Reviews

Trio of Brazilian superstars pool resources to win a Grammy and sell a million records

Banshees no more, the fourth Creatures album finds Siouxsie and inamorata Budgie turning Japanese

After Les Paul gave him a guitar lesson, the Gangster Of Love never looked back

First quartet of LPs by San Francisco's trans-love aviators, remastered with bonus tracks

Follow-up documentary about notorious US female serial killer

Beginning as an eye-popping cavalcade of dismemberment, cannibalism and pigs gorging on human offal, this quickly turns into an occasionally amusing attack on the critics of director Lucio Fulci's work, with Fulci himself starring as a horror director wondering whether extended exposure to fake gore has turned him psycho-killer. Demented.

John Carpenter was 24 when he shot one of the most influential films in movie history in just 20 days, on a budget of just over $300,000, for the apparently meagre salary of $10,000, a cut of the profits and his name above the title. Looking back, a quarter of a century on, it was probably the best deal he ever made. After a faltering opening run, Halloween quickly became a critically acclaimed box-office smash that went on to gross over $50 million and spawned a raft of sequels and an entire industry of mostly inferior slasher movies.

If Jim Carrey was suddenly declared God, what would he do? That's the premise, and only the easy, obvious routes are taken. But, as he did in Liar Liar, Carrey makes them funny even if you're determined he won't. Thus he enlarges Jennifer Aniston's breasts and you guffaw like a goon because the man is a comedy giant: you want him to fall on his ass, he does, you laugh again.

Cherished US singer-songwriter back on form

The legend behind such blaxploitation classics as Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song, an incalculable influence on Tarantino and Spike Lee, recorded this in 1974. Fundamentally, it's him growling over "funky grooves". A born philosopher, he opines that "A Birth Certificate Ain't Nuthin' But A Death Warrant Anyway", and, after bemoaning the fact that he'll never visit every bar in the world, claims that "between a woman's breast is the thickest thorns you can ever lay your head on". We'll look out for that, Melv. Godlike, of course.