1974’s Evil of Dracula is the last entry of Michio Yamamoto’s trilogy of Japanese gothic vampire films.  I could probably copy and paste much of what I wrote about the previous two and save myself some time. Once again, this is a film solidly in the European gothic style, having some degree of novelty just […]

Despite having a couple of years of Japanese language instruction, I have retained extremely little of it today.  With that, I am always pleasantly surprised by how many words in my limited vocabulary I recognized in 1971’s Lake of Dracula.  Simple things like “daijobu” (I’m OK) or “wakarimashta” (I understood).  This might be a good […]

When I discovered there was a blu-ray set with a trilogy of Japanese gothic vampire films, I knew I had to check this out.  While that country has a long, rich history of ghost stories, I was wondering what their spin on the European gothic tradition might be like.  Short answer: it is an odd […]

There are some movies which, for one reason or another, are truly one-of-a-kind and of the likes we will never see again.  One such picture is the justifiably legendary Freaks.  This 1932 movie stars a variety of attractions from real-life freak shows.  While I can’t imagine ever going to such a carnival sideshow attraction in […]

In 2016, the Cincinnati Zoo had a horrible tragedy where a child somehow got into the gorilla exhibit, irritating Harambe, a male silverback.  Fearing for the life of the child, zoo authorities fatally shot Harambe, and there was the resulting expected flurry of memes and impassioned discourse.  I don’t have an opinion as to whether […]

I’m baffled by movies which bring together famous fictional characters that would not normally be associated with each other.  An example which comes to my mind as such a failure is The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.   More successful, but still confusing to me, is 1987’s The Monster Squad. I had not seen it until 2024, […]

I am neither a fan nor a huge detractor of Disney, but I was aware of the spate of garbage direct-to-video sequels they went through for a while there.  That there is a sequel to Bambi feels as weird to me as if somebody made a sequel to Titanic.  I’ll confess I have seen one […]

At the turn of this century, Disney found itself in another of its weird dry spells where their animated features were struggling to find an audience.  This time, they were their own worst enemy, as their Pixar division was cranking out the hits, while the parent company was trying to figure out what audiences were […]

Since the dawn of time, one of the existential questions which has puzzled humankind is who, exactly, let the dogs out.  In 2000, The Baha Men released an incredibly popular song concerning this philosophical brainteaser, not realizing the question had already been answered in 1942 horror B-movie The Strange Case of Doctor Rx.  In this […]

1993’s Murders in the Zoo is pre-code horror picture, and you’ll know it is when a guy turns to the camera and you see his mouth has been sewn shut, and so crudely that there’s a fair amount of blood as well. This happens to the unfortunate guy who tries to put the moves on […]

Autumn is my favorite time of year, when the colors of the foliage are at their most vivid.  Alas, it is the shortest of the seasons, as those leaves start falling almost as soon as they have turned. I think it is deliberate 2002’s Far from Heaven opens in the peak of that season, as […]

Veronica Lake was huge star in her time, though seemingly not highly regarded by critics today.  One thing for certain is she was greatly disliked by many of her peers at the time, with Joel McCrea dubbing her “Moronica Lake”.  I always thought she was good in the film noirs I had seen her in, […]

Comedies that riff on Sherlock Holmes tend to not fare very well, and I wonder why that is.  And this is coming from somebody who found even a few crumbs of merit in the largely dire The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes’ Smarter Brother.  Never mind the Cook and Moore abomination that is their 1978 adaptation […]

You can learn all kinds of strange “facts” from old horror b-movies.  1943’s The Mad Ghoul, for example, taught me how ancient artists of some primitive culture would draw stink lines to communicate some noxious odor that would knock people out.  This “ancient” artwork is closer to early 20th century comic strip art than hieroglyphics. […]