Smart Words About Cinema
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 [...]
[Originally published in Movietone News 55, September 1977] It is important in any extended discussion of Leo McCarey’s cinema to emphasize the significance of context in determining the specific value of certain motifs. In Duck Soup we are little inclined to condemn Rufus T. Firefly when he machine-guns his own troops; this disinclination is a [...]
[originally published on Robert Horton's blog The Crop Duster on March 1, 2009] “I’ll be back,†the man calls out, “when it’s dark.†Those words are the warning, and the credo, of every monster that ever slouched through fairy tale or film. Toward the end of The Night of the Hunter, they are uttered by [...]