THE PEOPLE WHO OWN THE DARK (1976)

 

Directed By: Leon Klimovsky 

Written By: Gabriel Burgos, Vincente Aranda and Joaquim Jorda

Cinematography: Miguel Fernandez Mila 

Editor: Soledad Lopez 

Cast: Nadiuska, Alberto De Mendoza, Teresa Gimpera, Emiliano Redondo, Julia Sali, Tomas Pico, Diana Polakov, Antonio Mayans, Leona Devin, Ricardo Palacios 

Wealthy elites gather at a remote castle for a decadent party when nuclear catastrophe strikes. They emerge to find the surrounding townspeople irrevocably blinded by the blast, helpless and panicked. As the survivors venture into this collapsed world, they discover a shadowy faction called “The People Who Own the Dark,” whose motives remain obscure and threatening. Paranoia escalates. The castle becomes both sanctuary and trap. Trust disintegrates as survival instincts collide with moral decay.

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At first, This looks like it’s going to be one kind of movie entirely. It opens with wealthy people gathered at an estate for what appears to be a very exclusive bacchanal, somewhere between EYES WIDE SHUT and SALO only with considerably less Stanley Kubrick or Pasolini and considerably more exploitation movie energy. And then, suddenly there is an apocalypse.

A bomb blast wipes out civilization, leaves the surrounding population blind, and turns this decadent little gathering into a survival story. Except the people coming after our privileged partygoers aren’t zombies or mutants. They’re ordinary human beings who have been blinded by the blast and understandably aren’t thrilled when one particularly trigger-happy member of the group starts murdering them.

From there, the movie becomes something of a low-budget DAWN OF THE DEAD with the survivors fighting off the furious townspeople while gradually discovering that their biggest threat may actually be each other.

Because nothing reveals someone’s personality quite like the possibility of dying.

The film is cynical about privilege, survival, desire and human nature, but surprisingly, it also becomes more emotionally involving than you might expect. What initially feels like a disposable exploitation picture slowly develops into a story about people you may actually care about including a rather touching and heartbreaking love story.

And yes, this is another post-apocalyptic movie where humanity apparently has to relearn the concept of basic decency. You don’t really know anyone until panic sets in, and once survival becomes the only objective, morality becomes a very negotiable concept.

The movie even manages to complicate its own characters. You might expect to cheer when these wealthy, decadent people get their comeuppance, but the longer you spend with them, the more you realize that some of them don’t necessarily deserve the fates coming their way.

It’s essentially a B-movie with ambitions of being something deeper. Sometimes it gets there. Sometimes you can practically see the seams. But it works surprisingly well, largely because it keeps moving and mercifully doesn’t overstay its welcome. It makes its points, occasionally quite bluntly, and gets out before it can completely wear out its welcome.

And then there is Nadiuska. The film is certainly not shy about making sure its female cast is easy on the eyes, but Nadiuska has a screen presence that makes you stop paying attention to the plot for a moment. She is absolutely gorgeous. A genuine screen siren and the movie gives her one of its more romantic and emotionally affecting storylines. That makes what happens to her character all the more heartbreaking.

She brings a warmth and vulnerability to the movie that helps make the ending hit harder than it probably has any right to. Among all the chaos, violence and rather obvious social commentary, her character gives the film something genuinely human to hold onto.

So, yes, the film initially promises you exploitation and then hands you something slightly different. Thankfully, it’s a pretty good trade.

I wouldn’t call this a great film, but it’s an entertaining, strange and surprisingly effective one. It has enough atmosphere, sex, violence, social commentary, survivalism and melodrama to satisfy the exploitation crowd, while occasionally reaching for something more thoughtful underneath it all.

Not exactly essential cinema, but certainly not disposable either.

Grade: B-

REFUGE OF FEAR (Aka CREATION OF THE DAMNED) (1974)

Directed By: Jose Ulloa 

Written By: Jose Ulloa and Miguel Sanz 

Cinematography: Antonio Millan 

Editor: Emilio Ortiz 

Cast: Craig Hill, Patty Shepard, Teresa Gimpera, Fernando Hilbeck, Pedro Maria Sanchez, Fernando Millet 

Five strangers bound by concrete and dread hole up beneath a scorched America, waiting for radiation to thin enough to breathe. Food vanishes. Medicine runs dry. Nerves fray into territory no bunker was designed to contain. The youngest among them, restless and half-feral with need, makes a decision that nobody else has the courage to face. Above, the world is poison. Below, so is everything they’ve become to each other. The shelter stops being a refuge almost immediately, turning instead into a slow-burning pressure cooker of want, boredom, and bodies too close together for too long.

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This is the kind of movie that seems like it should be pure exploitation. It opens with plenty of shots of New York, establishing where we supposedly are, only for the film to later send a character outside into what looks suspiciously like the suburbs. Add the fact that this is an Italian production with dubbed English dialogue that doesn’t always agree with the actors’ mouths, and the movie is already having a bit of an identity crisis. Everyone is apparently American, even when absolutely nothing about the production agrees.

But once you get past that, there’s actually a pretty interesting little film here.

This is a post-apocalyptic drama with some nudity, some sex, and just enough exploitation seasoning to remind you what aisle you’re standing in. For the most part, though, it plays like a chamber piece. Five people: two couples and one of their sons are trapped inside a futuristic apartment building, waiting for news about what’s happening outside.

And, naturally, they have nothing to do but turn on each other.

Each character is basically a different type, and after being stuck together for what seems like weeks or months, the personalities begin rubbing each other the wrong way. We enter the story somewhere in the middle of their isolation, watching these people slowly come apart while the outside world becomes almost secondary.

It’s predictable. You can usually see where things are going; the only question is when the movie is going to get there. Still, it manages to be compelling because the characters gradually reveal themselves, and there’s something effective about watching ordinary human behavior become more frightening than the apocalypse itself.

It’s almost like NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD without the living dead. No zombies necessary when people are perfectly capable of becoming their own worst enemies.

The second half gets particularly cold, especially in the relationships. It sometimes feels as though death is the only thing capable of making these people realize they actually care about one another or at least about whoever has just become the latest victim.

The premise is interesting, the movie keeps moving, and despite its ridiculous touches, it’s never really boring. There’s something here worth watching, even if the film occasionally seems unsure whether it wants to be serious science fiction, exploitation, or an Italian movie pretending very hard to be an American one.

Patty Shepard is a stand out as at first she comes across as more of a minor ungrateful character whose wild end up, causing the initial dissension, but as the film goes along, she becomes more and more important as her character grows and seems maybe one of the few characters who hasn’t totally lost their mind. As at first, they play her more as a kind of flirtatious, easy character. as she is quite eye-catching throughout with her piercing eyes. Though she proves to be more than that throughout the film.

In the end, The filmfeels like one of those thought provoking science-fiction novels you discover in a used bookstore. The premise sounds better than the writing, there are some genuinely good ideas buried inside, and you wish the execution were just a little stronger.

It’s not great. It’ kind of cheesy. It’s not exactly sophisticated. But it’s certainly not forgettable. And sometimes, in a post-apocalyptic movie, keeping your attention is already a small victory.

Grade: C+

THE LIVING DEAD GIRL (1982)

 

Directed By: Jean Rollin 

Written By: Jean Rollin, Jacques Ralf and Gregory Heller

Cinematography: Max Monteillet 

Editor: Janette Kronegger 

Cast: Francoise Blanchard, Marina Pierro, Mike Marshall, Carina Barone, Fanny Maggier, Patricia Besnard-Rousseau, Veronique Pinson, Sandrine Morel 

A toxic spill revives a beautiful, dead heiress who, with the help of her childhood friend, must quench her insatiable thirst for blood.

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This is the first Jean Rollin directed film that I have seen, even as his films are notorious it film circles for their more sexual material in the middle of being a horror film and here is a perfect example, even though this is the first and only I’ve seen I imagine that the rest of his films are similar to a degree only hopefully better quality

Has this film plays like a 1970s softcore movie that strives to be artistic in European mixed with random ridiculous violence that looks like it should be in a low budget grind house horror film that is even over the top four it subject matter

At heart it’s a love story that is also a zombie movie where the female zombie in this film has quite amazing strength and seems to be perfectly presented and not the George Romero type where they crave brains in our continuously rotting. The zombie is cannibalistic, though that doesn’t seem to come out until the second half of the film Moore..

Which by the end doesn’t even matter because even though it’s zombies, the film seems to have the same rules where it could’ve easily been a vampire but it seems like the filmmakers were like well. We’ve been there and done that so let’s move on to zombies which I can’t blame the filmmakers for because eventually that is how Hollywood started treating the genre also it seems more in the early 2000s when there was a horror where vampire suddenly became in in the shadow of the popular TWILIGHT movies those after realizing the overkill and dwindling box office of those particular creatures, always romantic nature and always seeming to come around once in a while they moved to zombies, but not just plain old zombie films soon we were starting to get zombie films that were romantic like WARM BODIES or just zombies in general to be our protagonist who we feel sorry for as they are cursed or just a general villain. 

Director Jean Rollin’s style makes the film feel like his own personal fetish or fantasy material with actress Francoise Blanchard, as he seems or makes the camera seem obsessed with her from the many angles in poses he has her do especially nude as well as her female, best friend and lover, played by Marina Pierro though not as obsessed with her she is quite beautiful and stunning in her own right prove that the coldest or most evil monsters aren’t always the supernatural kind

Luckily, the film does have a plot that is barely there, but there is a story that ties everything together, which is a essentially a forbidden romance film between two women with themes of obsession that feels overall throughout, even while trying to show one’s devotion to the other

It comes across pretty pretentious as it tries at certain points to be classy, but it has just a low class style, like wanting to be artistic, but also wanting to be down with the people while providing plenty of sex which year is more nudity and violence at which at times can be gory, though only in one scene does it feel like it keeps going on and on and over the top

I believe the film is a bit anti-American. As it has the only American player by Mike Marshall be a complete idiot and blind to all that is going on around him. As he is the amateur photographer who keep snooping in and investigating’s boyfriend.

The film is a lesbian romance that is interrupted and slowly starts to break down and become more dramatic and tries to involve certain characters investigating these uncommon occurrences, though they seem here only for the audience to get more of a backstory that the two main characters are not providing

By the end, the film feels much do about nothing. The type that you probably wanted to watch when you were 13 only because you saw on the TV Guide that it had nudity and sexual themes, but then were partially disappointed because he had to sit through so much just to get to those scenes and it’s still seeing the kind of odd or something that you weren’t used to, though I wonder if that is what shaped certain artist Taste was going in for one thing expecting more T And A as well as exploitation and in sitting through all of the film just to get to that they also started to learn to appreciate art of foreign cultures, depth, story, or seek out what they weren’t used to necessarily.

The quality of this film could’ve been more understood if it had been made in the 60s or 70s, but this was made in 1982. It feels like the filmmaker’s knew better then again maybe it was a throwback for them rather than trying to be modern or they were trying to make a film that seemed more dipped in the past with for 1982 modern sensibilities as it was a decade just beginning and hadn’t quite found an identity yet, but was coming into its own

There is an English language version of the film. That was filmed and directed by Gregory heller only using the same cast and crew. A she would film the same exact scenes in English right after they did them originally in French. It was never released and thought to be a lost film or lost version of the film. 

Though even if it hopefully was one of those films that was a Gateway drug to better quality films of this type, this was still a major disappointment, though it will be slow. Can’t wait to see how this one measured up to his other films in terms of quality. As with this one, I like the song that it inspired by Rob Zombie, which to me is more exciting than the actual film that inspired it here.

For me this film is overhyped 

Grade: D+ 

JEFF OF THE CINEFILES & UNFINISHED BUSINESS: HALL OF FAME - FILE #0078: BAXTER (1989)

 

Directed By: Jerome Boivin

Written By: Jerome Boivin and Jacques Audiard 

Based On The Book “HELL HOUND” By: Ken Greenhall

Cinematography: Yves Angelo

Editor: Marie-Jose Chauvel

Cast: Lisa Delaware, Jean Mercure, Jacques Spiesser, Catherine Ferran, Jean-Paul Roussillon, Sabrina Leurgoin, Daniel Rialet, Evelyn Dipi

Told from a dogs perspective – the titular Baxter is moved from one owner to another, seemingly never being a good fit for anyone.

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Have you ever watched a movie that is so good you have no desire to really ever watch it again yet you would still recommend it. Well, this is one of those movies for me. Kept me watching with fear and anticipation until the end. Leave it to the French.

I was hoping that the recently released film GOOD BOY, would be on the level of this film while I found that film disappointing this was better than I could’ve ever expected as it kind of feels like it’s own version of the film MAN BITES DOG, though not as disturbing, but disturbing in its own way. Though this film could be watched with films such as WHITE DOG and WHITE GOD. Why all these films have White in the title? You’ll have to watch them and see.

This movie is a very depressing indefinitely disturbing though it never shows any violence throughout more leaving it suggested until the third act. 

Throughout the film, you know where it is going but not how it will get there or what it will do when it does and you kind of hope that it might steer itself somewhere else as we get to know the next inheritors of the dog and can instantly spot their weaknesses and vulnerability. especially as he seems to more go after the innocent, lonely, weak and trusting. All those that used to be sacred in films of the past or even of the films time period in which it was made.

Fell through throughout was thankful it didn’t go some places that were expected. As one feels sorry for most of the characters 

they keep in mind as one get older films like this bother me. They aren’t exactly for me anymore, but they’re watching it. It definitely inspired a reaction and kept me watching which can be rare when it comes to certain films

The film disturbed me yet want to read. It’s original source material. A 1970s American horror. Novel. Not shocked that one of the Screenwriter was future award-winning filmmaker Jacques Audiard (DHEEPAN)

I thought the film would be more an ensemble episodic anthology movie, Sort of like the movie WEINER DOG with less quirky comedy. Which then again makes me wonder if Todd Solondz  was inspired by this movie even as this stays more in a certain community in the neighborhood.

The ending is disturbing and sad as it shows a kind of legacy that will continue in its own one. 

Writer-Director John Waters put this on his list of favorite films that will corrupt you when he had an all two brief movie review show of his own

Which ends up being true as by the end, you are scared and feel a bit guilty as a film is going to make you feel something with barely having a Music score to guide you. It’s not flashy stylistically it’s definitely challenging and seek to instigate as you are a fly on the wall throughout and is going to take you with it willingly or even if it has to drag you unwillingly 

Grade: A

JEFF OF THE CINEFILES & UNFINISHED BUSINESS: HALL OF FAME - FILE #0077: SIRAT (2025)

 

Directed By: Oliver Laxe 

Written By: Oliver Laxe and Santiago Fillol 

Cinematography: Mauro Herce 

Editor: Cristobal Fernandez 

Cast Sergi Lopez, Bruno Nunez Arjona, Stefania Gadda, Joshua Liam Henderson, Richard Bellamy, Tonin Janvier, Jade Oukid, Ahmed Abbou 

A father, accompanied by his son, goes looking for his missing daughter in North Africa.

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Please watch this film before anyone can spoil any of it for you. 

There is so much one wants to say about this film

This film is more of an experience. All its own. Then something you just watch and rate. As it makes you Feel many things throughout. 

Perfectly titled, as it truly lives up to its appetite, which you truly only understand by the end

Imagine a movie centered around and filmed a club or on MTV spring break centering on the dance floor and dancers as well as the music only with a loose plot to interact with the dancing and Revels. Throughout broken up scenes and establishing shots of actual actors done for that you are here for you or spontaneous things happen or caught on camera. Like the movie CLIMAX 

Only here Based around the main characters of father and son looking for their missing daughters/sister, which keeps it from being an on the ground documentary so more staged docudrama.

That is what I thought this film would be until it finally bared down and focused after I would say the first 15 to 20 minutes

What we do end up getting is a film that is useful less stylized and more radical. That is a road movie based around ongoing road trip through back roads in the desert. As the film plays like a tempo with brakes between tracks.

The characters, other than the lead, father and son, the so-called ravens are not the Hollywood version. These are more not only international, but older and middle aged as well as weathered characters who just seemed to go with the flow of life some disabled some just lost so I’m looking for the next party or to see where the wind takes them so they form a kind of loose knit family themselves. 

The film is kind of a thrill throughout as you never know where it’s going and where we are going with these characters. It becomes hypnotic . 

The film does manage to be shocking. As it doesn’t go where expected. Especially when you think you know how everything is gonna play out, which is one of the reasons one believes they got nominated for best foreign film, other than just its unpredictable mnature. Presented as a loss journey that is surprisingly emotional, though never allows itself to be sentimental as it is unflinching.

The film is a kind of unknown suicide mission of sorts that no one knows they are voluntarily going on though always seems to want to have hope even in the worst situations. A dance through hell

As the desert situations can be beautiful, but are also dangerous and deadly, so there’s always that threat looming which creates great tension as well as the father, never quite trusting the group at first, even as they seem to come through for him, though also them being quite cautious of him without him being with child certainly helps them to open themselves up more though the film does present us with plenty of worst case scenarios

The film does offer a sucker punch of a third act. As characters we grow to know and care about are threatened. Where we in the audience never truly expect to care so much. Are pushed to the edge. This isn’t a film about a journey but one of acceptance. 

This is a truly unforgettable film. That seems like it will be a party, but ends as a nightmare. 

Grade: A 

WILD ZERO (1999)

 

Directed By: Tetsuro Takeuchi

Written by: Tetsuro Takeuchi and Satoshi Takagi

Cinematography: Motoki Kobayashi

Editor: Tomoe Kubota 

Cast: Guitar Wolf, Drum Wolf, Bass Wolf, Masashi Endo, Kwancharu Shitichai, Makoto Inamiya, Haruka Nakajo, Shiro Namiki, Yoshiyuki Morishita 

After a meteor strike aliens attack the earth and begin turning people into zombies. Rockers Guitar Wolf, Bass Wolf and Drum Wolf aswell as their rock and roll blood brother ace and his true love Tobio are caught in the middle of this madness

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WILD ZERO starts weird, gets weirder, and somehow still has room to surprise you.

The film quickly introduces its colorful cast before throwing all of their storylines together. At its heart, it’s an ensemble movie, even if the legendary Guitar Wolf stand proudly at the center like the coolest people to ever ignore the apocalypse.

This thing is loud, unfiltered, ridiculous, and incredibly charming. The third act is absolutely bonkers, piling on zombies, aliens, explosions, romance, and pure punk-rock energy. It shouldn’t make sense, yet somehow it feels completely natural. Every time you think the movie has run out of ideas, it casually throws another one at you.

Having Guitar Wolf play themselves is inspired . Imagine the Ramones in ROCK N ROLL HIGH SCHOOL filtered through a Japanese zombie movie with a garage punk soundtrack. They don’t perform every five minutes, but every scene they’re in reminds you why they’re the coolest band in the room. While everyone else panics, they just keep moving forward like the end of the world is an inconvenience. 

One of the film’s biggest surprises is its love story. At the center is a romance between a cisgender man and a trans woman that feels remarkably thoughtful for a film released in 1999. It acknowledges fear and prejudice but ultimately lands on acceptance without ever feeling preachy. It simply lets the characters exist, and Guitar Wolf delivers one of the film’s most memorable speeches about love that perfectly sums up its philosophy.

The world itself is delightfully off-kilter. A club manager is so obsessed with revenge that he’ll chase the band to the ends of the Earth, usually while wearing hilariously tiny shorts. Another character looks like a punk-rock mercenary whose wardrobe somehow becomes more dangerous every time she appears. Nobody dresses normally, nobody acts normally, and that’s exactly the point.

Think of it as SCOTT PILGRIM VS. THE WORLD nearly a decade early, only traded indie rock for Japanese punk, replaced the exes with a bunch of slow moving classic zombies, and decided aliens might as well show up too.

It’s a movie overflowing with imagination, creativity, and infectious energy. I owned the DVD for years but somehow never got around to watching it until now on streaming. Strangely, I’m glad I waited. I probably would’ve enjoyed it back then, but I appreciate its sheer originality much more today.

I wouldn’t call it a personal favorite, but I absolutely understand why it’s become a cult classic. If you’re looking for something unpredictable, inventive, funny, and unlike almost anything else, WILD ZERO  is an easy recommendation.

Honestly, it feels like the CRANK movies were chasing this same “anything goes” energy years later. Few films embrace insanity with this much confidence and have this much fun doing it.

Grade: B+

ALPHA (2025)

 

Written & Directed by: Julia Ducournau

Cinematography: Ruben Impens 

Editor: Jean-Christophe Bouzy 

Cast: Melissa Boros, Golshifteh Farahani, Tahar Rahim, Emma Mackey, Louai El Amrousy 

In a French city grappling with an unnamed viral epidemic, 13-year-old Alpha, the daughter of an immigrant doctor, confronts a challenging coming-of-age journey. Her mother, a frontline healthcare worker, is horrified when Alpha allows her classmate and love interest, Adrien, to tattoo her with a shared needle at a party. The resulting bleeding turns Alpha into a social pariah at school, igniting heightened fears of blood contamination among her peers. However, things take a dark turn when Uncle Amin, a person with a chronic substance use disorder, moves back into the family home. This unexpected reunion forces Alpha to share a room with him, further complicating her already strained life.

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Alot of people came away from Alpha feeling underwhelmed, calling it just okay, or even a disappointment,but against all odds, I really liked it.

In some ways, it’s overdone. It leans heavily into melodrama, and at times it feels almost overwhelming on purpose, But somehow, that worked on me. I was mesmerized by it, by the mood, the discovery, and the way it slowly reveals itself. Even when I had a sense of where it was going, it kept me interested.

This won’t be for everyone. It’s slower, more emotional, and much more introspective than many might expect. Especially from writer-director Julia Ducournau. If you’re looking for the shock or body-horror intensity of RAW or TITANE may feel restrained by comparison. But that restraint is part of what makes it fascinating.

The visuals are still unmistakably hers, sharp, beautiful, occasionally surreal, but they never feel flashy just for the sake of it. They serve the emotion. The film’s central allegory, with its mysterious virus that slowly turns people into marble statues that bleed sand, is an obvious but powerful reflection on illness, grief, and specifically the AIDS crisis.

This isn’t really a genre film, so much as a drama dressed in genre clothing. It’s less interested in shocking you than in sitting with discomfort, fragility, and loss. It may not always know exactly what it wants to say, but it remains compelling as a study of its themes and characters.

And yes, maybe it goes a little too far with the melodrama, perhaps to compensate for a story that feels thinner than its ideas. But even then, it never lost me.

To show how far, she has gone from her usual. The film doesn’t even have actress Garance Marillier who is. Usually in all of her work so far 

It’s not my favorite film from Julia Ducournau, but it might be her most personal. And sometimes a film doesn’t need to be perfect to leave an impression. it just needs to feel singular. This film certainly does

Grade: A

REFLECTIONS IN A DEAD DIAMOND (2025)

 

Written & Directed By: Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani

Cinematography: Maunuel Dacosse

Editor: Bernard Beets

Cast: Fabio Testi, Yannick Reiner, Koen De Bouw, Maria De Mediros, Celine Camara, Thi-Mai Nguyen, Kezia Quental, Herve Sogne 

A retired spy suspects his former adversaries have resurfaced when his intriguing neighbor vanishes.

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A new film by the directing team of Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani is always going to be a strange yet original affair. This might actually be the film. That is the best entry for newcomers to discover the filmmakers work. As strangely this is their closest to mainstream film, that is still odd & avant-garde, but beautifully and miraculously filmed.

When it comes to this directing and writing team, you always know you’re gonna be taken on a rollercoaster. Yet never quite sure which direction it will take, but there will be plenty of unforgettable sights and sounds. though you can never say it will be boring and it will always be quite memorable

 The  film is more about the visuals than anything else, story or plot wise. As this film feels more of a theme that has a weakness for distractions and fetishes

It is espionage themed and very violent, though has more humor than the filmmakers usual films. It plays almost like a parody of spy films specifically from the 1960s, but with a little modern day, technology and charm, but definitely a throwback vintage style. 

The film is visually delicious and beautiful throughout. Though it has feel a bit like artistic exploitation.

As the film has its fair share of strong, beautiful women only to be slaughtered. While all the male characters are seen as heroic, no matter their behavior. 

This film is strange that as it goes along, you start to get into its rhythms. Where you question what is going on half the time but except what you are given.

The film almost feels like music video directing, only better. As you were given more of a visual feast in a thorough story that is like patchwork. As it’s more set in the 1960s espionage style and design, but could be modern. Where the production and costume design are pristine. As this is very different from the previous films made by the directing duo as this is more lighthearted and fun, but ultimately by the end, still a bit sad

Grade: A