The dream came true on October 28th, 2013 at Los Angeles’s Egyptian Theater, where the 2013 Beyond Fest was being held. Trick ‘r Treat (2007) was appropriately closing out the evening, but the viewing began with a Q&A session including director Michael Dougherty, producer Bryan Singer, actors Dylan Baker, Brian Cox, Quinn Lord, Jean-Luc …
In a padded cell adorned with crudely drawn crosses resides John Trent. Trent has gone so far as to not only decorate his new insane asylum home with crosses, but himself as well — they run up and down his mental patient uniform and dance across his very face. Outside the asylum, the world is going to hell, and John Trent knows it. When the kindly Dr. Wrenn comes to talk with Trent, Trent tells him the cold hard truth: “Every species can smell its own extinction.”
One of the best at blending the two genres is Sam Raimi, whose answer to the question of why horror and comedy go together is his Evil Dead trilogy, which crackles with the energy of a mad scientist’s concoction.The Evil Dead II is largely considered the best of the three, taking the camp, gore, and over-the-top situation from the original and cranking it up past eleven.
John Frankenheimer’s ultimately terrifying Twilight Zone-like, futuristic thriller Seconds, received mixed reviews, and was critically panned at the Cannes Film Festival. But what do they know?
“Do not let your eyes see or your ears hear that which you cannot account for.” Abraham Van Helsing’s warning to three men in disbelief of the living dead has a blunt message: Our senses can lie to us. Anthony Hopkins’s off-kilter professor may be one of the top-billed “jewels” in what Francis Ford Coppola …
The close up has been a powerful device in horror films for nearly a century now. The close-up shot is used in horror to create atmosphere and increase the audience’s fear by zooming in on facial expressions of the characters at hand. Conversely, close-ups are an equally effective tool used to emote objects, from Freddy …
The Brainiac Directed by Chano Urueta Mexico, 1962 Chano Urueta’s 1962 mishmash of horror, science fiction, and largely unintentional comedy, is perfect Mystery Science Theater fodder. Less schlocky than illogical, The Brainiac (its title literally translates to The Baron of Terror, a much better name) features moderately high production value and enough over long reaction …
Musically speaking, Hellraiser begins like a fairytale. Glassy bell percussion provide an enchanted introduction before composer Christopher Young’s main titles layer in tragic string figures. Blaring low brass blast a tainted pessimism, harkening back like the prelude to some age old fable as piano moves in grand, darkened fashion. Like a spell cast over the …
In a month full of horror and malevolent covens and blood-curdling scares, I offer now the soothing respite of Hayao Miyazaki’s beautiful and serene Kiki’s Delivery Service. Possibly Miyazaki’s most under-appreciated film, it is surely his most modest, which I mean as a compliment. It is the epitome of Miyazaki’s quiet filmmaking, letting the soft emotion and warm aesthetics of the animation do most of the talking. The fact that Kiki is a witch is rather beside the point, because this is a coming-of-age story for a young girl committed to helping others but forgetting about herself.
Re-Animator, another obscure zombie flick, questions scientific advancements by revealing potential consequences and effects to the people around us. This last Tombstone Tuesday could have easily been given to Army of Darkness by Sam Raimi, Night of the Living Dead by George A. Romero, Shaun of the Dead by Edgar Wright, Dead Snow by Tommy Wirkola, or maybe even Dead Alive by Peter Jackson. But Re-Animator offers something beyond braining eating and strange noises. Re-Animator is a non-traditional classic that is centered on an underlying message of whether or not science is going too far.
Cloaked in hooded robes, hell-bent on destruction and ready to sacrifice innocents to please their master- worshipers of the Devil are an easy bunch to stereotype in popular portrayals. Ranked from worst to best, the extent to which they work with or against cliché and manage to be entertaining on film is profiled in the following list. This …
[Continued from Part 3] Take four, the final take of why I wanted to write about Bigfoot: Bigfoot is fun. I like dissecting movies. That is, after all, why I spend countless hours pounding out essays and reviews during my free time. I enjoy it so much that on my days off from work, instead …
A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master Written by Robert Shaye and Rachel Talalay Directed by Renny Harlin USA 1988 The first death of the fourth film in the Nightmare on Elm Street Franchise is one of the scariest for me personally because I have an irrational fear of cars. Kincaid, one of …
Just when I thought there weren’t any great filmmakers working in horror anymore, Ti West just scared the shit out of me. West bust out on the scene with the moody throwback The House of the Devil showing that he could replicate period aesthetic with ease. His first several films were shot standardly, but for The Sacrament, West dips his toes in the waters of the found footage genre.
After the success of Horror of Dracula (1958), it only made sense to make a sequel. The Brides of Dracula tells the story of a young Marianne who happens to stay the night at a baroness’ castle only to discover her host’s dashing son is locked up in an adjacent wing. Feeling sorry for the Baron Meinster, she releases him from his bonds with no clue that she just unleashed a vampire to wreak havoc on all the ladies of Transylvania. It’s a psycho-sexual scenario peppered with mommy issues that Hitchcock would certainly appreciate – his film Psycho was released the same year as Brides.
It may be more true in horror than in any other genre that certain subgenres ebb and flow in popularity over time. Vampires were hot in the mid-’90s when you had Interview with the Vampire, From Dusk Till Dawn, Blade and the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Then, vampires sat out of popular discourse for the next ten years or so, until the double whammy of Twilight and True Blood hitting in 2008, causing a tidal wave of vampiric fiction from the arty (Only Lovers Left Alive, Byzantium) to the schlocky (Dracula Untold, Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter) that hasn’t slowed down since.
Featuring a closely-coiffed Mia Farrow as the soft-spoken, childlike Rosemary Woodhouse, potential mother to the devil; John Cassavetes, post-Shadows, and just about to truly kick off his great directorial run; and the inimitable Ruth Gordan as a sort of Grace Zabriskie-precursor: the creepy neighbor next door, heavily made-up and eerily meddlesome, Rosemary’s Baby picks up the paranoid thread of 1965’s Repulsion. The film also anticipates the similarly – though more political – claustrophobic suspicion of Alan Pakula’s 1970’s films.
[Continued from Part 2] Take three of why I wanted to write about Bigfoot: Bigfoot is an avatar of extra-human nature. That is to say in the last two parts, I fibbed a bit for simplicity’s sake. Claiming Bigfoot has no cultural baggage is both true and false; he has no mythology and no permanent …
Paranormal Activity 3 Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman Written by Christopher Landon 2011, USA Sequels in horror franchises are rarely ever connected to their predecessors with the exception of the same villain/outline that proves profitable. What makes the additions to the Paranormal Activity franchise different is that each follow-up expands the universe, further exploring …
The original Universal Studios Wolf Man left an indelible mark on film history, particularly in it’s painstakingly specific make-up transformation that turned Lon Chaney, Jr.’s Larry Talbot into the title character. That effect has hung over every werewolf feature since, with films trying to compete with makeup maestro Jack Pierce’s legendary design. 20 years after the first Wolf Man film, Hammer Horror took a stab at the monster, utilizing a script based on A Werewolf in Paris and a barrel-chested Oliver Reed in his first film role.
On August 30th, 1972, Deathdream was released to American theaters. Not the standard Halloween release month, but close enough to it. This second Tombstone Tuesday pick is unlike any other zombie flick in terms of its storyline and technicalities. This movie features one zombie, in one town, with only one purpose to kill.
Knife in the Water Directed by Roman Polanski Poland, 1962 Certainly a stretch to categorize as horror, Roman Polanski’s debut feature anticipates the creeping dread and tense blocking that will characterize his later, truer films of the genre. Husband and wife Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) pick up a young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz) …
Over the years, Canadian film and television has gotten a reputation for being something that leaves a lot to be desired. It’s often depicted as low budget productions with mediocre acting, and a film grain to make you cringe. Except more and more, outstanding Canadian cinema is making headlines in Hollywood for being cutting edge, artistic, meaningful, not to mention downright funny. From the classic Quebec film C.R.A.Z.Y., the franco-anglo production Bon Cop Bad Cop to The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, Canadian films are more than just bad film stereotypes; they’re innovative, imaginative, and a joy to watch.