[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Backrooms is one of those movies that lingers in your subconscious long after the end credits have rolled. My initial reaction to Kane Parsons' vision of “liminal horror” was, to be perfectly honest, rather lukewarm; while the direction was quite competent by the usual standards of a feature debut—moody, evocative, stylish—the plot frequently felt haphazardly structured and thinly sketched (particularly in the second half)....

[The following review contains MINOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Richard Fleischer’s The Boston Strangler is a fascinating paradox. In some respects (e.g., in terms of its plot, narrative structure, and character archetypes), it’s a rather typical police procedural—albeit a remarkably lurid example of the genre by the standards of the late '60s (the degree of exploitative, voyeuristic sleaze in which it indulges is, in my experience, more commonly associated with the '70s—though there...

[The following review contains MAJOR SPOILERS; YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!] Kazuhiko Hasegawa’s The Youth Killer revolves around a brutal act of parricide. The catalyst for the crime is an argument regarding protagonist Jun Saiki’s “loose” girlfriend, but that isn’t really the cause—only the motive. Such conflicts are hardly uncommon, after all, and they rarely result in murder; what other environmental factors nurtured the irrational rage that ultimately culminated in violence? I believe his...