Being Film #24 for Hooptober 2023 Nightmare on Elm Street may have the dream logic and evil supernatural beings; The Serpent and the Rainbow may have actual magic in the shape of its depiction of voodoo, and yet it's the very real (to a point) horror and journey of its lead that makes Wes Craven's... Continue Reading →
Being Film #23 for Hooptober 2023 Having finally felt like I caught on to Ken Russell's particular and peculiar wavelength, I called an audible and went back to a film I saw as a teenager and never revisited. Gothic purports to dramatize the night that Lord Byron, Dr. John Polidori, Percy Bysshe Shelley and, of... Continue Reading →
Being Film #22 for Hooptober 2023 Man, Ken Russell is naughty, huh? I mean, yeah...I knew this in theory have seen The Devils, but maybe his predilection for the excesses of every appetite was maybe limited to the type of story being told? Uh, no, and that's a good thing. The Lair of the White... Continue Reading →
Being Film #21 for Hooptober 2023 A couple quick ones while I'm away for an extended weekend. I'm not sure anyone was expecting the feature debut from Danny and Michael Philippou, also known as YouTube's RackRacka, to be bad - the team over the years have been great at executing high concept shorts with miniscule... Continue Reading →
Being Film #20 for Hooptober 2023 I guess he had one more return to the Scream bucket after this, but I feel like this was the real end for Wes Craven, a last stab at an original story and his assured direction. Alas, My Soul to Take has a really nifty concept, but the screenplay... Continue Reading →
Being Film #19 for Hooptober 2023 How about a very short review for something that isn't necessarily horror, but utilizes horror imagery in a way that would be imitated for decades? Häxan is a silent essay film on the history of witchcraft and devil worship written and directed by Benjamin Christensen, who uses a variety... Continue Reading →
Being Film #18 for Hooptober 2023 The marathon called for a movie that had "X" in the title, and it was the perfect time to bring out a DVD I had for yers but never watched: my beloved Humphrey Bogart taking on horror in The Return of Doctor X. My heart knew this wasn't going... Continue Reading →
Being Film #17 for Hooptober 2023 It's seemingly impossible to get a solid, close adaptation of Richard Matheson's seminal novel I am Legend, but despite some of his problems with it he and I both seem to agree that The Last Man on Earth comes the closest, not least of all because he had a... Continue Reading →
Being Film #16 for Hooptober 2023 I think the biggest mystery of Dead Ringers is how it didn't win ALL the awards, especially for Jeremy Irons. I've always held the film at arm's length, admiring its execution but getting precisely what I wanted from a Cronenberg movie. Well that was then and now I'm older... Continue Reading →
Being Film #15 for Hooptober 2023 "Pick a film from the year you turned 10" they said. Easy enough. I had been meaning to get to Psycho II for more years than I can remember. For years it had been been the subject of reconsiderations; cries of "underrated" and "hidden gem" being floated about with... Continue Reading →
Cinema Dual 