A couple of articles ago, I described a “process of excitement” that filmgoers experience with each new release, especially if the film is the next entry in a franchise or directed by one of Hollywood’s top auteurs. We need everything that will help us bide our time until the film’s impending release date, and each …
Occasionally older, strong-willed women creep into the sex-saturated narrative of horror that traditionally wallows in the terrorizing and disposing of young ladies. There is something to the fact that whether their presence maintains, twists or rebukes the genre’s stereotypically repressive lessons about female sexuality that so often end in the punishment of women acting out …
When I was a kid, I used to love a scary movie. I remember catching the original The Haunting (1963) one night on Channel 9’s Million Dollar Movie when I was home alone. Before it was over, I had every light in the house on. When my mother got home she was screaming she’d been …
“This is Joe Bob Briggs reminding you that the Drive-In will Never Die!” In 1993, Monstervision on TNT in America, was mostly a program that aired old horror movies and science fiction with the occasional hosting from magicians Penn and Teller. During the early nineties, many cable channels hadn’t yet solidified their formats, and horror …
The basement was where my older brother went to watch movies. When the door was closed, it meant don’t go downstairs. EVER. Now I had my fair share of entertainment upstairs, where my room was, but just knowing that my presence was forbidden made me want to go downstairs even more. After countless of days …
With the release of Jonathan Levine’s Warm Bodies, I decided to compile a list of my favourite films that take a non-traditional approach to the living-dead canon. More specifically, they all blend romance and the undead. I can’t guarantee any of these films will make you believe in the power of love, nor that they …
Ok, so that may be slightly misleading, but I had to get your attention. The truth is that remakes and sequels, horror or otherwise, tend towards merely being insipidly contrived shadows of their predecessors; retreading formulas with less impact or merely upping the genre staples whilst degrading the narrative, acting, and soul. But every once …
2009’s Ten Best and Five Worst Films (So Far) We’re technically over halfway through 2009, but a disproportionately large number of great films tend to spring up in the latter months of the year, so let’s call it halfway for the sake of our collective sanity. It hasn’t been a terrific year for filmgoing so …
The definition of a slasher film varies depending on who you ask, but in general, it contains several specific traits that feed into the genre’s formula. Every slasher has a killer whose identity is often concealed (or at least his face in cases of characters such as Michael Myer and Jason Voorhees) and for no …