Smart Words About Cinema
The same year that An American Werewolf in London opened up the possibilities of the werewolf horror with a mix of black comedy and horrific transformations, Joe Dante went a different direction with The Howling (Shout Factory). Working on lower budget, Dante discarded the usual lone wolf route to frame the drama in terms of the [...]
Much—and now understandably—delayed, Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is grim going. This horror-action-comedy pastiche possesses all the terror and suspense and visual pizzazz of a downscale videogame for dull-eyed teens happy to lap up lame wisecracks and lots of gore. Back in 2009, director Tommy Wirkola served up Dead Snow, a horror hit about rampaging [...]
There is nothing tasteful about a Fu Manchu movie. The stories of a ruthless, sadistic, depraved Mandarin crimelord, originally created in a series of lurid pulp thrillers by Sax Rohmer in the 1910s, traffic in a jingoistic fear of Asian assault on western culture (especially the empire-building Britania). Fu Manchu is a criminal genius with [...]
Paranormal Activity 4 probably won’t drive you deep into slack-jawed boredom. This latest foray into found-footage, home-movie horror is far less annoying than the jumping-jack “edginess” of Sinister. Still, this particular style of storytelling has run out of juice. Audiences fondly remember their first Paranormal Activity, which scared them out of their bloody skins, and, [...]
Writer-director Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) and co-scripter C. Robert Cargill (the Ain’t It Cool News staffer who pitched the story) clearly hoped to make Sinister an old-school horror movie, mining terror from classic haunted house scenarios designed to drive a desperate writer to Shining-style madness. Juice that formula with ancient deviltry laced with [...]
Drew Goddard goes way back with Joss Whedon. He got his start writing episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, his launching pad to Alias and Lost and his first feature film screenplay, Cloverfield (produced by Lost creator J.J. Abrams). The Cabin in the Woods reunited Goddard with Whedon, who co-wrote and produced the [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 57, February 1978] THE VAMPIRE FILM. By Alain Silver and James Ursini. A.S. Barnes & Co.; The Tantivy Press. 238 pages. Illustrated. $10. THE VAMPIRE CINEMA. By David Pirie. Crown Publishers: Crescent Books. 176 pages. Illustrated. $7.98. Two recent books on vampire movies, both apparently bidding to become the definitive [...]
The Whisperer in Darkness (Microcinema), the second feature from the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society (following up their 2005 short feature The Call of Cthulu), once again approaches its adaptation of Lovecraft in the style of the era in which it was written. Where Cthulu was presented as a highly-stylized silent film in the German Expressionist mode, Whisperer is [...]
The Most Dangerous Game (1932) is the first screen adaptation of the classic story of the decadent hunter who stalks human prey. Directed by Ernest Schoedsack with actor-turned-director Irving Pichel (his first directing credit) and produced by Schoedsack and Merian C. Cooper, previously known for exotic adventure documentaries like Grass (1925) and Chang (1927), it is still the [...]
Hammer Films, the British studio that revived the classic horror film in the late 1950s with a lusty mix of gothic repression, lurid debauchery, sensationalistic set pieces, and bleeding color, struggled to keep up in seventies as rival studios became even more lurid and censorship standards brought nudity into mainstream cinema. The Hammer formula was [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 50, June 1976] A hand unscrews a series of lightbulbs. A switch is flicked on and the room stays dark. Shadows and forms dart out of vision before they can be made out. A pretty little girl clutching a stuffed toy protests, “Billy, you’re trying to scare me!” Then there [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 50, June 1976] What partly recommends and partly handicaps The Omen, the latest entry in the horror film genre, is its old-fashioned quality. The film develops its tale of the modern-day birth of Satan’s son with a modicum of special effects and supernatural gimcracks, relying instead on tried and true [...]
There was no other director like Jean Rollin, the French horror fantasist who died in 2010 and left behind a strange and wonderful (and sometimes horrible) legacy in his distinctive films. His reputation never really extended beyond cult circles but the weird sensibility and distinctive style and imagery of his sex-and-horror exploitation films, and his [...]
There was no director like Jean Rollin, the French horror fantasist who died in 2010 and left behind a strange and wonderful (and sometimes horrible) legacy in his distinctive films. His reputation never really extended beyond cult circles but the weird sensibility and distinctive style and imagery of his sex-and-horror exploitation films, and his ability [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] Attention to detail is of the essence in a fantasy film. If fantasy is to have the desired effect, everything hinges on the viewer’s willingness to suspend disbelief and submit to the film’s premises wherever they may take him. But if every shot, every moment, every idea [...]