Category: Film
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By 1959, Hammer had become an empire of beautiful decay. The blood of Frankenstein had dried to a glossy crimson, The Hound of the Baskervilles had wrapped dread in civility, and the studio was now looking inward — away from monsters, toward man’s most intimate horror: the fear of dying. The Man Who Could Cheat…
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After The Revenge of Frankenstein, Hammer had nothing left to prove. The blood had already been spilled, the moral lines blurred beyond recognition. What came next wasn’t escalation — it was refinement. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) wasn’t about gore or monstrosity. It was about atmosphere. About dread that slithers rather than strikes. This…
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By the time The Revenge of Frankenstein hit screens in 1958, Hammer was no longer testing the waters — it was baptizing itself in blood. The Curse of Frankenstein had shattered the old order, turning the genteel Universal monsters into something vivid, violent, and human. The Abominable Snowman had cooled the chaos, testing the moral…
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After the blood and blasphemy of The Curse of Frankenstein, you might expect Hammer’s next foray into horror to keep that arterial flow going — another plunge into the lurid, the violent, the gothic. But instead, they went cold. The Abominable Snowman (1957), directed by Terence Fisher and written by Nigel Kneale, is the quiet,…
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We’ve already ventured into the coffin of Hammer’s Dracula — that blood-soaked fever dream that redefined Gothic horror and drenched British cinema in technicolour blasphemy. But before the Count ever bared his fangs, before Cushing and Lee carved their names into horror’s stone altar, there was another experiment — quieter perhaps, but no less revolutionary.…
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There’s something about the red velvet and candlelight of Hammer’s Dracula that feels almost sinful. Not just because it redefined horror, but because it seduced it. Before 1958, cinematic vampires were ghostly aristocrats, whispering through cobwebbed castles in black-and-white shadows. But Hammer Films — in their usual, gloriously excessive way — didn’t just want to…
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What’s the best horror sequel of all time? Is it Evil Dead 2? Aliens? Bride of Frankenstein? Those are all great picks, but I’d like to throw another title into the conversation: A Quiet Place Part II. The jury is still out on whether it’s the best genre sequel of all time, but at the…
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It’s just one of those days. Cut my life into pieces. In the end, it doesn’t really matter… or does it? In this ongoing series, we take a look at the decadent, the depraved, and the downright visionary horror films of the late 90’s thru early 00’s that fall under the umbrella of what we’ve…
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To prepare for the release of A Quiet Place: Day One, I revisited the previous two films in the franchise. I often do that when a new sequel or prequel comes out, but this time, I got a bit more out of these rewatches than I was expecting. They reminded me that A Quiet Place…
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Last week, I had the distinct privilege of taking in the Godzilla vs. Music Box festival at Chicago’s historic Music Box Theatre. A celebration of all things Godzilla, the festival featured 31 screenings of 25 Godzilla films. These include a 24-hour marathon of the 15 Showa films, a screening of Godzilla (2014) on 35mm (one…