Category: Movie Discussions
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Got Told Me To (1976)
October 22, 1976 Based on what I’d heard about Gold Told Me To (1976), I’ve never had much desire to watch it. Then again, I hadn’t heard much. Nevertheless, I expected a typical Larry Cohen movie that might have some interesting ideas, but presented unevenly, sometimes annoyingly. Surprise! I love Cohen’s It’s Alive (1974), but…
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A Bucket of Blood (1959)
October 21, 1959 Back in late November of 2020, I wrote an unplanned series on early Roger Corman films such as Beast from Haunted Cave, Creature from the Haunted Sea, Last Woman on Earth, and The Little Shop of Horrors. Missing from the group was A Bucket of Blood (1959.) If you recall, this was…
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Let Sleeping Corpses (1974) aka The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
October 20, 1974 This discussion is updated from one first published on Aug. 1, 2022… For all intents and purposes, this was the first time I watched The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue (1977), the name of the movie on the Synapse Films Blu-ray. (It’s been known by many others, including Let Sleeping Corpses Lie,…
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Chamber of Horrors (1966)
October 19, 1966 Chamber of Horrors (1966) was intended as a pilot for a series, but was too “intense” for television, so additional footage was added and it was released as a theatrical motion picture. Neither these circumstances, nor the movie itself, is as strange as what the series might have been: a period detective…
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Re-Animator (1985)
October 18, 1985 Today we have another mid-80’s horror film that I’d never seen. It may be surprising to learn it’s one that’s been so popular over the years: Re-Animator (1985.) There was a time when I had little interest in a movie that featured over-the-top gore, as well as prejudice against what I perceived…
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The Devil & Daniel Webster (1941)
aka All That Money Can Buy October 17, 1941 This discussion is updated from one first published on Sept. 26, 2022… The Devil & Daniel Webster (1941) evokes It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) for me. Both are about men who make unfortunate decisions but discover the error of their ways and are given an opportunity…
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Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II (1987)
October 16, 1987 During the Countdown to Halloween, there’s usually one movie that catches me by surprise. This year, it’s one I would never have imagined, one I can hardly believe I enjoyed so much: Hello Mary Lou: Prom Night II. No, it’s not really a sequel to Prom Night (1980.) In fact, I think…
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Dead of Night (1945)
October 15, 1945 There weren’t many horror films produced in Great Britain during World War II; however, Ealing Studios went horror-adjacent with one of the earliest anthology films, Dead of Night (1945.) It’s the type of anthology that uses a “wraparound” or “framing sequence” to contain its stories. Here, Walter Craig (Mervyn Johns) arrives at…
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The Earth Dies Screaming (1964)
October 14, 1964 What a great title! However, screenwriter Harry Spalding supposedly never liked it. In a 2003 interview with Tom Weaver, he claimed that someone said the title as a joke and “somehow it kind of stuck.” As I said, it’s a great title, but not necessarily for this movie. In fact, it’s ironic…
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Color Me Blood Red (1965)
October 13, 1965 If we judge Herschell Gordon Lewis movies based on the amount of over-the-top gore, then Color Me Blood Red is the mildest one I’ve seen. With its story of a creatively stalled painter who can’t get his colors right until he discovers blood is the perfect shade of red, you’d think it…