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  • CTH24: 12 Monkeys (1995)

    CTH24: 12 Monkeys (1995)

    Time travel movies sometimes raise the question if the person who claims to have travelled is instead suffering some type of mental breakdown. In these cases, we, the audience, usually know the truth. In 12 Monkeys (1995), though, I was not convinced that James Cole (Bruce Willis) wasn’t in the middle of his own delusion.

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  • CTH24: Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)

    Hear me out! If you wonder why we’re discussing a crime drama with virtually no thrills or chills, let me share the plethora of behind-the-scenes tidbits that tantalized me to make Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954) horror-adjacent. First, it was directed by Don Siegel and we had just released an episode of The Classic

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  • CTH24: 10 Rillington Place (1971)

    10 Rillington Place (1971) is another film I never watched because of the VHS cover box. I couldn’t tell what it was, really… it seemed like more of a a drama or a stuffy British film with people of whom, at the time, I’d never heard. I was interested only in movies that were clearly

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  • CTH24: The Ninth Configuration (1980)

    Don’t let the fact that William Peter Blatty (“The Exorcist”) wrote, produced, and directed The Ninth Configuration (1980) lead you to believe it’s a horror film. And don’t let the fact that he considered it to be the true sequel to The Exorcist (1973) lead you to believe it’s full of thrills and chills. No,

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  • CTH24: Eight Legged Freaks (2002)

    The first movie to use computer-generated imagery (CGI) was Vertigo (1958.) Granted, it was used only in the opening credits, but I had no idea it went back that far. This is especially since the first movie I remember watching DVD bonus features to learn about CGI was The Mummy (1999.) I know, that’s skipping

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  • CTH24: Seven Deaths in the Cat’s Eyes (1973)

    As the camera floats around the bedroom, we hear moaning and see a generous splatter of blood against the wall; then a bloody straight razor and clothing on the floor. We then cut to a trunk tumbling down the dark stairs to the cellar. When it hits the bottom, a body falls out. A plump

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  • CTH24: 6 Hours to Live (1932)

    Captain Paul Onslow (Warner Baxter) has only 6 Hours to Live (1932) and it’s not because he’s ingested poison (he hasn’t) or that he’s the target of an assassination attempt (he is.) It’s because he’s been brought back to life and there’s a flaw in Professor Otto Bauer’s (George F. Marion) process. Oooh… sci-fi with

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  • CTH24: Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970)

    Thank goodness for Wikipedia! Had the entry for Five Dolls for an August Moon (1970) not included a lengthy synopsis of the plot, I would have been unclear about the goings on. It’s not that it’s incoherent in any way, but there are a lot of characters that get killed one by one, for no

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  • CTH24: Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971)

    Two things struck me during my first-time watch of Four Flies on Grey Velvet (1971.) First was how stylish it is. That may sound silly since it was directed by Dario Argento (Suspiria, 1977), but I don’t mean “stylish” as in gloriously bloody set pieces, but as in the camerawork itself. The fact that it’s

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  • CTH24: Three on a Meathook (1972)

    Prior to his untimely death in a helicopter crash at the age of 30, writer-producer-director-composer William Girdler had a promising film trajectory. Four years after his inauspicious beginnings with two drive-in quickies in 1972 (Asylum of Satan, Three on a Meathook), he made the most successful independent feature of 1976, Grizzly. Sprinkled among his nine

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