There are a few ways one can cleanly divide the catalog of R.E.M. The easiest is their initial run of albums on I.R.S. records before moving to Warner Brothers. But that wasn’t as radical of a break as their work immediately preceding, and soon following, the departure of drummer Bill Berry. As for myself, I […]
Movie: Sugar Hill (1974)
1974’s Sugar Hill is a weird beast, a hybrid of zombie, gangster and Blaxploitation genres. It is truly number one in a field of one. Marki Bey stars as the title character. She’s hellbent on revenge for the murder of husband Larry Don Johnson, emphasis on “hell”. With the assistance of an old voodoo woman […]
Movie: It’s Never Too Late to Mend (1937)
One my favorite novels is Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix. In his book, a store that is obviously a surrogate for Ikea is haunted by the ghosts of guests of the prison that used to occupy the land a century before. Those ghosts then subject unfortunate employees to such tortures as they endured in their rehabilitation […]
Movie: Mysterious Intruder (1946)
I have now seen five of the eight Whistler films Columbia Pictures made in the 1940’s. By now, I thought I would have memorized the incredibly strange tune The Whistler whistles at the beginning and end of each installment. Instead, I find myself increasingly frustrated by the piece. It seems to start with the first […]
Movie: Lynch/Oz (2022)
I first cottoned to the work of David Lynch through his Blue Velvet, just a little before Twin Peaks became a sensation. I even have a weird association with his Eraserhead, as I accidentally burned microwave popcorn the first time I saw it, so I now smell that if I so much as think about […]
Movie: The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1966)
I used to sneer at light entertainment, thinking “harmless” was an adjective one should only use in the pejorative. Live long enough, and the harsh realities of the world tend to make one have a greater appreciation of fare one might describe in that way. 1966’s The Ghost and Mr. Chicken is the textbook example […]
Movie: Apollo 18
The Atari 2600 had some gloriously batshit titles. For example, there was Communist Mutants from Outer Space, which is actually an incredibly solid game, almost in spite of the silly name. 2011 found footage sci-fi horror film Apollo 18, has aliens that can disguise themselves as rocks destroy our flag. And this is near a […]
Movie: The Crimes of Stephen Hawke (1936)
UK censors have always been more concerned about violence than their equivalents in the US, which makes it all the more surprising 1936 British thriller The Crimes of Stephen Hawke is about a villain who breaks the spines of their victims. What’s even worse is Tod Slaughter, as that fiend, tends to giggle mischievously after […]
Movie: Footprints (1975)
Italy’s first lunar mission isn’t going well. I’d say the first problem is their spaceship is a paper cut-out of the Apollo 11 lunar module. It lands successfully, but something happens to one of the astronauts, rendering them unconscious. Another of the crew is apparently sick of their shit, dragging them away from the lunar […]
Movie: The Desperate Hours (1955)
Home invasion movies get under my skin. I guess one could say they are usually successful, since that’s the goal of them. Still, it is a sub-genre I don’t actively seek out. The most disturbing such scene I have had the displeasure of encountering in a film was in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. […]
Movie: The Shop at Sly Corner (1947)
Seldom have I been rooting for the bad guys as much as I did while watching 1947’s The Shop at Sly Corner. I also cannot recall ever wanting to see one character to kill another as much I did here. The two I wanted to get away with everything are Oscar Homolka and Manning Whiley. […]
The alternative to 90’s alternative
Much like how October is the month most of us get our colder-weather clothing out storage, I break out the fall music. And for me, a great deal of that music is from the early 90’s. As I was in my teens at the start of the 90’s, I was more attune to contemporary music […]
Movie: The Last Voyage of the Demeter (2023)
The 1974 TV movie adaptation of Dracula has a brief, great moment where we see the wreck of the Demeter, the ship that has brought the title character to British soil. There’s a remarkable amount of wreckage on the beach. Most shocking is a dead man lashed to the wheel, crucifix in hand. There is […]
Movie: At the Earth’s Core (1976)
I keep thinking of steampunk as an annoying genre that only appeared in the past couple of decades, and then I remember it is actually a very old style, going back to the works of Jules Verne. Other authors also dabbled in it, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose silly At the Earth’s Core was […]
Movie: The Power of the Whistler (1945)
Some of the most astounding dialogue I have heard in any movie or TV show is in the first season of True Detective. There are lines from that I just like to roll around in my head, in the same way there are certain tunes I like to recall. Sometimes, I like to say one […]