Top 10 Brian De Palma movies!

Do you like De Palma? Great, because we do too! So to commemorate our imminent release of the director’s superlative John Travolta-starring Blow Out, we decided to ask our nearest and dearest Arrow affiliates to list their Top 10 favourite De Palma flicks. Much like the work of the man himself, the results were intriguingly diverse and there were more than a few surprises thrown in along the way.

Cutting Moments: A Potted History of the Chainsaw in Horror Cinema

By Ewan Cant

Above all other power tools, it is surely the mighty chainsaw which reigns supreme in the world of horror cinema. Sure, the noble drill has had its moments in the sun: notably in Abel Ferrera’s 1979 troubled-artist-goes-bonkers video nasty Driller Killer; and also in Lucio Fulci’s City of the Living Dead where, in a grand guignol sequence of gore theatrics, long-suffering actor-slash-camera fodder Giovanni Lombardo Radice (aka John Morghen) gets a drill between the ears. Hell, even the common household screwdriver has had a look in; see, for example, DIY-gone-bad opus The Toolbox Murders (1978).

The Top 10 Portmanteau Films!

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, the adjective ‘portmanteau’ means something which combines “more than one use or quality”. When we talk about a ‘portmanteau’ in the context of cinema, essentially we mean a film which is comprised of several shorter, self-contained pieces or stories. 

This week sees the release of Black Sabbath, which got us thinking, is it the best portmanteau film ever made? We couldn’t decide so we polled a few of our favourite Arrow Video contributors and here’s the top 10 that we came up with.