Smart Words About Cinema
“The Woman in Black” has scared the bejesus out of audiences since first materializing in Susan Hill’s 1983 faux-gothic novel. Subsequently, this Victorian ghost story’s been adapted for British radio and television, and even for the stage. (The play opened in 1989 and is still selling tickets — the second-longest run in London history.) Now [...]
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 [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 51, August 1976] The anthology film is by now familiar, even old hat, to devotees of British horror product. But, as already hailed in other quarters, Amicus Productions’ From Beyond the Grave may well be the best one since Dead of Night. The context in which it is set—encounters in [...]
Eugenio Martino’s Horror Express (Severin) is a one of those odd duck films: a Spanish horror for an international audience with Hammer stars Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing and American actor Telly Savalas (something of an international character actor icon of the time thanks to such films as The Dirty Dozen, On Her Majesty’s Secret [...]
Lon Chaney became a star for The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) but it was the 1925 Phantom of the Opera (Image) that confirmed his stardom and his talent. The first version of many versions of the Gaston Leroux novel is still considered the definitive, thanks to Chaney’s committed performance (right down to enduring painful [...]
With the exception of “The Woman” (which is still in limited theatrical release), all of the films from “Bloody Disgusting Selects” are currently available on multiple platforms including Netflix, Amazon.com and most VOD providers including Comcast, DirecTV, Amazon, iTunes, CinemaNow, VuDu and Verizon FiOS. Check your VoD provider listings, or go to www.bloodydisgustingselects.com for more [...]
Dr. Moreau: What is the law? Sayer of the Law: Not to spill blood, that is the law. Are we not men? “Are we not men?” That question is at the heart of the 1932 Island of Lost Souls (Criterion), the first adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel and (for all the changes from the [...]
With big screen horror films routinely returning to familiar paradigms, whether it be psychotic killers stalking teens or the post-Blair Witch Project video “reality” strain (like Paranormal Activity 3, last week’s box-office monster), it’s always a treat to find filmmakers reviving old genres with new attitude and hacking their way through new territory. This week, [...]
As long as I can remember, I’ve loved horror movies, delighted in stories about monsters getting loose in the dark, scaring complacent squares to death. Scared me, too, but deep down I confess I’ve always been primally tickled when vampires, blobs, giant bugs, werewolves, and aliens broke all the rules. What liberating joy when some [...]
Who is Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.? Probably you’ve never heard of this Dutch helmer, and judging by The Thing, his debut film, that’s not likely to change anytime soon. Saddled with “prequeling” John Carpenter’s 1982 classic, and supremely short on originality, van Heijningen Jr. and company simply rework the bare-bones template — shape-shifting alien stalking a [...]
Dutch filmmaker Tom Six’s The Human Centipede (First Sequence) accumulated disgust, death threats and lots of video-on-demand dough. It was hard for most people to hear the film’s premise, let alone watch the thing. Framing this almost documentary-style nightmare about a deranged doctor’s experiment to surgically join three human guinea pigs mouth to anus, Six [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 53, January 1977] Once you’ve experienced the multiple twists and revelations in the last reel of Brian De Palma’s Obsession, and you think about what’s gone before, the basic storyline appears not only terribly contrived but in several ways downright impossible. But the film nevertheless works by the sheer power of a [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 53, January 1977] For the past 16 years I’ve been unable to step into a shower without thinking of Psycho. For the next 16, Carrie will have the same effect on me. The film’s opening credits sequence is the most audacious voyeuristic fantasy Brian De Palma has yet given us. [...]
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Take out the word “Chainsaw” and it could be the title of a Western. And what do you know? It is. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre takes place over one day, from sunrise after a night of grave desecrations to sunrise after a night of unspeakable murderous horror. Sunset comes not at [...]