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 […]

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 […]

There are many things one should never say to those they love.  1985’s Smooth Talk has such an example, and I have never heard a line quite like this before: “I look in your eyes and all I see are trashy daydreams.”  This is what Mary Kay Place says to her teenaged daughter, Laura Dern […]

I think it is strange so many people seem to believe animals have souls and that there is a Heaven for them.  Does that apply to everything that has lived?  Will there be spiders in animal heaven?  In that case, I have sent a great many to their heavenly reward.  What about plants?  They’re all […]

I was aware of the 1975 sci-fi picture A Boy and His Dog decades before braving it.  It just happens to be coincidence I finally watched it in 2024, the year in which the film takes place. What I had already known about the movie is it is a post-apocalyptic tale told with a harsh, […]

Some of the most interesting books on music I have read are about artists or albums I otherwise could not care less about.  Some of the most interesting special features I have encountered on blu-rays have accompanied movies I didn’t like.  With that in mind, it shouldn’t have surprised me to find myself intrigued by […]

Satire is a funny, delicate thing.  It can be sublime on the rare occasion it is done well, but folds like a cheap card table when it isn’t. Consumerism is an easy target and is often the subject of such works.  The original Dawn of the Dead lands solid criticisms of it.  1971’s They Have […]

One of my favorite films of this century so far is Kill List, a brutal and still fresh take on folk horror.  That was director Ben Wheatley’s second feature.  His debut was 2009’s Down Terrace, and it is a different film in a great many ways. The most significant difference is this is in another […]

Most horror movies treat murder victims in a trivial way.  Consider slasher films, which usually provide little background for those who only seem to exist so they can die horribly. 1943’s The Leopard Man takes a different, though rather bizarre, tact.  This is a film which seems to keep forgetting to follow its leads (Dennis […]

I’m finally starting to notice that books on fringe cinema, in combination with blu-ray sales, have resulted in some unfortunate additions to my movie library.  First, I read P.J. Thorndyke’s excellent Satan in the Celluloid: 100 Satanic and Occult Horror Movies of the 1970s, then there was a Target 3-for-2 sale, and so I came […]

Never underestimate a one-armed man.  For example, nobody believed Richard Kimble in The Figutive when he tries to convince them such a man murdered his wife.  I’m not exactly sure what the singularly limbed guy in Twin Peaks is all about, but he’s pretty creepy. Ernest Borgnine is a thug in a very small desert […]

1966’s Eye of the Devil is a curious film.  It anticipates the folk horror genre which would only kick into gear a few years later.  It has the feel of Polanski’s workaround that time. Strangely, he is two degrees of separation away from this production, at best, as his future wife Sharon Tate is in […]

As the end credits rolled for 1990’s Crazy People, I said aloud a one-word assessment to my wife, a word I do not believe I have ever used before in describing a movie, and that was, “Neat.”  That there was a sing-along-with-the-bouncing-ball bit happening over those credits only reinforced this feeling. I’ll admit that is […]

Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman pick up a quick paycheck in 1977 telefilm Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo.  It looks like they’re going to be the stars of this, except they’re out of the picture in about 15 minutes or so. These two had been flying a plane full of coffee out of Ecuador, after taking […]