I never thought it would be difficult to be a Peter Cushing fan but, dear lord, I’m only two titles into this Cushing Curiosities box set and it’s already killing me.  The first, Tender Dracula, set the bar so low that it seemed impossible for any of the other works in the box to clear […]

2012’s ParaNorman has an elementary school kid with a problem.  Norman, as voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee, sees dead people everywhere and can even converse with them.  Throughout the film, I was thinking how that was going to make puberty even more difficult than it is for most people.  Everybody sees some privacy in those years, […]

If Satan is supposed to be the great deceiver, you’d think he would clever enough to never have to reuse the same gags.  And yet, the opening scene of 2024’s The First Omen recalls the moment in the 1976 film for which this is a prequel, as a priest played by Charles Dance is killed […]

I had been aware of 1973’s Ganga & Jess long before finally seeing it and was excited to finally take the plunge.  There was a fair amount of promise in an independently produced horror film from a Black writer/director, a film which often had the word “poetic” used when describing it.  Now I have seen […]

Some movies don’t stand up to a second viewing, and I found this to be the case with 1983’s The Keep.  I can’t recall how I saw the first time, but I remember being overall impressed with it.  Then I watched it again years later and I am baffled by what I saw in it […]

Roger Corman had a good run of Poe adaptations with Vincent Price.  He would eventually run out of works that were more easily translatable to feature-length films, eventually basing one work around “The Raven”, which is a rather short poem.  It is odd he made 1963’s The Haunted Palace in the middle of that run, […]

It is an understatement to say Stephen King has been prolific, yet I suspect we will eventually see every single work of his development into a movie or TV show, maybe even more than once.  I’m surprised there isn’t a film made of his Danse Macabre, and that is a non-fiction work of his musings […]

Johnny Cash could act but, let’s face it, he wouldn’t have been in anything in that capacity if he hadn’t been a famous musician first.  His one performance which always stands out in my mind was that episode of Columbo, but he even played a famous country musician in that. Not exactly a stretch. In […]

Outside of genre, films are usually grouped by their director or a particular actor.  Rarely are they known for their producer, but cineastes tend to make an exception for Val Lewton.  Known largely for his work with director Jacques Tourneur, the films he produced effectively used atmosphere to cover the low budget.  Lewton’s influence over […]

1943’s I Walked with a Zombie is movie I had some awareness of decades before actually seeing it for the first time, and that was because of R.E.M.’s cover of the same-named Roky Erickson track on the compilation Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye.  Any mention or reference to film immediately has Michael Stipe singing […]

One of the most memorable art museum exhibits I have seen was of the photography of Gordon Parks. It was an experience that instantaneously made me a fan of his work. He was the definition of a polymath, somehow an author, film director and musician in addition to being a photographer.  As if that isn’t […]

People sure do love them some cinema about killer kids, and I wonder why that is.  From The Bad Seed to Children of the Corn to Orphan, the interest in this horror subgenre suggests many have an inherent fear of children.  I may not particularly like kids, but I am not, on the whole, scared […]

Samuel Beckett has a lot to answer for.  I have never seen a production of any of this works, but I feel like being aware of the concepts is appreciation enough.  I’m not sure I could endure an actual production of No Exit.  Waiting for Guffman is as close as I intend to experience Waiting […]

Rondo Hatton was one of the most unique presences to ever grace the screen.  Deformed through acromegaly, he turned tragedy into success by appearing as the villain in such horror films as 1946’s  House of Horrors.  He plays The Creeper, and seeing the “and Rondo Hatton as The Creeper”, I found it impossible not to […]

History has shown that the first to do something is rarely the best.  Often, in fact, they are far from it, even if they are rarely the worst. The 1952 African adventure Bwana Devil was the first feature-length 3D picture shot in color and, as such, deserves credit in cinematic history for that.  Unfortunately, if […]