Viewings: May 2026

Not honestly sure what I would have thought of The Grapes of Death back in my student years, but its depressing tone reflects my middle-aged outlook on life than any of the eco-horror commentary featured within. It also helped that Marie-Georges Pascal was a dead ringer of Melinda Clarke and that's why I liked it. Definitely my favourite find this month.

Adding it to the ever growing backlog of films I've failed to review in time. Spent way too long on The Prisoner post.

 

Film:

From Hell It Came (Dan Milner, 1957)

The Snake Woman (Sidney J. Furie, 1961)

The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati, 1976) ♲

The Grapes of Death (Jean Rollin, 1978) 

 The Warriors (Walter Hill, 1979) ♲

 Madness (Bruno Mattei, 1994)

Sorry to Bother You (Boots Riley, 2018)

Faces of Death (Daniel Goldhaber, 2026)

They Will Kill You (Kirill Sokolov, 2026)

 

Television:

The Prisoner (Various, 1967-1968) ♲

♲ Rewatch

 

Dada Debaser Notes:

• Amazed how the infamous video nasty Faces of Death (1978) has been resurrected into a modern era slasher with a Charlie XCX cameo. Very uneven film, with eye-rolling hackneyed social commentary and logic that made me lose more brain cells than that poor monkey in the original. But I did enjoy its dark humour and unexpected mean-spiritism. Gavin Brivik's soundtrack is very fitting until a horrendous pop song sampling Dr. Francis B. Gröss starts blasting during the end credits.
• There's nothing in Sorry to Bother You as remotely funny as Boots Riley going from 5 Million Ways to Kill a C.E.O. to sponging off Larry Ellison's nepobaby in getting it made. I'll give his latest one a miss.
• Apart from being a Poundland Tenebrae, the only memorable thing about Bruno Mattei's Madness is the killer in traditional giallo killer threads.
• The Snake Woman comes across as a B-movie forerunner to Hammer's The Reptile (1966). Ridiculously short for a feature film, but even then, it's still something of a slog to get through. Not enough action, sadly. 

Speaking of Hammer, I'm hyped for the uncut version of Dracula (1958) finally getting released this year.