Amazon.co.uk Review
It’s sick! It’s twisted! It’s House of 1,000 Corpses, and it’s more fun than a wholesome bowl of “Agatha Crispies”! Dropped by two studios (Universal and MGM) and doomed to obscurity until Lions Gate Films gave it a limited theatrical release, Rob Zombie’s gonzo horror flick is a blood-spattered throwback to the gore-fests of the 70s, lending new meaning to the term “box-office gross”. Most critics misunderstood this unbridled exercise in graphic style and violence, but for devoted horror buffs it’s a refreshing rebuttal to the comparatively “polite” frights of the post-Scream era. While paying homage to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Last House on the Left, Motel Hell and other gory classics, Zombie’s ramshackle plot (two young couples are terrorized by an inbred family of homicidal maniacs) lacks a crucial sense of dread, but his pastiche of vivid colours, grainy fetish-films and photo-negative imagery is guaranteed to hold your attention. A bona-fide cult item, this House is definitely worth a visit… if you dare. –Jeff Shannon

House of 1,000 Corpses

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Amazon.co.uk Review
By any rational measure, Alan Parker’s cinematic interpretation of Pink Floyd’s The Wall is a glorious failure. Glorious because its imagery is hypnotically striking, frequently resonant and superbly photographed by the gifted cinematographer Peter Biziou. And a failure because the entire exercise is hopelessly dour, loyal to the bleak themes and psychological torment of Roger Waters’ great musical opus, and yet utterly devoid of the humour that Waters certainly found in his own material. Any attempt to visualise The Wall would be fraught with artistic danger, and Parker succumbs to his own self-importance, creating a film that’s as fascinating as it is flawed. The film is, for better and worse, the fruit of three artists in conflict–Parker indulging himself, and Waters in league with designer Gerald Scarfe, whose brilliant animated sequences suggest that he should have directed and animated this film in its entirety. Fortunately, this clash of talent and ego does not prevent The Wall from being a mesmerising film. Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof (in his screen debut) is a fine choice to play Waters’s alter ego–an alienated, “comfortably numb” rock star whose psychosis manifests itself as an emotional (and symbolically physical) wall between himself and the cold, cruel world. Weaving Waters’s autobiographical details into his own jumbled vision, Parker ultimately fails to combine a narrative thread with experimental structure. It’s a rich, bizarre, and often astonishing film that will continue to draw a following, but the real source of genius remains the music of Roger Waters. –Jeff Shannon

Pink Floyd: The Wall

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