From The Blood Is the Life, published 2024
There’s a whole subgenre of great horror movies with stupid titles. Let’s Scare Jessica to Death (1971) is a first-rate psychological thriller with a paranormal twist. I Walked with a Zombie (1943) is the greatest zombie tale of the pre-Romero era. And 1970’s Taste the Blood of Dracula is the second-best film featuring Christopher Lee as the inimitable bloodsucker.
Continue reading “Taste the Blood of Dracula (1970)”
From The Blood Is the Life, published 2024
By 1968, Hammer Films had become a respectable company. It was still known (and sometimes derided) for cranking out mid-budget horror fare, but its financial success could not be ignored. Even Queen Elizabeth took notice.
Her Majesty was not a fan of boundary-pushing Gothic adventures (that we know of), but Hammer became the first movie studio to receive The Queen’s Award for Industry, thanks to the millions in overseas earnings it brought into the British economy. The award was presented on the set of Dracula Has Risen from the Grave by the Lord Lieutenant of Buckinghamshire, who likely never imagined his job would include watching Christopher Lee being impaled on a cross, screaming while bright red “blood” oozed from his chest and eyes. According to Lee’s autobiography, the Lord Lieutenant deadpanned to his wife, “Do you know, my dear, that man’s a member of my club!”
Continue reading “Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)”
From The Blood Is the Life, published 2024
Can a film be both behind the times and ahead of them? Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr is an acknowledged masterpiece now, but its release in May of 1932 was a disaster. Panned by critics and booed by audiences, Vampyr could not escape the expectations set by Universal Studios’ Dracula and Frankenstein, which had been massive hits the year before. Dreyer’s style was just too weird for mainstream crowds.
To find a true stylistic peer, you have to go back to Luis Buñuel’s avant-garde Un Chien Andalou (1929) or forward to Maya Deren’s dream-logic short films of the 1940s. Technically, Vampyr has a linear story, but it feels like an afterthought, something Dreyer attached out of necessity but had little interest in.
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From Euro Horror, published 2024
When The Exorcist was released in 1973, evangelist Billy Graham reportedly insisted that “the Devil is in every frame of this movie” and evil is “buried within the celluloid of the film itself.” To Graham, it wasn’t just scary – it was infected, endangering the very souls of the people who watched it.
Sounds like a great plot for a horror film.
Continue reading “Fury of the Demon (2016)”
From Euro Horror, published 2024
A title like Bloody Pit of Horror conjures up all sorts of gruesome imagery, especially when the filmmakers claim it’s based on the writings of the Marquis de Sade. Will there be dismemberments? Disfigurements? Rivers of the red stuff?
Not exactly. Even by 1965 standards, this exploitation flick is fairly tame – there’s more blood in the title than on the screen – but it has just enough loony creativity to make it a cult favorite. The shock metal band Gwar named an album after it, which must confer some kind of street cred. It’s also filmed in PsychoVision, whatever that means (probably nothing, but it sounds cool).
Continue reading “Bloody Pit of Horror (1965)”
From Unsung Horrors Has Risen from the Grave, published 2024
When RKO hired Val Lewton to run its horror unit in 1942, its executives had fairly simple expectations: His films had to be cheap (no more than $150,000), short (just over an hour), and based on pre-approved titles like The Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. As long as he stayed within those parameters – and made a profit, of course – the cultured, perfectionist producer could do pretty much as he wished.
The suits had no idea what they were in for. Lewton was a true auteur, and he hired directors who would fulfill his vision. He drew on art, literature, and folklore to offer audiences much more than cheap scares. He could handle that part, too, but it was never the point. His work was more in line with the film noir and social dramas of the era, with their challenging themes and dark aesthetics.
Continue reading “Bedlam (1946)”
From Spotlight on Science Fiction, published 2022
The human survival impulse is extraordinary, and apocalyptic fiction could not exist without it. No matter how bad things get, certain characters push on, determined to keep the species going into an uncertain future. There’s no alternative.
The Girl With All the Gifts would like to challenge that assumption. In Colm McCarthy’s virus/vampire/zombie mashup, the girl of the title isn’t entirely human, but she’s certainly the future.
Continue reading “The Girl With All the Gifts (2016)”
From We Belong Dead, Issue 31, published 2022
If you live in a place like New York or Tokyo, you’re used to seeing your hometown destroyed on screen. It’s a slow year if the Statue of Liberty isn’t decapitated in at least one movie.
I’ve spent most of my life in Kansas City, a mellow Midwestern town that’s often overlooked in popular culture. Except that one time in 1983, when we got obliterated in a nuclear war.
Continue reading “The Day After (1983)”
From Spotlight on Science Fiction, published 2022
Without the title card, the beginning of Panic in Year Zero! could be mistaken for a family road trip comedy. It has a hip jazz score by Les Baxter and features a long-married couple who tease and flirt with each other while their teenage kids complain about being stuck in the car all day.
But as they leave Los Angeles and head to their mountain camping spot, they see a blinding flash of light. Then another. Then a mushroom cloud over the city.
The groovy music sticks around. The happy family doesn’t.
Continue reading “Panic in Year Zero! (1962)”
From We Belong Dead, Issue 24, published 2021
Ask anyone to define “zombie” and you’ll probably get the same answer: A dead person, reanimated, hungry for human flesh. After more than 50 years of pop culture saturation, it’s hard to imagine another response. Such is the influence of George A. Romero’s 1968 masterpiece Night of the Living Dead.
Continue reading “Before the Living Dead: Zombie Cinema Pre-Romero”
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