Sex and violence. Why do we culturally gravitate toward entertainments that exploit these two facets of the human id? If I could properly explain that, then the mysteries of the human condition would be no more, and FANGORIA might be out of business. It’s just how we’re wired, that primal voyeuristic need to channel aggression and lust through entertainment…and writer/director Darren Ward knows this. For sex and violence are the chief reasons why Ward’s new film A DAY OF VIOLENCE (now out on British DVD) exists.

Any horror nut worth their own weight in musty old comics can tell you that the EC Comics of the 1950s, along with Warren’s CREEPY and EERIE from the ’70s, are the upper echelon of the bite-size-illustrated-horror world, a benchmark that has been strived toward countless times. Very few, however, have come within a kidney-stone’s throw of capturing the same magic. But that’s why I’m terrifyingly tickled to tell you fright fans about Asylum Press’ upcoming release.

I had never heard of the German band The Other before I set out to review them, so I had no idea what to expect. My first impression? Total shock! Being a die-hard metalhead, the music I prefer must have balls. And NEW BLOOD (out August 30 in North America from Steamhammer/SPV) will have your fangs on point and blood boiling.

These days, unfortunately, the words “theatrical experience” tend to call up the feeling you get when threatening the lives of whichever pack of 14-year-olds snuck in and won’t stop texting/answering their phones/making incredibly obvious observations through whichever not-worth-$12 movie you’re seeing. It’s becoming increasingly hard to get an entire audience on the same page, and I, for one, really miss the communal aspect of laughing, gasping or collectively going crazy at whatever’s displayed up on the screen.

Short on budget, but long on style and quirk, writer/director/actor Park Bench’s literally biting Canadian horror/satire THE DEATH OF ALICE BLUE (opening for a limited theatrical run today in Toronto, followed by an expansion across Canada) is a real find. It’s an arch, theatrical, funny and absolutely stunning-looking film, riding genres with gleeful abandon, playing with conventions and admirably cheating its limitations. And man, does it have a great central character…

With BLACK DEATH, it’s high time that director Christopher Smith be acknowledged as one of the major modern forces in horror. The British filmmaker been getting better with each successive movie, and his latest (which had its North American premiere at the recent Fantasia film festival in Montreal) is a striking, mature and deeply scary piece of work.

It might seem that there’s little left to be done with the devil-possession subgenre or pseudodocumentary horror, but in combining the two, THE LAST EXORCISM comes up with something fresh. The movie, which had its international premiere at the recent Fantasia film festival in Montreal and opens theatrically August 27 from Lionsgate, delivers thrills that have nothing to do with spewed pea soup or shaky runs through dark woods.