By Andrew Montiveo. Imperfect and occasionally clunky, its slow-boil tension, isolation-driven horror, and cerebral elements make it a compelling watch….” Recently, witches have become conduits for exploring folklore and collective fear, as in The Blair Witch Project (1999), where ambiguity reigns, blurring the lines between reality and myth. These varied […]
The Phantom (1931): Hollywood’s First Independent Horror Movie
By Gary D. Rhodes. Even if it is not at the artistic level of many of those produced in the months, years, and decades that followed, The Phantom exemplifies ambition over vision. Its speed of production placed it in a pole position, independent of competition, let alone studios, a position […]
“The Invisible Man”: Race in Horror Films
INTERVIEW: “Racial representation in visual horror fictions have also become a trope in the way that audiences do not expect to see minorities—or at least not very often and not alive for very long. Due to long-standing tropes, minorities in visual horror fictions have become, in a sense, invisible.”
Skeletons in the Basement: Daniel Lasker’s Hidden Within (2023)
By Thomas M. Puhr. I hope we get more Zimbabwean horror movies in the future, and that they’re much better than this one.” It gives me no pleasure to announce that Daniel Lasker’s Hidden Within (2023) is a disaster. Made in Zimbabwe, the actor’s feature directorial debut concerns people and […]
All the Fear Looking Back at You – Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay
A Book Review by Matthew Sorrento. The supplementary footnotes included in Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay should launch more needed commentary, showing that a scholarly monograph on the film is already overdue….” In his very informative and enjoyable 2008 autobiography, X Films, Alex Cox finishes a discussion of his cult […]
Clawing the Surface: Mary Dauterman’s Booger
By William Blick. A visceral metaphor for grief in an impressive low-budget indie debut…..” Mary Dauterman’s first feature length film, Booger, comes across as a cinematic exercise of sorts, i.e., a visceral metaphor for grief in an impressive low-budget indie debut. Not quite gory or suspenseful enough to satisfy the hardcore/ […]
Lost and Found: In Praise of Josh’s Blair Witch Mix (1999)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. The Blair Witch Project – Josh’s Blair Witch Mix (1999) can be found online in full at Archive.org here. The essence of The Blair Witch Project that has made it so compulsively alluring for me has largely remained as elusive to me as ever. And then I […]
Danse Macabre: Filmmaker Karen Arthur on The Mafu Cage (1978)
By Alexandra Heller-Nicholas. I find that there is an emotional energy in a theater piece [the basis for The Mafu Cage] and that the relationships are so much stronger and more connected. I always use the concept that you have to see in film and so therefore I took the […]
When Radiohead Met Nosferatu: Josh Frank on Silents Synched Event Cinema
August 1, 2024
In running a tiny drive-in, I found over time that people were not coming for new releases or even often caring that it was an old movie, they wanted a special movie experience. This got me thinking about how to customize the experience of going to the cinema, horror and […]
Sometimes They Come Back: Bob Clark’s Deathdream (Blue Underground)
By Thomas M. Puhr. Much more than an interesting time capsule…it’s also a minor horror classic in its own right, one well-deserving of a spot alongside Clark’s superior genre work.” Movies like Bob Clark’s Deathdream (aka Dead of Night, aka The Night Andy Came Home, 1974) operate by blunt-force symbolism. […]