Category: Movie Discussions
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Mr. Sardonicus (1961)
Director William Castle emerges from the fog at the beginning of Mr. Sardonicus (1961) to warn us we’re about to see a story of “gallantry, graciousness, and ghouls.” He returns near the end of the film to ask us to vote whether the villain deserves “mercy or no mercy.” This Castle film is not a…
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Ghost Story (1981)
Unusual and old-fashioned at the dawn of a new age of horror, Ghost Story (1981) nevertheless has its chilling moments, and I’m not just talking about the fact that most of it takes place during a snowy New England winter. Documentary and TV director John Irvin delivers the jump scares but favors nudity over gore.…
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The Evil Dead (1981)
Each time I watch The Evil Dead (1981), I increase my rating. One more time and I may be giving it a perfect ten. (Do these go up to eleven?) In between viewings, I forget how raw and exciting it is, its effectiveness amplified by Sam Raimi’s kinetic filmmaking. As the camera moves low across…
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The Walking Dead (1936)
For a film that runs barely over an hour but spends almost half that time setting up the story, The Walking Dead (1936) is a tight little thriller. Director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Mildred Pierce) expertly weaves seemingly disparate plots together to tell an elaborate, yet simple, story. What does a…
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Family Plot (1976)
Watching Family Plot (1976) again, it felt more than ever like I was watching an old-fashioned Hollywood movie made at least a decade earlier. This is primarily due to the use of Poor Man’s Process for filming the car scenes, of which there are several. However, the pace and scope of the film evokes a…
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Death Takes a Holiday (1934)
The origin of Death Takes a Holiday as a stage play are apparent in the 1934 film version. It’s talky, but the words don’t just consume time that could be used for action. They’re contemplative and meaningful. I probably didn’t catch the significance of them all, but at only 79 minutes, I’d gladly watch the…
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The Funhouse (1981)
Soon after its release in March of 1981, I wrote about The Funhouse for my movie review column in The Quill, the Enid High School newspaper. After rewatching the film for the first time in over (gulp) 40 years, I located my original review and remembered that I didn’t like it much then. Some things…
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The House by the Cemetery (1981)
With The House by the Cemetery (1981,) I’ve now seen two of the three films in Lucio Fulci’s unofficial “Gates of Hell” trilogy. I haven’t watched them in the order they were made, but no matter; they are connected only thematically. When I wrote about The Beyond, I stated that it was a simple, straight-forward…
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West of Zanzibar (1928)
Phroso (Lon Chaney) is paralyzed during a scuffle with Crane (Lionel Barrymore,) the man with whom his wife, Anna (Jacqueline Gadsdon) is having an affair and leaving the country. A year later, he finds her dead inside a church with a baby beside her. 18 years later, he’s living West of Zanzibar and creating an…
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The Devil’s Men (1976) aka Land of the Minotaur
In The Devil’s Men (1976), Peter Cushing doesn’t look as gaunt as he does in Star Wars (1977.) It’s an odd coincidence, though, that both movies were released on the same day in the United States. Guess which one emerged as a box office champion? It sure wasn’t this one, known in the States as…
Classic Horrors Club 