Category: Movie Discussions
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The Mad Ghoul (1943)
Maybe it’s because I just watched a ratty old print of The Mad Monster (1942) on YouTube and a crisp new transfer of The Mad Ghoul (1943) on Blu-ray, but I enjoyed the latter… a lot. One of the “lesser” films among the Universal Horror Collections, I liked it better than some of the sequels…
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Flesh & Fantasy (1943)
When a man (Robert Benchley, I Married a Witch) has a “rough night” combination of a chat with a fortune teller and then a bad dream, his friend at the club (David Hoffman, The Beast with Five Fingers) attempts to snap him out of his jitters with three stories of the supernatural. Synopses of Flesh…
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The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
All good things must come to an end. Be careful what you wish for. I jinxed it. Insert the expression of your choice. The point is, after singing praises of mid-1980s horror films that I originally disliked, then rewatched and enjoyed, here comes The Return of the Living Dead (1985.) For me, this was the…
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Invaders from Mars (1986)
Another week, another rewatch of a 1986 movie I originally hated, but now kind of enjoy. This may be blasphemous since the movie is Invaders from Mars, about which Joe Dante once said, shaking his head with a look of disgust, “very few remakes are as misguided.” Sure, it comes nowhere near to capturing the…
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Deadly Friend (1986)
What was wrong with me in the mid-1980s? I didn’t like most horror films. Take 1986, the year today’s film, Deadly Friend, was released. Chopping Mall – never saw it; thought it looked bad. House – hated it. Invaders from Mars – awful. Maximum Overdrive – despised it. Night of the Creeps – nope. Vamp…
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Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)
There’s something about mid-century British films that make them distinctively British. While it’s hard to describe, you can recognize them in nearly every aspect of filmmaking: the angles, lighting, camera movements, close-ups, transitions, edits, and so on. It’s more than just the actors speaking with a funny accent and driving on the wrong side of…
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Woman in the Moon (1929)
Parts of Woman in the Moon are familiar; we’ve seen them in countless science-fiction movies over the years. However, because it was made in 1929, we can hardly accuse it of borrowing from other films. I never realized how often other films borrowed from it and it’s never been on my radar like Fritz Lang’s…
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Murder Story (1989)
In retrospect, there were parts of Murder Story (1989) that I enjoyed. However, when I consider the experience of watching it, it’s nothing more than a slightly better than straight-to-VHS movie. No surprise, Christopher Lee is terrific in it, but it’s Alexis Denisof (Wesley Wyndam-Pryce from Angel) in his first movie role that kept me…
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Possession (1981)
Spoiler Alert! It’s going to take a while to fully understand how I feel about Possession… (1981) and I may never understand the movie itself. On the surface, a woman leaves her husband, harboring a tentacled creature in her new apartment that forces her to murder anyone who comes to visit. Meanwhile, her husband has…
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Dracula & Son (1976)
The first thing I noticed when watching Dracula & Son (1976) was how gorgeous it looks. Next, I noticed the lush score. Like the rest of the film, though, there were diminishing returns. By the time it ended, I could barely remember its most positive elements. It’s not that it’s bad; it’s just so… I…
Classic Horrors Club 