2023 folk horror movie All You Need Is Death has a couple of hurdles to overcome, not the least of which is that stupid title.  Fortunately, this is a largely successful film which introduces a new twist on the genre. This fresh angle is a plot concerning collectors of old Irish folk songs.  There must […]

An irate John Heard growls at Mary Beth Hurt, “I’m gonna rape you”, in the allegedly romantic alleged comedy Chilly Scenes of Winter from 1979.  This is part of an argument between the characters, but the line is abrupt and weird that it only calls attention to itself. What was even more appalling to me […]

The current peace between Britain and Ireland has lasted longer than I think anybody had expected.  I wonder if I’m the only person who wonders exactly how permanent that might be.  1952’s The Gentle Gunman was made at a particularly difficult period of “the troubles”, and so I was surprised a UK studio would attempt […]

I have recently found myself obsessed with the video game Untitled Goose Game, where one plays a goose that goes around stealing objects from, and generally tormenting everyday people.  An element of the game is stealing a harmonica and honking through it, which never stopped amusing me. 1947 UK film It Always Rains on Sunday […]

Nathan Juran directed some lousy movies.  The first one that comes to my mind is Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, though I found some merit in that.  His career ended in the far worse The Boy Who Cried Werewolf.  What’s strange is his first time at bat, 1952’s The Black Castle, is possibly the […]

My wife recently clued me to the yet another contemporary phrase of which I was previous unaware and that is “Manson lamps”.  For those similarly uninformed, this means large crazy eyes, like how Charles Manson looks in seemingly every photo of him. Gideon Drew has that look throughout his turn as the villain in 1958’s […]

In the movie Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey is told by Lauren Holly that there is a one-in-a-million chance of them ever getting together, yet he positively glows when he replies, “So, you’re saying there’s a chance.” I’m betting I’m the only person to ever see 2020’s deadly serious sci-fi film Last and First Men […]

Foreign cinema can provide fascinating glimpses into other cultures and their folklore.  It can also reveal the similarities between societies.  Consider the 1973 Serbian film Leptirica, which goes to some length to demonstrate every place has large groups of mostly useless men who seem to do little more than sit around bullshitting and drinking. The […]

In the first two decades of the 21st century, I felt like I was the only person who wasn’t swept up in the wave of raunchy hard-R comedies of the time.  The appeal of The Hangover, to cite just one example, completely failed to connect with me, and that there were two sequels boggles my […]

As I write this, there has been much hand wringing by people in various professions who are worried their jobs will be eliminated soon by an evil which doesn’t even have hands, that being artificial intelligence.  1970’s Colossus: The Forbin Project has a supercomputer which goes one better, as it seizes control of the world’s […]

Among the worst cheats a film can do is to end with the revelation everything that transpired before it was a dream.  Even worse is to have a film that is so strange one is surprised it doesn’t conclude with that twist. Without such a twist, I am at a loss to explain most of […]

It’s a shame nobody thought to use the title Faster, Pussycat KILL KILL before Russ Meyer, as it would have been perfect for 1961’s The Shadow of the Cat. This gothic horror film has a tabby out to avenge the death of his elderly owner, Catherine Lacey.  She isn’t in the movie for long.  We […]

Mr. Show was a great comedy sketch series, with many original ideas which have stuck with me since it aired in the 90’s.  One of these is “Imminent Death Syndrome”, where David Cross is a hopeless guitar student, but who receives a preposterous amount of encouragement to continue with the instrument after it is learned […]

One of my favorite headlines from The Onion is “Elvis Dead.  Is Elvis Alive?” I’m betting Stanley Baker in 1963’s The Man Who Finally Died is feeling that way.  This German ex-pat has been a Brit since childhood, where he was informed twenty years prior that his father had died.  Now he has received a […]

I had heard nothing but bad things about 2000’s What Planet Are You From? for a couple of decades before finally seeing it.  But it was directed by Mike Nichols, and reading about it in the Elaine May biography Miss May Does Not Exist had my interest piqued. I wondered how bad a movie could […]