Category: Film
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Released into the crowded horror landscape of the early 1970s, the original Black Christmas was a signal of what was to come, the subgenre that would dominate the next two decades: the slasher. Black Christmas helped codify many familiar tropes that would be used for years (and are still used today), but its treatment of…
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What happens when a BAFTA-winning editor swaps shorts for a no-distributor rave nightmare? I saw the answer when watching Game at Mayhem Film Festival a few weeks ago, and now I had the chance to find out from the director himself, John Minton. My teenager, Fern, had loved the film too, and couldn’t help gatecrashing right at…
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By 1964, Hammer’s Gothic machinery was running on instinct, guided less by inspired vision and more by the relentless momentum of commercial demand. The studio had resurrected monsters, seduced the dead, and given Technicolor blood a moral weight it hadn’t known before. Yet as The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb emerged from the venerable, dust-shrouded…
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The move into the third dimension had been experimented with in cinemas long before Jason picked up that hockey mask. The 1950’s was the golden age of this technology with Andre de Toth’s House of Wax (1953) heralding a wave of, mostly, horror films to the 3D screen. William Castle, long an exponent of the…
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As a fan of horror, comedy, musicals, and any combination thereof…is it any surprise to anyone that I love Scooby-Doo? The answer should be as obvious as my orange shirt as I interview Neil Fanning: the actor, writer, producer, stunt performer, stunt safety supervisor, voice actor, and more who starred in Scooby-Doo (2002) and Scooby-Doo…
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“What’s your favorite scary movie?” It’s maybe the most famous opening line in horror history, and I’d somehow never actually watched the movie it came from. I know, I know, how does someone who loves movies avoid SCREAM for this long? The Ghostface mask is everywhere, from Spirit Halloween stores to Reddit memes, and I’ve…
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By 1964, Hammer Films stood at a crossroads. The great Gothic cathedral they had built—of blood, faith, and moral dread—was showing its cracks. Dracula and Frankenstein had already carved their myths deep into British cinematic history, terrifying and scandalizing audiences across the globe. Yet the hunger for more persisted. The world demanded another resurrection, another…
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The screen transitions from darkness to a nighttime suburban street. A little girl named Jessie sings ‘Incy Wincy Spider’, one foot in the flooded gutter, the other on the pavement before she is called in by her mother. Moments later, a Hitchcockian violin stab screeches in time to an adult pair of boots splashing violently…
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Over the next thirteen weeks, the Friday the 13th franchise will be ripped apart, dissected and, maybe, put back together again by nanites (depending on what century we are in). This is a series of films that has taken the audience on a hell of a ride from the low-fi beginnings at Crystal Lake before…
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I love ranking franchises! Even bad franchises. And I think that’s what shocked me the most after my recent watch of the entire Alien franchise: it’s not particularly good. Whereas many of the classic horror franchises I’ve ranked to this point (Halloween, Friday the 13th, Child’s Play) tend to have a roller coaster like experience…