By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “All I want to do is make a million dollars.” (Jack Webb, 1953 [as qtd. in Hayde 2001: 59]) Jack Webb had a lot of help when he created the hit series Dragnet. The series marked a significant departure from existing models of “crime and punishment” […]
Corman’s Poe and Male Hysteria in 60s Horror: A Revaluation
Christopher Sharrett
October 2, 2012
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By Christopher Sharrett. This is an attempt at a brief revaluation of Roger Corman’s cycle of adaptations of the work of Edgar Allan Poe, which strike me as among the most significant contributions to the psychological turn of the horror film, equaling in intelligence and ambition, if not realized achievement, […]
Maya Deren’s Ritual in Transfigured Time
By Francis DiClemente. Last summer, in the midst of the blockbuster movie season dominated by sequels, 3-D animation and superhero offerings, I stumbled upon a cinematic treat from a forgotten era. While eating my lunch at my desk one afternoon, I went to YouTube to look up some alternative music […]
“Lost in a Roman Wilderness of Pain”: Film and Television After 9/11
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “This is the end My only friend, the end Of our elaborate plans, the end Of everything that stands, the end No safety or surprise, the end I’ll never look into your eyes again Can you picture what will be So limitless and free Desperately in […]
Dark Humor in Films of the 1960s – Part 4
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. This is the fourth and final part of “Dark Humor in Films of the 1960s.” Follow these links for previous installments: Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. As the 1960s drew to a close, so did the string of dark comedies; the real world was bleak […]
Capitalism Eats Itself: Gluttony and Coprophagia from Hoarders to La Grande Bouffe
By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “Recently my dull life seems to have no meaning I am stuck with someone We’re not communicating I want to buy Have you been affected I need consoling You could be addicted” (“Spend, Spend, Spend,” The Slits [1979]) Consumption. Excess. Gluttony. Hoarding. Waste. Massive debt. The […]
Dark Humor in Films of the 1960s – Part 3
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. This is the third article in a 4-part series. You can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Death has often been used to comic effect in films, but an all out assault on what Jessica Mitford termed “the American way of death” is another […]
Dark Humor in Films of the 1960s – Part 2
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. This is the second article in a 4-part series. You can read Part 1 here. With sick comedy beginning to bubble up through the margins of the studio system in Hollywood, filmmakers in Britain soon leaped on the bandwagon. The country was in a “gallows humour” […]
Embracing The Apocalypse: A World Without People
August 21, 2012
By Gwendolyn Audrey Foster. “If civilization goes down, that Would be an event to contemplate.” (Robinson Jeffers, “May-June, 1940”) Human-centered popular folktales of Apocalypse and Doomsday narratives of every imaginable scenario are undeniably as powerful and plentiful as they have been from the beginnings of human narrative tradition. Indeed, apocalyptic […]
Dark Humor in Films of the 1960s – Part 1
By Wheeler Winston Dixon. “There’s a story about an adolescent boy who was taken to a psychiatrist. The doctor drew a rectangle on a sheet of paper and showed it to the boy. ‘What does it make you think of?’ he asked. The boy looked at it and said, ‘Sex.’ […]