DVD Review: The Frightened Woman (1969)

Visually stunning, achingly stylish, slightly disturbing and at times even confusing. One thing is for sure though - you'll not forget The Frightened Woman (aka Femina Ridens) in a hurry.

Classed unfairly as sexploitation upon its release, this pop art gem got a rough ride from the censors - and hasn't been seen in its entirety since its 1969 release. But Shameless, working with director Pierro Zchivazappa, have managed to piece together and restore the surviving versions, producing what the director has called 'THE version of my film to watch'.

And Soon The Darkness finally gets a UK DVD release

It's been some time coming, but finally, years after it got a release everywhere else, And Soon The Darkness is finally getting a DVD release in the UK. And as it's a lost Brit classic, it's not a day too soon.

We've reviewed the US version previously and recently dug up the trailer via YouTube. It's directed by Robert Fuest, using the team behind The Avengers (soon after that series ended), coming together to produce a tense/moody thriller about two young female cyclists who are on holiday in the French countryside. But one goes missing, leaving the other alone and unsure who to trust - because any of the people around could be a murderer.

I've managed to secure an advanced copy of the UK disc, so here will be a review of it online soon, along with details of any extras. If you can't wait for it, you can pre-order on Amazon for a bargain £7.98.

Find out more about the DVD at Amazon.co.uk

Cult Clip: And Soon The Darkness trailer (1970)

And Soon The Darkness is a firm Cinedelica favourite and one of the first films reviewed on the site many months ago.

So as the trailer to this post-Avengers project has recently been added to YouTube, we feel we have to give it a mention. And we also think you should view it, then seek out this gem of a British thriller.

DVD Review: Society (1989)

It is appropriate that Brian Yuzna’s barmy, marvellous debut feature took three years after completion to be released in the US, while enjoying critical and popular success in Europe and elsewhere. Into the decade that mythologised hidebound family values, plugged its ears to social injustice and made heroes out of beancounters, the plunging of this splendidly over-the-top nightmarish satire of America’s social elite must have felt like the herald of the Apocalypse. Albeit a deeply silly, psychedelic Apocalypse. With rivers of prosthetic latex instead of blood.

To all outward appearances, Bill Whitney (Baywatch’s Billy Warlock) is living the (American) dream. Son of Beverley Hills WASP socialites, he drives a Jeep, dates a cheerleader, is a star basketball player and frontrunner for Class President. But all is not as it seems. Bill has paranoid fantasies that he is adopted, that his surrogate parents and platinum-blonde sister secretly hate him.

DVD Review: Bride of Re-Animator (1990)

After a 5-year hiatus, those mischievous abominators-of-nature Drs. Herbert West and Dan Cain are back, this time under the direction of shock godfather Brian Yuzna. Sadly, though the grungy production values, hammy acting and gleefully silly prosthetic FX will appeal to genre fans, this is a disimprovement from Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985).

After a pointless prologue set in wartorn Peru, West (the always watchable Jeffrey Combs) and Cain (Bruce Abbott, sporting an unspeakable mullet and all the charisma of an office partition) are back in good old Miskatonic University Hospital, Massachusetts. Far from discouraged by the massacre precipitated in the first film by his ‘research’ into reanimating dead tissue, West has redoubled his efforts to prove that consciousness pervades all flesh by reanimating individual body parts.

Meanwhile Police Lieutenant Chapham (Claude Earl Jones), whose wife was killed in the original Miskatonic Massacre, doggedly continues his investigation into West’s macabre practices. Irritated by his attentions, West kills and subsequently reanimates him. The crazed doctor then reveals to Cain his plans to create a whole organism from disparate body parts. Initially Cain is horrified, but relents when West suggests including the preserved heart of Cain’s dead sweetheart Megan.