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Reviews & Commentary by Adam Groves
SERIE NOIRE
A 1979 French language take on Jim Thompson’s A HELL OF A WOMAN, directed by the talented Alain Corneau
ATTACK THE BLOCK
The primary intent of this no-budgeter was evidently to jumpstart a Hollywood career for its debuting writer-director, yet the film can be enjoyed by viewers who aren’t studio executives or talent agents
ROLLERBALL (2002)
One of the most calamitous flops of the 2000s was ROLLERBALL (2002), which lost MGM/UA an enormous amount of money and destroyed the careers of its director and its leading man
TERROR ABOVE THE SUNSET STRIP
This 22-minute jaw-dropper can be termed the AI movie to end all AI movies
OLDBOY
After twenty years this film remains an astonishing sensory assault
THE CITY OF UNSPEAKABLE FEAR
A rare example of a novel by Belgium’s Jean Ray and an even rarer example of an English translation of Ray’s work
SPA
This unforgettably gross and surreal graphic novel hails from Sweden, and I say this 2023 English translation is an absolute necessity
RITUAL
There are some ingeniously nasty elements in this 1988 horrorfest, yet also some misconceived ones, all packed into a vastly overblown framework
DARK MATTER (Blake Crouch)
A fun book–quantum mechanics without pain!
MOONDEATH
The first novel by the late Rick Hautala, and a damn good read
THE GUTTENBERG BIBLE
To those of us who came of age in the 1980s actor Steve Guttenberg is a familiar and perhaps even beloved figure
APROPOS OF NOTHING
It’s an interesting thing about Woody Allen: not too long ago he was considered the epitome of class and sophistication, but now he’s a pariah
I’M SCREAMING AS FAST AS I CAN: MY LIFE IN B-MOVIES
A slim but reasonably satisfying mini-memoir by Linnea Quigley, the most prominent of the 1980s and ‘90s scream queens
CUT TO THE CHASE
A movie book that’s as gossipy, informative and entertaining as anyone could possibly want
TURNING JAPANESE
A short collection of six Asian Cult Cinema magazine articles, spanning the years 1997 to 2007, by the late horror novelist Jack Ketchum
TV Flashback: THE HORROR HALL OF FAME
A horror movie Academy Awards? Here’s the closest thing that exists to such a program
The DUNEiverse and Its Discontents
DUNE: the novels, films and everything else
LISZTOMANIA, Ken Russell, Genius and Madness
LISZTOMANIA is not a widely admired film, but I say it deserves a reappraisal
TV Flashback: THE BOY WITH TWO HEADS
Here’s proof of something I’ve long believed: children’s programming is the weirdest that exists
9/11 and The Media
9/11 in the media: the (amost) good, the (mostly) bad and (extremely) ugly