What must it feel like to walk the streets for money at night? I’m not talking about scalping tickets, or collecting funds at a sleepout for the homeless. I’m talking, of course, about good old-fashioned prostitution. It’s a bleak, damaging occupation, yet exploitation films tend to have a field day with its bottomless vault of built-in sleaze (you’d need many more than 10 fingers to count how many end-credit rolls contain the words “Hooker #1, 2, 3, 4…”). But as call girl Holly (Viva Bianca) glances out at the night sky and buzzing streets below a client’s rooftop, her environs evoking at once a sense of the distant and the familiar, there comes the sudden realization that X (currently avaiable on-demand from IFC Films) is going to reject any notions of a tongue-in-cheek, two-dimensional romp. She wants to escape.

With THE HANGOVER PART II breaking box-office records in theaters, now’s a good time to look back at one of star Bradley Cooper’s earliest big-screen credits: the horror film MY LITTLE EYE. Far from an embarrassing skeleton in the closet, Cooper’s turn in EYE (made shortly after the actor began his regular role on TV’s ALIAS) is a memorable part of a seriously underrated movie; read on for Michael Gingold’s original review.

Just hitting stands is FANGORIA #304, with a cover and plenty of features celebrating the legendary Tom Savini, who narrated and hosted this 2006 documentary examining a genre his work simply shined in. Presented below is Michael Gingold's review of GOING TO PIECES: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE SLASHER FILM.

PRIEST opens with an animated sequence by SAMURAI JACK/CLONE WARS’ Genndy Tartakovsky that cleanly and succinctly establishes the backstory, delivers some striking moments and looks really cool in 3D. It’s good enough that, not long into the movie, you may start wishing the whole thing had been done that way.

THE SILENT HOUSE (opening theatrically at New York City’s IFC Center today and hitting VOD May 11) has an admirable aim. Through one continuous take, it leads the audience down a singular path with Laura (Florencia Colucci), discovering the secrets and evils of a possibly haunted rural Uruguyan home as she does. It’s an admirable gambit, but not quite successful—as in, it ruins the film.

“The Killer Cut” of Jack Messitt’s MIDNIGHT MOVIE premieres tonight and plays Saturday-midnight shows through June in Westwood, CA, with extended and never-before-seen scenes and new, enhanced visual FX; Bigfoot Entertainment then releases a new special-edition DVD June 14 (click here for details and to order tix). Here’s Michael Gingold’s review of the original release.

From the way it’s being sold, CHOOSE (currently available on-demand from IFC Films) comes off like the latest SAW derivative, but the movie itself proves to be equally indebted to SE7EN. Needless to say, it’s not as good as either.