It could be said that a country’s horror movies tell us something essential about its culture, its fears, and its desires. America, the great melting pot, gleefully cribbed monsters from European novels like Dracula, our own imperialist impulses, and later, we began to express a more individual, distinctly “American” sensibility in 1950s with the birth of creature features and atomic age fever dreams. The Vietnam War followed by Reagan’s reign gave us the slasher--helpless people stalked and brutally dismembered in the woods, usually after betraying a moral or cultural norm.
Read MoreMSF: Male Seeking Female (2014)
There’s a particular difficulty in reviewing so-bad-they’re-good films. By the very fact of including “bad” in the descriptor, you’re necessarily being critical of the creative forces behind the movie. Rare is it that an intentionally “bad” film turns out to be enjoyable.
Read MoreMemory Box (2015)
Attendees at this year’s Fantastic Fest who checked out the delightfully surprising dramedy Aloys were in for a treat of a different sort before the film proper began—a tragic, beautiful little short called “Memory Box.” The simplicity of its’ title betrays the complex framework of the story. In a not-very-distant future, people can pay to participate in “boxes”—elaborate role playing scenarios that let individuals relive past experiences, allowing them to literally relive their happiest memories, with companies and their employees painstakingly recreating places, events—and people.
Read MoreLady in White (1988) #BluRay
With the frequency with which Hollywood productions change or fall apart, the history of the industry is littered with “what ifs” and “almosts.” We’ll never get to see what would’ve happened had Alejandro Jodorowsky directed Dune; we’ll probably never see the result of Orson Welles filming Charles Williams’ Dead Calm. On the other hand, there are productions which do see it to fruition that are so out of the ordinary for their creators, or so far removed from any other films out there, that they function as the fulfilment of certain what-if scenarios without even involving any of the parties in question.
Read MoreComicpalooza (2016)
In many ways, Comicpalooza is another Christmas. I tend to salvage action figures, run into people I'd rather avoid, and drink because I'm lonely. I kid, I kid... I'm not lonely, I just have a problem.
Read MoreGreen Room (2015)
In my career as a horror journalist, I’ve spent a good deal of time writing about grindhouse movies—what they were, what they weren’t, and what contemporary films aping the style get it right and which are simply pedestrian imitations of what filmmakers think a grindhouse movie was. For the uninitiated, grindhouse films were a peculiar subgenre that cropped up between the 1960s and 1980s, aimed nominally towards those who frequented the theaters along 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York. Most often horror oriented but also including dark dramas, action movies, and straight-up smut flicks, they were loud, nasty, violent, and amoral—gritty tales with their roots in the pulp magazines of the 40s and 50s, catering to the audience’s basest desires and most misanthropic beliefs.
Read MoreThe Witch (2016)
Once in a while, a horror film comes along that transcends both the genre and audience expectations to become not just a classic fright flick, but a classic in its' own right. The Shining. Rosemary's Baby.
Read MoreGun Woman (2014) #BluRay
I’ve long lamented the dilution of the term “grindhouse” in the modern horror era. Thanks to the rampant reissuing of a very specific type of grindhouse film, modern filmmakers have come to the conclusion that everything showcased on 42nd Street was an over-the-top, endless bloodbath filled with gallows humor and devoid of any subtext, resulting in a slew of modern “grindhouse” movies built on precisely that formula. Thankfully, we have filmmakers like Kurando Mitsutake, whose Gun Woman—available from Scream Factory on Blu-ray—may be one of the finest true grindhouse offerings of the decade.
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