If there’s a common element to the stories that have captured the imaginations of entire cultures over time, it’s rather obviously mythology. People innately respond to myths. This goes back … Continue Reading Why Horror Will Never Be as Popular as Sci-Fi or Fantasy — and Why That’s Okay
Roger Corman’s 1959 horror-tinged beatnik satire A Bucket of Blood may have been the start of one of the least likely shared universes in movie history. Well, okay. Not officially. … Continue Reading The Walter Paisley Universe: Tracking the History of Cult Cinema’s Favorite Recurring Character
“I think someone should just take this city and just…just flush it down the fuckin’ toilet.” -Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver (1976) As soon as you emerge from the stairway of … Continue Reading New York as Hellscape in Horror Cinema of the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s
I remember while watching the quite good 2006 documentary This Film Is Not Yet Rated, about the hypocrisies of the thinly veiled censorship committee known as the MPAA, I was … Continue Reading Cinematic Brain Freeze: ‘Ice Cream Man’ and the Phenomenon of Offbeat Tone
Neon Maniacs sounds like it could have been one of those toy lines or trading card series from the late ’80s or early ’90s. You know the ones. Garbage Pail … Continue Reading The Glory of ‘Neon Maniacs’
As much as I’m glad to have pretty much full control over what movies I watch and when I can watch them now that I have a plethora of streaming … Continue Reading USA Up All Night and the Virtue of Late-Night Trash Flicks
It’s hard to imagine in today’s movie market, but there was a time when superhero movies didn’t dominate the box office. At the time I’m writing this, the three highest … Continue Reading Putting the ‘Goth’ in Gotham: Remembering ‘Batman Returns’ 26 Years Later
I suppose the advantages of streaming movies greatly outweigh the disadvantages; in fact, it’s quite possible that there aren’t any disadvantages of which to speak. Conclusively, the quality of … Continue Reading Cardboard Kids with Glowing Eyes: An Ode to the Age of Video Stores
About a third of the way through The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Kirk comes across a decrepit house and haphazardly enters (rookie mistake in a horror movie, of course), hoping … Continue Reading Why All This Junk?, or: An Introduction