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Act I: The Fucking Foreplay ​You all know the drill. You hear the magic word—SEQUEL—and the blood runs cold, not from fear, but from disappointment. It’s a studio contract, a cash-grab, a cynical, focus-grouped piece of cinematic product designed to wring a few more dollars out of a perfectly finished corpse. It’s a mandatory encore…
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I need to watch more of the classic Universal Horror features from the 1930’s through 1950’s. I’ve seen a handful of them, sure, but there are several more out there. For instance, I have skipped The Mummy and The Phantom Of The Opera because I had heard they didn’t quite measure up to the rest.…
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By 1960, Hammer Films had conquered the Gothic. Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein had redrawn horror in shades of crimson and candlelight; The Brides of Dracula had turned that terror into liturgy. And then, without warning, Terence Fisher turned the gaze inward. The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll is not a film of monsters…
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Despite having talked to the Mayhem team a year ago about how they put on such an event, it’s still a surprising feat, just like every other time I have attended. And also just like every other time, I have come away with a few stand-out memories and some new favourite films. Here are this…
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If Dracula (1958) was Hammer’s resurrection — the blood-soaked birth of modern Gothic horror — then The Brides of Dracula was the sermon that followed. This is Terence Fisher’s cathedral of the damned, his hymn to sin and salvation sung through fangs and candlelight. It is also a paradox — the Dracula film without Dracula,…
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The menacing sound of a shark swimming slowly through water. The punctured, staccato shrieks of a knife as it tears into an unsuspecting woman’s flesh as she showers in a roadside motel. A repeated ghostly chant repeats itself as a hockey-masked killer stalks and slashes his way through the forest. These are the sounds of…
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By the end of the 1950s, Hammer had perfected resurrection. They had resurrected Frankenstein, resurrected Dracula, even resurrected the very idea of Gothic cinema. And now, with The Mummy, they turned resurrection itself into religion. Released in 1959, The Mummy is not merely a remake of the Universal classic — it’s a reinvention. A funeral…
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Very often in my free time, I browse the channels of YouTube. My most watched content consists of board games videos. I do, however, also watch movie reviews. Out of everyone I watch, Chris Stuckmann is at the top. He brings with him a positive energy and an enthusiastic attitude that’s easy to see. Although…
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John Carpenter and Debra Hill had no idea back in 1978 that they were changing the horror genre. They set out to make a scary movie about babysitters being stalked on Halloween night. They weren’t thinking about sequels – let alone 12 of them. They weren’t thinking about Corey Cunningham’s awful night of babysitting, heavy…
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I was lucky enough to be there on the opening night of Grove Productions’ show Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a run starting at the perfect time of year. Throughout, it was spooky, intense, and incredibly well–acted. The colours and lighting used perfectly accentuated the seasonal feel of the performance, and the special effects were…