Pearce’s Film Reviews

239 Films have been rated or reviewed by Pearce.

Naked Lunch (1992): Funny and some great parts, but I cannot give more than three stars to a movie which takes a classic of queer literature and puts a heterosexual love story at the centre.
Sex and Fury (Furyô anego den: Inoshika Ochô) (1973): Extremely stylish – the nude swordfight at the start is a stunner – but it meanders after a while and the subplot with Christina Lindberg isn't terrible interesting.
Existenz (1998): I think of this as Videodrome 3 as along with Naked Lunch, it follows the same structure. All three movies have very similar abrupt endings too!
Crimes of the Future (2022): I love it when Cronenberg lets his weird sense of humour off the leash – most notable Naked Lunch, eXistenZ and here. Kristen Stewart and Don McKellar are especially funny.; DVD $29.95 | Blu-Ray $34.95
Dracula - Pages From A Virgin's Diary (2002): One of the more interesting Dracula movies, this abandons the cliches and finds an interesting new structure. Staging Lucy's blood transfusion as a gang rape was astonishing and lays bare some unintentional subtext from the book.
Scanners (1981): Cronenberg says this was made from an unfinished script – it shows. I was surprised to find that star Stephen Lack was great in an earlier movie, The Rubber Gun; he's terrible here. Ironside & McGoohan rule though.
Horror of Hammer, The: Too many of these are the inferior US trailers, but the audio commentary by a trio of experts is a lot of fun.
Burning, The (1981): The first Miramax film and you'd believe a sex predator was involved in making it... brilliant gore effects.
Twitch of the Death Nerve (Bay of Blood) (1971): Several of the deaths in this were ripped off directly by the first two F13 movies, though the filmmakers claimed not to have seen it. The connection is that the US distributor of this, Phil Scuden, produced those movies.
Evil Aliens (2005): I feel slightly responsible for this because I read the original treatment and gave the feedback that it was unintentionally very funny – it was then turned into a weak intentional comedy.

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Pearce’s Film Reviews