It is by complete surprise that I ended up with a copy of this movie. There I was, walking the aisles of my virtual movie store, looking for ‘The Empire of the Wolves’ when my clumsy fingers stumbled and clicked on Neil Jordan’s (The Crying Game, In Dreams, Breakfast on Pluto) film instead. The result? …
Body Count: Volume 10 . I’m not sure how the heavy metal and horror movie connection started but it’s a match made in hell. The two go together like chocolate and peanut butter. It’s a natural pairing. Alice Cooper had been combining Grand Guignol stage theatrics with live music since the 70’s. Blue Oyster Cult …
Pixar’s Up and Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell are looking to be two of the years best reviewed films. Up currently has a 96% on the tomato meter with over 45reviews (If you consider the diatribe by Almond White a review). Drag Me to Hell has a 94% with 38 reviews. Both appear to …
Drag Me to Hell Directed by Sam Raimi Where other horror pioneers’ attempts to return to the cinematic styles that earned them their reputations have generally ranged from middling (George Romero’s Land and Diary of the Dead) to embarrassing (Dario Argento’s Mother of Tears), Sam Raimi effortlessly slips back into “spook-a-blast” mode with the outrageously …
Body Count: Volume 9 I have this story that I like to tell after I’ve been drinking about the night that I was alone in our house and thought someone had broken in. I was scared shitless. There was very clearly someone wandering around the first floor of my house, turning lights on and making …
Body Count: Volume 8 One of the many disadvantages of living in a place like New Hamsphire is that you have to live on the edge vicariously through the lives of people who live closer to the action through correspondence so it was a while before I got into the depths of crazy horror movies. …
– Body Count: Volume 7 I did a report on H.P. Lovecraft back in the seventh grade and my teacher thought I was fucking insane. Up to this point, I hadn’t really read much by the guy but my mother turned me on to his writing via The Case Of Charles Dexter Ward and an …
Body Count: Volume 6 I bought a region free DVD player nearly ten years ago when I decided that I had had enough reading about particularly sweet editions of movies being released in foreign markets. These days it seems like just about everything released everywhere finds its way to Region 1 DVD but it wasn’t …
Auteur Theory: Volume 1 New York horror filmmaker Frank Henenlotter has managed to remain in relative obscurity thus far in his career, despite the notoriety his films have achieved. But for those who know his work, it feels as if his filmography is far more massive than just six films. His films are definitively schlock …
Billed as a horror film, The Hunger is anything but. What it is, however, is a credible first effort by Tony Scott (Déjà vu, Domino, Man on fire), Ridley’s younger brother. Immediately after watching I came to the conclusion that this film is one of either two things: an incredibly good 80s vampire movie or …
28 Days Later… 2002, UK Directed by Danny Boyle Written by Alex Garland Starring Cillian Murphy, Naomie Harris, Noah Huntley, Christopher Eccleston, Brendan Gleeson The more times I see this film, the better it gets. This may, however, be because it’s made up of three better movies, The Omega Man, Dawn of the Dead, and …
Body Count: Volume 5 . There are certain directors whose represent absolutely pivotal moments in filmmaking. People like Griffith, Welles, Coppola and Scorcese have contributed to film in a way that has shaped the entire medium and changed the game. But there are also directors who represent pivotal moments of genre evolution: George Lucas and …
Cult Cinema: Volume 8 At their best, horror films hold society up to a funhouse mirror, providing a grotesque yet revealing reflection of cultural concerns, values, and above all, fears. And then there’s torture porn, in which the only insights are gained from peering deep into the vivisected ruins of a woman’s genitals. The term …
Body Count: Volume 4 . If two things go together like chocolate and peanut butter, it’s Satan and horror movies. Satan, by himself, is the ultimate adversary and boogeyman so it just makes sense that the genre falls back on the devil from time to time. Seemed like in the 70’s you couldn’t throw a …
Body Count: Volume 3 Vampires are starting to make a come back, in case you haven’t noticed. Teenage girls seem to be swooning at the thought of gentlemanly “vegetarian” vampires that sparkle in the sunlight that should be burning their wretched husks to a crisp. A little while back, I did an article studying the …
Upon viewing Begotten for the first time, one could easily mistake it for an archaic silent film made by a seriously deranged director on crack (or whatever popular drug they used a hundred years ago). Low and behold, this is a movie from 1991 by 45-year old Edmund Elias Merhige (Suspect Zero, Shadow of the …
Cult Cinema: Volume 6 In the 1980s, author Clive Barker was dubbed the new face of horror. And what a face it was, one that looked like it should be fellating both Lord Byron and Aleister Crowley during a sex magic ritual, all arched eyebrows and smooth cheeks and smoky eyes. Barker’s 1985 short story …
Body Count: Volume 2 I was recently asked to write a horror script that would be produced by a local group that’s trying the Sam Raimi/Robert Rodriguez means of raising money for real features by making schlocky b-pictures as a revenue source. They’re hell bent on producing a zombie picture because everyone seems to have …
Although Brad Anderson’s career as a feature-film director spans less than a decade, the American director has consistently satisfied audiences with his own peculiar brand of supernatural tales. Happy Accidents, Session 9, The Machinist and Transsiberian all have their own following by people who enjoy an alternative to the mainstream “thrillers” we’ve been inundated with …
1. The Shining Jack Torrance only kills one person yet he is the monster of the film. No one ever questions Wendy, who not only repeatedly hits Jack over the head with a baseball bat, but also lashes after him with a knife, finally leaving him to die of hypothermia. Clearly the so-called “victim” in …
Body Count: Volume 1 Horror. The much maligned, hard partying, estranged uncle of cinema. Being the reasonably presentable professional that I am by day, it often shocks people that I, a man in his thirties of above-average intelligence devotes such a large portion of his free time mentally cataloguing some of the worst movies ever …
On a dark and rainy night a few years ago I attended an 11pm screening of Eraserhead at Cinema du Parc, my favorite source for late night cult classics. Afterwards I popped into the bathroom with a full bladder and made my way into one of the stalls. Two guys walked in while I was …
Cult Cinema: Volume 3 In the 1950s, a group of French writers revolutionized film criticism with the magazine Cahiers du cinéma. By re-evaluating the films of Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, and John Hughes, among others, the critics gave birth to a grand unified ‘auteur theory,’ which positions the director as the ultimate creative force behind …