Unrated - Cinema of the Extreme                 Update 16.7.2010

Following the huge critical success of Bad Lieutenant, director Werner Herzog maintains his brilliant return to form with My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, his first collaboration with David Lynch as executive producer.

Nominated for the Golden Lion at the 2009 Venice Film Festival, the film reunites many of the cast and crew of Bad Lieutenant, including Michael Shannon, Brad, Irma P., cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger (Encounters At The End Of The World; Rescue Dawn; Grizzly Man) and also stars Willem Dafoe and Chloe Sevigny alongside Udo Kier and longtime Lynch collaborator Grace Zabriskie,

Inspired by true events, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done tells the peculiar story of Brad Macallum (Shannon), an aspiring actor who commits, in reality, the crime he is to enact in a Greek tragedy in which he is performing.

Called to the scene of a domestic disturbance in suburban San Diego, Detective Hank Havenhurst (Dafoe) arrives on the scene to discover an elderly woman (Zabriskie) lying in a pool of blood and an antique sword lying next to the body. The prime suspect is the woman’s son, Brad, who has now barricaded himself inside a nearby house and appears to have taken hostages.

As the events leading up to the murder emerge, via the accounts of several neighbours as well as Brad’s fiancée, Ingrid (Sevigny) and his theatrical director Lee (Kier), it becomes apparent that Brad is not so much insane as he is affected and confused by the madness of the world around him.

Containing all the cinematic elements that have made Herzog and Lynch’s best works at once so menacing, humorous and compelling, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done makes for essential viewing and is “a pungent and distinctive work that’s at least as good as anything Herzog (or Lynch) has come up with in the past decade” (Tribune Magazine).

My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (cert. tbc) is released by Scanbox Entertainment and will open at selected UK cinemas on 10th September, 2010.

The film will be released on DVD on 27th September 2010. Special Features include: audio commentary by director Werner Herzog, producer Eric Bassett and screenwriter Herbert Golder; interview with Werner Herzog including behind-the-scenes footage. 

Saw and Hostel meet Columbine High School Massacre-inspired movies such as Elephant, Zero Day and

The Class in The Final, the debut feature from director Joey Stewart. Featuring novel if somewhat inappropriate uses for cattle prods and stun guns, gardening shears, acupuncture needles and a specially formulated skin cream you wouldn’t want to leave on for too long, The Final is a horror movie aimed fairly and squarely at viewers with very strong nerves and comes with a BBFC warning to consumers "contains strong sadistic violence".

The Final (cert. 18) is released by Chelsea Films and will open at selected UK cinemas on 13th August 2010, though the DVD hits shelves on the 9^th.

Based on the best-selling 1992 novel by John Skipp and Craig Spector (who co-scripted A Nightmare On Elm Street 5: The Dream Child and are regarded by many as key pioneers of the late-1980s literary splatterpunk movement), Animals comes to the screen as a full-blooded, no-holds-barred adaptation that mixes sex and horror in equal measure.

Directed by Douglas Aarniokoski (Highlander: Endgame) from a script adapted by Spector and starring Marc Blucas (Buffy The Vampire Slayer), Naveen Andrews (Lost), Nicki Aycox (Supernatural) and Eva Amurri (Californication), this graphically violent and erotic reinvention of the werewolf/shapeshifter lore will appeal to horror fans who prefer the content of True Blood to the toothless, juvenile shenanigans of the Twilight movies.

Science fiction was never so wild and depraved as it is in The Beast In Space, a sex mad intergalactic saga starring Sirpa Lane (Love Goddess Of The Cannibals) who’d already shocked the world when she starred in Walerian Borowczyk’s notorious art-house porno classic, ‘The Beast’. She now returns in this mind-blowing, completely unofficial, outer space set “sequel” as a woman forced to submit to the carnal lusts of an horrific space monster in a movie that gives trash cinema lovers exactly what they want in a riot of space disco insanity, sci-fi oddness and twisted eroticism.

The Beast In Space (cert. 18) will be released on DVD (£15.99) by Shameless Screen Entertainment on 26th July 2010. Special Features include: Shameless Rebuild with extra footage, previously only available in XXX version; alternate scenes comparisons; reversible sleeve featuring original artwork;  optional English subtitles; theatrical trailer; Shameless trailers.