Being Film #11 for Hooptober 2022 If nothing else, Creature should impart just how influential Alien was to the science fiction and horror landscape. The film wears Ridley Scott's classic (as well as Howard Hawks's The Thing From Another World) on its sleeve, and there's no denying this was a film writer/director William Malone felt... Continue Reading →
Being Film #10 for Hooptober 2022 The world needs more variation in its Lovecraftian horror. So here is Glorious, a Shudder original that takes its tales of Elder Gods and puts it in a dirty rest stop restroom for almost the entirety of its runtime. But if you're going to do a bottle movie where... Continue Reading →
Being Film #9 for Hooptober 2022 The biggest surprise for me upon watching 1925's The Phantom of the Opera was how - 6 years before Universal horror really kicked off in the sound era with the 1-2 punch of Dracula and Frankenstein in 1931 - a lot of the style and mood of those classics... Continue Reading →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
Being Film #2 for Hooptober 2022 The PG-13 horror film is a tough nut to crack. There's an unspoken rule in films where "scary" equals lots of blood and gore, and too often what I'll lamely call YA Horror is rendered toothless. So kudos to Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark for having some... Continue Reading →
Cinema Dual 