• #Followme (Sam Hardy)
• 13 Graves (John Langridge)
• 47 Meters Down: Uncaged aka 47 Meters Down: The Next Chapter (Johannes Roberts)
• Alien Party Crashers aka Canaries (Peter Stray)
• Annabellum: The Curse of Salem (Craig Rees)
• Apocalypse of the Blood Freak (Andrew Clarke)
• Apocalyptic 2077 (Marc Hamill)
• Armageddon Gospels (John Harrigan)
• Aylesbury Dead II (Wiliam Axtell)
• Black Site (Tom Paton)
• Blood Myth (Sean Brown, Luke Gosling)
• Book of Monsters (Stewart Sparke)
• Borley Rectory (Ashley Thorpe)
• Bride of Scarecrow (Louisa Warren)
• Bundy and the Green River Killer (Andrew Jones)
• Burning Men (Jeremy Wooding)
• Cannibals and Carpet Fitters (James Bushe)
• The Circle (Peter Callow)
• The Cleansing (Antony Smith)
• Cleavers: Killer Clowns aka Cleavers: It Runs in the Family (MJ Dixon)
• Crucible of the Vampire (Iain Ross-McNamee)
• CTRL (Harry Lindley)
• The Curse of Halloween Jack (Andrew Jones)
• The Dark Mile (Gary Love)
• The Dark Within (David Ryan Keith)
• Demon Eye (Ryan Simons)
• Doll Cemetery (Steven M Smith)
• Doom Room aka Nightmare Box (Jon Keeyes)
• The Final Scream aka Deadly Callback (Scott Jeffrey)
• Follow the Crows (Alex Secker)
• Frankenstein's Creature (Sam Ashurst)
• Gwen (William McGregor)
• The Haunted aka The Haunting (David Holroyd)
• The Haunting of Borley Rectory (Steven M Smith)
• Here Comes Hell (Jack McHenry)
• Heretiks aka The Convent (Paul Hyett)
• In Fabric (Peter Strickland)
• The Investigation: A Haunting in Sherwood (Richard Mansfield)
• The Isle (Matthew Butler)
• Is That You? aka ¿Eres tú Papá? (Ruy Riveron Sanchez)
• Killer Weekend aka FUBAR (Ben Kent)
• Landing Lake (Cesare Pollacci Libardi Di K)
• The Last Faust (Philip Humm)
• Let’s Go Home (Suha Al Khalifa)
• The Lodge (Severin Fiala, Veronika Franz)
• Lonely Hearts (Sam Mason-Bell, Jessica Hunt)
• Mask of Thorn (MJ Dixon)
• The Massacre on Cielo Drive aka The Manson Family Massacre aka The House on Cielo Drive (Andrew Jones)
• The Missing (Ranjeet S Marwa)
• Mrs Wiltshire aka Dark Ditties Presents Mrs Wiltshire (Gary Smart)
• The Mummy Reborn (Dan Allen)
• Muse (Richard John Taylor)
• Ouijageist (John R Walker)
• Pagan Warrior aka Viking vs Krampus (Louise Warren)
• Patients of a Saint (Russell Owen)
• Pentagram (Steve Lawson)
• Perfect Skin (Kevin Chicken)
• Pet Graveyard aka Grim Reaper (Rebecca Matthews)
• Point of Death aka In Extremis (Steve Stone)
• Portmanteau (Mark Garvey)
• Postscript (Mark Garvey)
• The Power (Paul Hills)
• Robert Reborn (Andrew Jones)
• The Santa Suicides (Stephan George)
• Scare Attraction (Steven M Smith)
• School of the Damned (Peter Vincent)
• Scrawl (Peter Hearn)
• The Seven (Richard Colton)
• Shed of the Dead (Drew Cullingham)
• Sniper Corpse (Keith R Robinson)
• Soul Reaper (Bob Pipe)
• Suburban Coffin (Ben Rider)
• Suicide Club (Maximilian von Vier)
• Tales from the Lodge (Abigail Blackmore)
• The Tombs aka The Tombs: Rise of the Damned (Dan Brownlie)
• The Tormented (Tim Pickette)
• To Tokyo (Caspar Seale-Jones)
• Tooth Fairy aka Toof aka Curse of the Tooth Fairy (Louisa Warren)
• Trash Arts Killers Vol.2(Sam Mason Bell et al)
• Trick or Treat (Ed Boase)
• The Twisted Death of a Lonely Madman (Will’ Terran)
• The Village in the Woods aka Harbour (Raine McCormack)
• White Chamber (Paul Raschid)
• Wicked Witches aka The Witches of Dumpling Farm (Martin J Pickering)
• Widow's Walk (Alexandra Boyd)
• Winterskin (Charlie Steeds)
• The Witching Hour (Adam Evans)
• Wolf(Stuart Brennan)
• Wounds aka Transgression aka The Translation of Wounds (Babak Anvari)
• The Young Cannibals aka Eaten Alive! (Kris Carr, Sam Fowler)

Intense, dark, Freudian sci-fi/horror feature with an unavoidable Xtro feel. When three-months-pregnant Amy is rescued from an attempted rape, she unwisely invites her saviour home – but we know from an effective prologue that he’s actually a humanoid alien. Amy is drugged and raped by this being, but police, doctors and cheating boyfriend only believe she was assaulted once. By the end of the film four people are dead and Amy has given birth to a slug which is eaten by a spider-monster under her bed. Excellent acting by the whole cast combines with well-crafted, naturalistic dialogue plus tight, shallow camerawork and very gooey effects to create a powerful, disturbing, serious drama with few answers. Frustratingly, like too many titles in my books, The Spawning is a lost film. Shot in 2016 around Cheshire and Merseyside, it premiered in New York in 2017 and was released VOD in March 2018. But by 2020 Riley had moved abroad and his only feature had disappeared from Vimeo, becoming no more available to watch than London After Midnight…

Unsure of its own title, this latest Driscoll film is (mostly) the one he shot in 2006 as The Raven Part 2 which he has been trying to edit together ever since. Over the years variously aka The Devil’s Disciple, Back2Hell, When the Devil Rides Out and even Blade Hunter, it’s a prequel to EvilCalls, in which author George Carney comes up with the main story of that film. Hence stock footage of Eileen Daly (credited top and tail), Jason Donovan (in end credits only) and Norman Wisdom (uncredited). The Ask, who assures me he got paid, actually pops up in two very brief new scenes as Carney’s cuckolding bother.

Carney is a pulp writer whose New York editor Martha (Anthony) has bought a collection of original HP Lovecraft manuscripts which includes the ‘Necromonicon’ (sic) which is, of course, actually the secret diary of Aleister Crowley aged 36½. Martha sends Carney to New Orleans to get the diary authenticated by bisexual femme fatale tattooist Zilia (Ling, who flashes her tiny tits at the drop of a hat). This will somehow enable him to adapt it into a graphic novel because that’s what sells (as evidenced by a news report on a superhero named the Praying Mantis). It all turns out to be a plot to ritually sacrifice Carney and thereby resurrect the Great Beast himself.

Everybody is involved in this conspiracy, of course, including auctioneer Dudley Sutton (died 2018), university academic Vass Anderson (died 2015), vintage bookseller Sylvester McCoy, Madsen and Sizemore (who are both some sort of underworld contacts, I think), Zilia, Martha, The Ask and an unnamed comic book artist who seems to be Carney’s flatmate (the credits don’t identify individual characters, but this doesn’t seem to be any of the credited male cast). RADA graduate Clive Shilson (died 2012) appears momentarily as a strip club patron. The original 2006 shoot definitely included Kenny Baker (died 2016) and allegedly included Tom Savini, but neither is evident here.

Despite the rambling, nonsensical, contradictory plot – and the fact that almost all the American characters have British accents – this is actually one of The Drisc’s more coherent narratives; certainly much more so than the random WTF-ery of Assassin’s Revenge. The ending is sudden and inexplicable but there is a plot of sorts. Nominally it is “based on the MR James novel Casting the Runes” (which isn’t a novel…) and there are a couple of references to a slip of paper with symbols on it which Carney finds inside the diary, but that is swiftly forgotten. Nevertheless, the additional footage shot in Cornwall in 2017, including a scene in the Boscastle Witchcraft Museum, was filmed under the title Curse of the Demon.

This has finally seen the light of day thanks to American executive producers Maria Norman and Galen Walker of B-movie/space documentary distributor Monarch Films. A trailer was released in October 2018 and it finally turned up on both British and American Amazon Prime this month.

All the above notwithstanding, the film’s highlights include Sutton’s HP Lovecraft infodump speech, partly cut and pasted from a horror wiki, which specifies his dates of birth and death and then adds a new line that gets his age-at-death wrong; a time-lapse shot of the Moon crossing the New Orleans sky with a real-time rain effect over it; and the traditional misspellings which include actress Gabz Barker (on the front desk of the museum) as ‘Gabz Baker’ and British horror regular art director Melanie Light (here an ‘Art Dept Assistant’) as ‘Melaine Light’. Some things never change.

Unavailable for some time now, this is a smart little film with a pleasingly ambiguous narrative. To celebrate their A-level results, ten Geordie friends head for a music festival, get booted off the coach for rowdiness, walk to the coast and end up trapped on a causeway-accessible island. They tell spooky stories around a campfire but, in commendable defiance of tradition, don’t get drunk or high. In the morning, two are missing and others vanish one by one, while a tall, dark-clad figure is occasionally glimpsed. The key, somehow, is ‘new girl’ gothette Izzy. A final act flashback montage of violent deaths and slashed tents contradicts the silent, mysterious disappearances, suggesting the whole thing might be in Izzy’s head. Well shot and edited, with atmospheric music by, among others, top folkie Kathryn Tickell. Shot in 2011, this had a couple of local screenings and was briefly available on the now defunct Vodo website. Music video director Shotton allegedly coined the term ‘Madchester’!

Confused and generic, Grim deserves props for being produced in 1995, the absolute doldrums of British genre cinema. PeakViewing Transatlantic, a Cheltenham-based, sibling-run construction firm turned production company, was a big fish in this small pond from the mid-nineties to the mid-naughties. Investigating subsistence under an allegedly American but obviously British housing estate, seven people explore a cavern/mine network where they discover a troll-like monster halfway between Rawhead Rex and Trog. Despite its animalistic appearance, ‘Grim’ wears (ragged) clothes and dextrously uses implements including chains and a meat cleaver. Also, it can magically walk through solid rock. There are no discernable characters, no explanation/motivation for anything and the ending is inexplicable. Every so often, the cast remember they’re meant to be American. Unlike The Descent, this was shot in real caves, with DP Alan M Trow (who also shot The Comic!) making a good job of the 16mm photography. Creature suit by Neill Gorton, whose name is spelled wrong in the titles. The feature debut of tragic starlet Kadamba Simmons.

This stylish horror-thriller benefits from terrific photography by ace DP Douglas Milsome (Full Metal Jacket) and an extraordinary principal location. Alex is a successful actress living with her glamour photographer boyfriend (the always bankable Potts) in an ultra-stylish, split-level luxury apartment. It has a bathroom bigger than your living room and a slide between floors! But an AirBnB guest (who, oddly, they make no attempt to trace) has smeared fake blood everywhere. Eve is a well-produced, enjoyable flick with some seriously creepy ‘someone’s in the house’ moments, but … I would be lying if I said I knew what was going on. It’s something to do with duality (mirrors are a recurring theme) but is it a Fight Club thing? A Jekyll and Hyde thing? An evil twin? Even as the credits rolled I was none the wiser. Reading other reviews, some claim the basic plot is quite prosaic and straightforward, but they are misreading things. Which is understandable; the stylish nature of the film (and the casting of two very similar looking actresses) does somewhat obfuscate the story. I would probably have understood this if I’d read a synopsis – but that’s something I never do, on principal, for precisely this reason: a film must stand or fall on its own and require no pre-knowledge. Worth watching, but if you read other reviews than this beforehand, don't necessarily believe them.

A rare theatrical release during lockdown, Saint Maud consequently received a level of promotion – and hence hype – that it doesn’t really warrant and cannot possibly live up to. It’s a well-crafted psychological horror with powerful religious motifs and a superb lead performance by Clark. But it’s not the great white hope of British horror and certainly not the scariest film of the year. Maud/Katie is a home carer employed by an agency apparently unaware that she lost her nursing job after something appallingly bloody happened (glimpsed in a momentary flashback). A devout Catholic, Maud is sure God has a purpose for her, which might be saving the soul of her charge, a disabled, bisexual, wine-swigging ex-dancer. As her grip on reality dissipates – God literally speaks to her (in Welsh!) – our concern for Maud’s fragile mental health increases. But despite some wince-inducing moments of self-harm, there’s no real horror till the end when debut writer-director Glass suddenly throws in blood, violence and unnecessary VFX. A FilmFour/BFI production, Saint Maud feels very mainstream and restrained, lacking the punch of a true low-budget indie.

This sequel (with prequel flashbacks) to Once Upon a Time at Christmas functions as a stand-alone film. One reason why that enjoyable 2017 slasher stood out from the crowded psycho-in-a-Santa-suit subgenre is because it was structured as a police procedural, and the same trick works here. Schroeder is terrific as the FBI agent searching for a link between the new victims (which turn out to be not quite as fun – or obvious – as last time). At 104 minutes this is a tad too long and could probably have lost a few of the numerous times when Schroeder deduces “It’s an actual list.” Nevertheless, it’s good festive bloody fun with Phillips and de Goede hamming it up gleefully and plenty of production value on screen. Tanter pops up in the stand-out scene, a boardroom massacre. Originally announced as Twice Upon…, this was shot in Canada in January 2019 and premiered 10 months later in Toronto. A third outing for Santa and Mrs Claus, One Christmas Night in a Toy Store, is in development.

Produced by staff and students at Cowley International College, St Helens (30 years after it served as a location for Chariots of Fire) this amateur feature does a surprisingly good job of maintaining its central mystery. A trouble-making student clashes with a strong-willed teacher but when things get out of hand, he swears he has actually backed off and blames the ghost of a former pupil. Unknown to all but a few colleagues, this teacher was involved in that boy’s accidental death. As her mental state deteriorates, she struggles to cope with the pressure. Camera-work and sound are nothing to write home about but the film does a good job of walking an ambiguous line between ghost story and psychological thriller until the final revelation. A subplot about a ghost-hunting TV show filming an episode on the premises is a red herring. Rugby international James Roby has a cameo. There was a single local screening in December 2011 and a DVD the following year.

The latest feature from Lawson’s Leicester-based Creativ Studios (funded and distributed by High Fliers) is based on Dracula, or at least the part of Dracula after the Demeter arrives but before the Harkers return from Budapest. Reigning British horror princess Bond has a ball as the ailing Lucy who goes from simpering coquette to full-on monster. Topping is subtle and restrained in the title role, dealing with Lucy’s illness and the jealousy between fiancée Arthur and spurned John (there’s no Quincy). Neither V-word nor D-word is mentioned, and the Count is seen only briefly as a faceless figure. Steve says that he treated this sub-story as analogous to The Exorcist and it’s a refreshing take, although the film is distinctly short on action. The overly talkie second act drags somewhat but things perk up when Lucy starts flying to London to attack street whores (not part of the novel!), murders which The Times credits to Jack the Ripper. Creativ regular Crevel pops up at the end as Mina, teasing a possible sequel. Filmed in 2020 at Pipewell Hall, Northants and against a variety of effective digital backgrounds.

I don’t know what’s going on with Richard Driscoll. Nothing new there. But this time things have got really weird.

No-one else makes films ‘starring’ Michael Madsen, Tom Sizemore, Bai Ling, Robin Askwith and Colin Baker. That’s Driscoll’s stock (footage) company. But it’s directed by ‘Ross Fall’. Is that a pseudonym for Richard Driscoll?

Interestingly, the credit block on the poster doesn’t mention a director, but does list Ross Fall as producer (and DP) and Chris Newman as writer. The production company is MAHA Films, funding by Red Rock Entertainment.

This took me down an extraordinary rabbit hole. Ross Fall and Chris Newman have an extensive slate of movies in ‘production’ or development, some of them on the IMDB. Now, Ross Fall is a real person. He has credits on a bunch of British (or British-ish) horrors including Chemical Wedding, Book of Blood, Dread, Surviving Evil and World War Z (although the credit for The Devil’s Music on his IMDB page is not the Pat Higgins film of that title).

Chris Newman was (according to IMDB) the editor on Driscoll’s Highway to Hell, Conjuring: The Book of the Dead and Evil Calls, this last under the pseudonym ‘Gideon Quin’, which is a name that Driscoll has used in the past.

My apologies to Chris Newman if he is a real person, but for now I’m assuming he’s Mr D. And, as we shall see, there is plenty of other evidence to support that assumption. But one of two things is for sure. Either Richard Driscoll is collaborating, under a pseudonym, with Ross Fall. Or Richard Driscoll is collaborating, uncredited, with Ross Fall and someone named Chris Newman. Whichever way you slice it, MAHA Films’ slate is pure Driscoll. And MAHA Films’ website is pure Driscoll too. No-one else could possibly have written something as incoherent as this:

“MAHA films Ltd was set up by Writer, Producer, Director, Cinematographer & Editor, Ross Fall. After 40 years in the film industry, Ross decided to set up a production company that deals with all forms of Content in this new & exciting time. Dealing with content that could be feature films, documentaries, Live events, Series, including Youtube content. Ross have also taken the view that MAHA films will look at anything that arrives on their doorstep, to help produce or distribute if it fits into the MAHA criteria. As a production company, MAHA can offer various facilities and services to other filmmakers. Maha various equipment. They have their own lighting rig plus generator, camera’s, Panther dolly, Jib arms & a Tulip Crane as well as a post-production facility.”

This is from https://mahafilms.org/about-2/ and there’s a bio of Mr Fall on there too which seems entirely legitimate, as well as obeying the basic rules of grammar, syntax, punctuation and spelling.

Let’s see what MAHA has ‘in production’, shall we? 

Jeff Sheldon seems to have no credits beyond the MAHA films slate so may be a real person or may be Richad Driscoll/Chris Newman/Steven Craine/Gideon Quin under yet another name. However, if you click on the ‘episode guide’ link on the MAHA Films website the credits are: “Edited by Chris Newman; Directed by Jeff Sheldon & Victor Huesca; Produced by Linnea Quigley & Ross Fall.” 

That’s also the set of names in a press release that appeared a few weeks ago on various horror sites, which promised “The 12-episode first season premieres soon on DRagonFLIX!” What is DRagonFLIX? That’s Richard Driscoll’s online channel, which he has been threatening to launch for years but which has never got further than a YouTube channel of public domain titles.

There’s a 90-second trailer on YouTube and a different 90-second clip/trailer that was sent to Rue Morgue which says the series will be “available on all good platforms from April 2021”.

<checks calendar>

Incidentally, don’t bother clicking on any of the video links on the MAHA site as you’ll just get this:

“A cross between The Hunger Games& World War Z. When a virus destroys the planet only a small amount of humans exist. Out of those they need to fight to get into the special facility and be safe. So the Zombie Games was invented.”

Starring Driscoll, Linnea and Donna Wilkes from Jaws 2. Produced by Ross Fall, directed by Jeff Sheldon (according to this artwork) and/or “co-produced and directed by Linnea Quigley” (according to the website).

Then we come to the good stuff. Buckle Up (‘feature film’, ‘currently in production’), the film that Paul Tanter spotted, has this alternative artwork and synopsis:

“The story of ex-banger racer Jack Elger who has to honour his brothers gambling debt by picking up a rare diamond necklace from an Arab prince off the coast of Cornwall and bring it back to London before he his killed. The trick is to stay alive as they race through the streets of London’s Westend dodging bullets in the process.”

“After Sherlock Holmes tracks down Jack the Ripper he ends up on the Orient Express where another murder is committed by his deadly foe, Professor Moriarty.”

The credits are: a cast of Craine, Madsen, Sizemore, Ling and Clive Shilson (who you undoubtedly remember from his award-winning performance as ‘first detective’ in the 1986 pilot of London’s Burning). DP and producer, Ross Fall. Edited, written, produced and directed by ‘Chris Newman’.

“After years of trying to find the serial killer Max Boden he is finally trapped and killed on the roof of a warehouse overlooking the San Francisco bridge but in the process, his last victim Louise Linn, Whose boyfriend is the leading policeman on the case is also murdered. Now retired Police Officer LB Jefferies still can’t get that night out of his mind and the other victims Boden murdered.”

This stars Craine, Madsen and Ling of course plus… either Denzel or Denzil Washington, depending on which part of the poster you’re glancing at.

Once Upon a Time in Hollyweird (‘feature film’, ‘in production. Main unit filmed waiting to schedule second unit shoot after COVID19’) has been floating around for a while. What has changed is the credit block. Where once it said ‘Edited by Mark Brindle, written produced and directed by Richard Driscoll’, now it’s ‘written, produced, directed and edited by Chris Newman’.

The production company has changed from ‘DRagon and House of Fear’ to ‘MAHA Productions’ and we have some cast changes. Out goes Jason Donovan; in comes the aforementioned Donna Wilkes plus Virginia Madsen and “archive footage of David Carradine, Dennis Hooper and Harry Dean Stanton”! How much do you think the archive footage of David Carradine will get paid this time?

Oh, and I checked just in case there was anyone on IMDB actually called Dennis Hooper but no, he definitely means Dennis Hopper.

Next!

This is more of Driscoll’s Crowley festish: “An interlocking anthology of stories in the style of “Clive Barker’s Hellraiser” about a Diary written by Occultist Aleister Crowley called The Book of Nightmares which gets sold at auction. Each owner who possesses the Diary ends up dying in the most horrific way before the book returns to the original owner, who then sells it AGAIN…”

Craine, Sizemore, Ling, Madsen and Lysette Anthony head the cast. ‘Written for the screen’ by Chris Newman Produced by Ross Fall, And frankly, given Driscoll's inability to proof-read anything he writes, I'm amazed it's not about Aleister Crowley's dairy.

But wait, there’s more: “The Book of Nightmares is a Psychological Fantasy Horror movie in the tradition of Hellraiser and Angel Heart”

But wait, it gets even better: “Based on the Novella & audio book ‘The Book of Nightmares’ read by Colin Baker (Dr Who) to be released 2021” Well, we're all waiting for that.

Then we have another Linnea Quigley gig, The Lost Tapes (‘feature film’. ‘in production’): 

“A group of students discover an old box of VHS tapes at their school which is about to be thrown out. As soon as they view the tapes they discover footage of the missing student’s everyone thought was dead. With a couple of cameras the group goes to investigate.”

This is either produced by Quigley and Fall, directed by Quigley (website) or produced by Fall, written, produced and directed by Jeff Sheldon (artwork).

“When a heist involving stolen diamonds goes wrong it is not the Police you have got to worry about.” 

Not to be confused with the 1999 Casper Van Dien classic Shark Attack.

“When a stranger comes to the Great Wall pulling along a stretcher with what looks like a dead man, it only becomes time when the Zombie King pays a visit.”

This classic will feature “actors from the award winning tv show Game of Thrones. Kristan Nairn. James Cosmo. David Bradley. Written Produced & Directed by Chris Newman. Produced by Ross Fall.” This may be related to the Game of Thorns idea that Driscoll was kicking around while he was in prison.

MAHA Films also has some titles ‘in development’, in other words even that mythical ‘2nd unit’ hasn’t started shooting.

“Evil grows beyond the door in this 2021 remake of the 1974 classic which made $17 million dollars in the US alone in 1974 Now MAHA films brings you this remake which starts production 2021.”

“When 2 scream queens decide to take a short cut to their next convention they get caught in an earth quake which causes their truck to be swallowed by the road beneath them. When they wake up they find themselves in a world full of Dinasaurs.”

“The dreadful nightmares of John Hardcastle when he was in Afganistan never go away, they just form into a living hell.  Now the retired soldier just drives his taxi through the night. He has lost everything, family, friends and loved ones. Nobody or nothing matters anymore…”

“As World War One starts the German’s recruit the exotic dancer Mata Hari as a spy to help them win the war. When the Americans hear of the outbreak they hire the illusionist Houdini to help them.” 

This ‘stars’ Bai Ling, whose unrelated character in Conjuring: Book of the Dead was called that. And it just occurred to me: this could be where MAHA Films gets its name.

So there you are: that’s anything up to 15 ‘new’ Richard Driscoll/Chris Newman(/Jeff Sheldon?) productions in the pipeline. Interestingly, all mention of films in production/development at DRagon Studios has disappeared from that website at about the same time that this one has launched.

Will we ever see any of these ‘films’? There’s literally no way to tell, although I would say Once Upon a Time in Hollyweird and Call Me Joker are the front runners – those could turn up some day in some form under some title.

For now, let’s just enjoy a bumper crop of Driscoll-ian weirdness, be it unauthorised use of a still from Legend, or Sherlock Holmes solving an Agatha Christie mystery, or just an inability to spell ‘Denzel’. God bless you, Mr D. It’s good to see you’re still making films, and determined to stick at it until you eventually get it right.

d. Steven M Smith; w. Steven M Smith, Christopher Jolley; p. Steven M Smith, Louisa Warren, Paul G Andrews; cast: Toby Wynn-Davies, Reece Putinas, Leila Kotori, Louisa Warren, Lee Hancock, Colin Baker, Julian Sands, Christopher Ellison, Toyah Willcox

The Haunting of Borley Rectory was one of the most successful DTV features of the 2010s so it was only natural that Steven M Smith would return to ‘the most haunted house in England’ for this unrelated prequel. The bigger budget is evident in a tighter script, less rushed production and name cast including Baker and Toyah (who have several British horror credits apiece), The Bill’s Ellison, and Sands who is a veritable Borley regular, having narrated Ashley Thorpe’s animated dramadoc. The strong cast orbits around Wynn-Davies (Dogged, Nefarious), marvellously dynamic as Harry Price. The prolific Smith (15 horror features in as many years, plus several hooligan films) teams here with another key figure in the British horror boom, Louisa Warren (only 14 features but all in the last 3-4 years!) for what should be another big hit. Adroit direction of scare scenes creates a genuinely spooky and gripping feature that demonstrates how far Smith has come since his early work.