

From the esteemed director who brought us ‘The Witch,’ comes another disturbing tale of ‘The Lighthouse.’ The film is loosely based on Welsh folklore and tells the story of two men (actors William Defoe and Robert Pattinson) who become marooned on an island while working as lighthouse keepers and start to go insane. The film leans heavily on mythological themes while exploring both sexuality, identity, and madness in midst of a nightmare scenario!

There are still places in this dreary world where you can escape and live in the fantastical if even only for one night. To step out in your finery and be the belle (or beast should you fancy) for the darkened hours. Danza Della Luna – dance beneath the moon – is now in its third year and this was by far the most spectacular. Not only did the patrons literally gasp when they walked into the magnificent gold gilded ball rooms of the Opera Ghent but the subsequent oohs and ahhs as they admired each other’s guises for the night filled the space between the beautiful cello chords. The theme was “The Fallen” and feathers, skulls, and black bejewelled fabrics were the order of the night. The backdrop of shiny opulence and chandeliers twinkling in mirrored panels gave an eerie reverence to the darker figures milling within.

The 2018 Abertoir Horror Festival

Every November, Alchemy’s resident horror fiend GAVIN BADDELEY makes his annual pilgrimage to the Abertoir festival in Wales. And every year he comes back to report on the best new horror movies previewed at the event. Take it away Gavin…

Rob Zombie is perhaps the only performer to successfully master both shock rock and the kindred parallel universe of horror cinema. But while he’s enjoyed fair commercial success in Hollywood, Zombie took a lot of fan flack while in the director’s chair – both for being too gratuitously brutal in films like The Devil’s Rejects, and for being too corporate by agreeing to helm two Halloween remakes. In the wake of the very mixed response to his most recent horror movie – last year’s bold and bizarre Lords of Salem – Rob very publicly announced he was done with directing horror for the foreseeable future. Until now…

Last Sunday, May 26th, was the centenary of the birth of one of Britain’s best-loved character actors.

Having risen from the grave in grand style last year with their box-office hit The Woman in Black, Britain’s legendary Gothic studio Hammer Films have been spreading their bat-wings into other media.

The UK’s legendary horror studio, Hammer films, has been delighting fans over the past few months with reissues of classic movies from their illustrious back catalogue, carefully restored to allow 21st Century viewers to enjoy them with the blood reds and midnight blacks as vivid as when they were first made decades back.

Can there be anything eerier than a reborn doll? How about one of Bean Shanine’s undead reborn dolls?…

If you didn’t get one for Christmas, chances are you might well be on the look out for a new calendar. If you’re looking for something saucy, yet a little different, then how about the latest tastefully erotic calendar from the Polish company Lindner? Of course, there’s nothing new about improbable businesses promoting themselves with sexy calendars, with Italian tyre company Pirelli setting the fashion with their iconic version way back in 1964. What makes Lindner’s unusual, is that they’re a coffin manufacturer.

Morbid culture vultures visiting the capital over the next few weeks will be spoilt for choice, with not one but two exhibitions dedicated to the only certain thing that awaits us all. The Wellcome Collection on Euston Road offers Death: A Self Portrait which is open until February 24th, while the Museum of London (near St Paul’s Cathedral) is hosting a special exhibition dedicated to Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men which runs until April 14th.