DVD

Family Guy's tenth season provides another 15 episodes of animated chaos featuring the misadventures of the Peter Griffin and his family. Highlights this time around include abortion-themed Partial Terms of Endearment (which was initially banned from broadcast in the US and ended up making its worldwide TV debut on BBC Three last June), the 150th episode special Brian & Stewie (a smart two-hander featuring the popular dog and baby pairing trapped in a bank vault) and the surprisingly dramatic 55min murder-mystery special And Then There Were Fewer (which actually kills off some of the supporting cast). Like always, the show's mix of gross-out gags, gross stupidity, desire to offend and pop culture spoofs make it an acquired taste - but if you've stuck with the show this far then you won't be disappointed.

Thanks to the likes of Haute Tension (aka Switchblade Romance), Frontiere(s) and Martyrs, the past few years have seen a major resurgence in French horror cinema. Proving particularly adept at pushing the boundaries of taste, this new wave of French horror eschews the safe scares of its Americanised brethren in favour of more challenging fodder. And the latest of these films to make it to UK shores is the writer-director Alexandre Bustillo and co-director Julien Maury's visceral 2007 shocker A l'interieur (Inside).

I blame Russell Mulcahy for my curious love of killer pigs in horror. Ever since I first saw his 1984 giant boar flick Razorback I've never been one to shy away from a spot of porcine violence. Sadly, it seems that very few filmmakers share my passion for bacon-flavoured terror, and as such I've had to make do with re-watching Mullcahy's aforementioned slice of Oz-ploitation (which, I still find to be his most satisfying film... yes, even more so than Highlander), that bit in the otherwise forgetable Evilspeak where Clint Howard unleashes a horde of Satanic pigs on a naked chick having a shower and re-reading Clive Barker's wonderfully weird short story Pig Blood Blues.

Shot guerrilla-style on the streets of New York city, this clumsily-titled shocker is one of the most impressive micro-budget horrors this reviewer has encountered in some time. The story follows a group of neighbours from a dilapidated apartment block who find their mundane lives turned upside down by an outbreak of violence that sweeps across the city.

Based on one of the lesser known works by writer and dramatist Edward Plunkett (better known as fantasy pioneer Lord Dunsany), this delightful shaggy dog story deals with an eccentric cleric who believes he had a past life as a canine. Set in the early years of the 20th century, the movie stars Jeremy Northam as Henslowe Fisk, a young man forced every Thursday to pay a visit to his cranky father Horatio (Peter O’Toole). The latter has closed himself off from the world since the death of his other son during the Boer War and the passing of his wife soon after.

The past couple of years have seen the DVD release of some great feature-length documentaries pandering to fans of exploitation films. Going to Pieces took a look at the rise and fall of the slasher genre, while the Friday the 13th and Halloween franchises have both been treated to celebratory retrospective documentaries in the form of His Name Was Jason and Halloween: 25 Years of Terror.

Reviewing Wes Craven's 1972 debut feature The Last House on the Left isn't an easy thing. For those, like myself, who became horror devotees during the early 1980s the film has a significance and impact that is often lost on younger audiences. In this way it is much like those other '70s genre classics The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Exorcist, which are often greeted by hoots of derision rather than screams of terror these days.