Being Film #8 for Hooptober 2022 A quick rundown of The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll, Hammer's take on the Robert Louis Stevenson tale. As enjoyable as it may be, there are distracting elements that kept me from the velvety praise I typically heap on a Hammer production. One, it features Oliver Reed in a... Continue Reading →
Let me start with the following declaration; if you watch a Hammer horror film, you’ll want to watch ten of them. After watching The Satanic Rites of Dracula, I had to watch another Hammer produced horror film. Since that was Christopher Lee’s last Dracula movie, why not revisit his first? Rewatching Horror of Dracula, or... Continue Reading →
Being Film #7 for Hooptober 2022 Horror gets tricky when it comes to trying to extend it into animation. There's the ability to extend the imagination even further, but the remove from reality that even the best animation contains means that - at least for me - actual horror or fright is in short supply.... Continue Reading →
Hammer Horror holds a very special place in the hearts of genre fans. Hell, Kate Bush wrote a song about it. There isn’t anything else like these period horror films shot in glorious technicolor with that gorgeous bright red blood. These films aimed for a kind of “respectability”. The British actors in these may have... Continue Reading →
Being Film #6 for Hooptober 2022 In my time doing this marathon over the course of nine years I have learned a lot about how horror is constructed: what works, what doesn't, how fears transcend (or not) across cultures. But I've also learned more that a few things about myself as well. And one of... Continue Reading →
“Is Australian Gothic a thing?” was a question I asked myself many times watching Tony Williams 1982 film Next of Kin (according to a Google search, yes it is). Next of Kin has the hallmarks of Gothic storytelling; an old house, a heroine who may or may not be mentally ill, and of course, the... Continue Reading →
Being Film #5 for Hooptober 2022 After my positive experience with X, I decided to travel back to the beginning and take another look at The House of the Devil, West's first feature from 2009. I probably hadn't see the film since about that time, and although the years have certainly been kinder, my initial... Continue Reading →
As Florida residents and lovers of spooky things, going to Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights is an annual tradition for my spouse and I. For anyone who has never gone or is unaware, Halloween Horror Nights is an after hours event in September and October at Universal Studios. Generally, they’ll have multiple “haunted houses” based... Continue Reading →
Being Film #4 for Hooptober 2022 I've always given writer/director Ti West credit for trying with his films. Whether it was the 80s VHS clamshell horror of debut The House of the Devil or the found footage cult madness of The Sacrament, there's always solid filmmaking not content to merely emulate, but to live and... Continue Reading →
Being Film #3 for Hooptober 2022 Mako: The Jaws of Death is the prefect example of why something like Hooptober is great, and why adhering to the rules is so necessary. There's no other way I would have watched this crazy riff on Jaws where, far from the shark being the terror, it's the man... Continue Reading →
Cinema Dual 