It’s horror season, and Arrow Video, one of the most horror-centric boutique labels, has plenty of great selections for horror fans. Here’s ten to watch, courtesy of Flickering Myth’s Tom Jolliffe…
It’s every horror aficionado’s favourite time of year. The lead-up to Halloween usually inspires a shift in viewing habits and a heady dose of horror. It’s thrills, chills, scares, and hairs (standing up on the back of your neck). It’s oodles of cheese, lashings of gore, and no doubt the odd sleepless night or two.
Boutique labels and specialist streamers are rising in prominence. Cinephilia is quietly booming once more, with an upturn in interest for physical media. Likewise, where streaming was once Netflix and… well, just Netflix, there are countless streamers offering a variety of genres or particular niches. Arrow Films have been going for 35 years now and specialise in shining a light on cult, indie and arthouse genre cinema. They do most genres but are probably most synonymous with horror. Their boutique label, Arrow Video, and their streaming channel have a treasure trove of well-known (including Hellraiser) and totally obscure horror.
So if you’re looking for some horror films to watch this October, check out some of the curated selections from Arrow, including these ten essentials…
Pulse
Kiyoshi Kurosawa is a master of understated and skin-crawling psychological horror. Pulse arrived in the early 00s during a J-horror boom. There was a huge onus on supernatural horror, and the success of films like Ring, Dark Water, and Ju-On: The Grudge led to a string of US remakes too.
Pulse was also timely, focused on the internet being used as a conduit for restless spirits, whilst delving into deep psychological drama about crippling isolation in Tokyo. As with Cure, Kurosawa manages to patiently enrapture you with stark and gritty colours and lingering, patient frames. He lets the audience consume a frame for detail before something unnerving happens. Pulse will certainly leave its mark and remains prescient.
Demons
Arrow has a wealth of Italian horror cuts, including the cult favourite, Demons. Dario Argento co-wrote and produced this anarchic and wildly gory horror, directed by Lamberto Bava. A film screening of a horror movie turns to demonic chaos, the plot flies out the window, and then Bava and Argento treat us to an onslaught of gnarly gore and body horror in excess.
The film looks great, particularly thanks to restorations in HD and more recently 4K. Add in Claudio Simonetti (of Goblin fame) providing a rousing and enjoyable score, and you have a perfect encapsulation of 80s Italian horror.
A Tale of Two Sisters
Kim Jee-woon put himself on the international radar with A Tale of Two Sisters, a quietly unsettling and atmospheric horror mystery. It followed in the wake of films like The Sixth Sense, with a focus on patient pacing and atmosphere, over blood, guts, and masses of jump scares.
Jee-woon’s stylish and assured direction elevates this, as do some excellent performances from the cast. It’s largely a chamber piece, contained within the country home of a Korean family and two daughters struggling to find commonality with their stepmother. The film builds to an effective, harrowing and slightly heartbreaking finale, whilst retaining plenty of ambiguity to inspire repeat viewings.
Dead End Drive-In
Brian Trenchard-Smith has an impressive selection of cult favourites (including Frog Dreaming and BMX Bandits) and obscure deep-cuts within his CV. Dead End Drive-In is somewhere between cult and obscure. The dystopian Ozploitation fuses action, horror, and sci-fi together as a young couple head into a drive-in but find themselves unwittingly becoming trapped in a prison commune that has become a lawless Mad-Maxian/Escape From New York-esque hellscape.
It’s an interesting mixture of elements and propulsive escalation as Jimmy and Carmen try to find a way out. It has that distinct Oz genre pic Je ne sais quoi and is a hell of a lot of fun. Trenchard-Smith packs it with colourful characters, production design, and wild stunts at breakneck pace.
Tenebrae
Back to Dario Argento, with a film he helmed. Many of Argento’s peak-era classics have been given the Arrow treatment, and a number of his classics have been upgraded to 4K. It’s more than deserved, and more importantly, they look incredible. Tenebrae isn’t as immediately known as Deep Red or Suspiria, and by Argento’s standards of the time, it is fairly restrained, but it’s also a brutal and effective Giallo that masters the tropes of the genre.
Argento knew how to create violent and impactful payoffs to complement the mystery. The plot almost feels Stephen King-ian, with a writer protagonist who finds his latest novel being used as inspiration for a serial killer terrorising Rome.
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
It’s hard to believe that Michael Rooker’s breakout film is 40 years old. The bleak, unsettling, yet darkly comedic serial killer thriller, based on the real-life killer Henry Lee Lucas (and Otis Toole), has slowly been discovered over the years. From very low budget and humble beginnings, John McNaughton’s film actually benefits from its rough-edged visuals and deeper, more intimate focus on its protagonist.
Rooker is the star turn, though, giving an immense performance that is magnetic and unsettling in equal measure. The film lives up to its controversial X-rating too.
Mute Witness
Mute Witness is another film that deserves more recognition and has been propped up by Arrow in the hopes of getting it. For years, Mute Witness kind of lumbered with a so-so DVD release, until the fairly recent upgrade to 4k and Blu-ray that gave it a new lease of life.
Anthony Waller’s movie about movie production meeting murder with a mute heroin strikes a nice balance between Hitchcockian thriller and Euro horror. It’s beautifully shot and now finally looks as striking as it deserves on the upgraded physical releases. Marina Zudina is great in the leading role, having to convey so much as a character without a voice. The film is also famous for its Alec Guinness cameo, shot a decade or so before the film went into full production, with Waller convincing Guinness to shoot his impromptu appearance in the back of a car.
Pieces
A Detective hunts down a serial killer with a penchant for chopping his victims up into pieces. As it transpires, the killer is trying to piece together a recreation of his late mother in macabre fashion. Pieces is pure grindhouse, Video Nasty-era horror. Low-budget and grimy, this Spanish giallo film also features Christopher George, who occasionally popped up in Italian horror and was a former Western star.
Although the film certainly lacks a bit of polish, even with modern restorations, it has a certain effective ickiness and grizzly nature that has helped it retain a cult following. Juan Piquer Simón also directed cult horror films Slugs and The Rift, but Pieces is probably his magnum opus.
Rawhead Rex
In the 80s, whilst a swathe of creature features and creatively wild horror movies were coming out of America and Italy, Britain was also taking wild swings. Though the output of 80s British horror wasn’t as iconic or successful as previous periods (notably Hammer), there’s something to be said about some of the batshit crazy excess of films like Xtro, Dream Demon, Lair of the White Worm and Rawhead Rex (to name a few).
Few of these hit anything like the peaks of a Nightmare film, a Halloween, Friday movie or Evil Dead, but still, these slightly slipshod productions certainly held charm. Add to that a great mix of recognisable British character actors popping up. Rawhead Rex is a goofy Irish set creature feature with a mixed bag of effects and creature makeup.
The Snake and the Silver-Haired Girl
A quaint but enjoyable Japanese folk horror from a great period in the genre. Noriaki Yuasa’s film, based on an old Manga, was aimed at a younger audience, but it’s an enjoyable fantasy horror that foreshadows a number of J-horror tropes that would come in the late 90s onwards.
It’s short and sweet, with coming-of-age themes, and has plenty of memorable visuals and elements that feel like they’d translate well into Ghibli-style animation. If you want to watch a more family-friendly horror that isn’t filled with gruesomeness, then this hits the spot.
What’s your favourite Arrow Video horror movie? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Tom Jolliffe
