Because it’s pretty hard to lose money with a horror movie, it’s been possible for filmmakers to experiment and push boundaries. But it’s a fact which has also produced a lot of laziness in both conception and execution, or at best a rote repetition of overly familiar formulas.
Twilight Time has become one of the most notable boutique labels over the past couple of years; with each title limited to 3000 units, collectors feel a sense of urgency with every new release. Available only through the Screen Archives Entertainment website which specializes in movie soundtracks, Twilight Time’s initial focus was on the music, […]
Two disks illustrate the spectrum of British genre production in the ’70s and ’80s: Pete Walker’s cinematic horror Frightmare and David Rudkin’s epic BBC fantasy Artemis 81.
Recent disks offer a range of horror movies displaying commercial and artier approaches to the genre from Vincent Price vehicles from American-International to Roger Vadim’s visually rich LeFanu adaptation …et mourir de plaisir and Bill Gunn’s key Black Cinema offering from 1973, Ganja & Hess.
I just came across this interesting nature documentary clip on YouTube. It’s from a BBC series called Inside the Animal Mind and it illustrates the remarkable intelligence of the crow. Well, perhaps it does, and perhaps not. If you read the comments below the clip, there are a number of people who (inevitably) cry “fake!” […]
Horror remains one of the most durable of genres, with a constant stream of disk releases of new and classic movies.
I’ve recently had evidence that computers do indeed make people more stupid. I’ve been out to the movies twice in the past two weeks, both times to my most accessible theatre, Silver City Polo Park. The first time was for Pompeii (in 3D). I thoroughly enjoyed it, but then I’ve liked quite a lot of […]
Wanting to make a comedy to end all comedy, in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, serious-minded Stanley Kramer produced a bloated compendium of comedy styles which stubbornly refused to be funny.
Reading great critics of the past – Agee, Farber, Kauffmann – sheds interesting light on the ways our perception of film history has been formed.
Three recent disks showcase performances by interesting actors in less-than-reputable movies: Klaus Kinski in Crawlspace, Udo Kier in The House on Straw Hill, and Peter Cushing in Corruption.