Phenomena (1985)
A monkey. A girl who can talk to bugs. Donald Pleasence. All directed by Dario Argento. If you don’t immediately say to yourself, “I’m in,” you’re reading the wrong website. Within the movie’s first two minutes, you realize you’re watching an Argento film. A tourist misses her bus somewhere in the Swiss countryside before she […]
Drive Angry (2011)
I have a real soft spot for Nicholas Cage. Sure, he’s been in some shit movies, but he’s our generation’s John Carradine, taking role after role because he’s a working actor. Who else could give us the magic of “No, not the bees?” Directed by Patrick Lussier, who edited all of Wes Craven’s later films and […]
RIP Tobe Hooper
I keep a list of themes that I want to write about, movies that I feel group together well. Over the last few months, I’ve been sketching out a series about Tobe Hooper. No hyperbole — I’d compare his career to Orson Welles, at least within the horror genre. His introduction to the world was The […]
DANGEROUS WOMEN: Don’t Torture a Duckling (1972)
Known in Italy as Non si sevizia un paperino (Don’t Torture Paperino, because Paperino is what they call Donald Duck) and La Longue Nuit de L’Exorcisme (The Long Night of Exorcism) in France, this was what Fulci considered his best work. It’s a giallo, which if you don’t know, is an Italian movie tradition — kind of like a detective story, […]
DANGEROUS WOMEN: The Red Queen Kills Seven Times (1972)
Emilio P. Miraglia followed up The Night Evelyn Came Out of Her Grave with this giallo freakout — starring the magnificent Barbara Bouchet (Don’t Torture a Duckling) — that combines gothic horror with the high fashion we’ve come to expect from early 70’s Italian horror. A curse haunts the Wildenbrück family once every 100 years — two sisters […]
DANGEROUS WOMEN: They Call Her One Eye (1973) AKA Thriller A Cruel Picture
The poster says it all: “The movie that has no limits of evil.” When people talk about grimy, evil pictures, this is the one they’re talking about. Quentin Tarantino called this “the roughest revenge movie ever,” and that’s including I Spit on Your Grave and Last House on the Left, one would suppose. After all, Elle Driver […]
DANGEROUS WOMEN: Vampyros Lesbos (1971)
Sometimes, when you watch a horror film, you’re lied to by a title which promises you something that the film cannot or will not deliver. Not so with Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos. Franco promises you lesbians and vampires and he delivers. He also delivers plenty of late 60’s style and a space age jazz soundtrack that threatens […]
Horror and Sons Halloween Horrors 2017
Sam will be contributing to this year’s Horror and Sons Halloween Horrors 2017, a celebration of different writers’ stories of their favorite horror characters. He, of course, picked Sammi Curr. NO FALSE METAL! Look for the article in October and check out http://www.horrorandsons.com now!
DANGEROUS WOMEN: A Lizard in a Woman’s Skin (1971)
If you were a well-to-do woman in Italy in the 1970s, chances are — based on the movies that I have seen — that you are about to killed, have killed someone, are having a lesbian affair, are on drugs or all of the above. Carol (Florinda Bolkan, Don’t Torture a Duckling) is one of those […]
Small Soldiers (1998)
A Joe Dante movie always like a conflict — a battle between blockbuster and personal statement, led by a filmmaker with keen commercial instinct, yet the heart of a non-conformist. Through it all, one walks away with the feeling that while the film itself may have some rough edges, there’s a true love for moviemaking […]
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