Graphic Novel • Lists • Fails • 70’s Cinema • K-Horror • Arthouse • Canadian Horror • Film Noir • Grindhouse • NC-17 • J-Horror • Exploitation • Sci-Fi • Pulp • Evangelical Horror • Favorites • Cult • Fantastique • Surreal • Animation • So-Bad-It’s-Good
Reviews & Commentary by Adam Groves
BLOOD FOR DRACULA
The just-as-wild 1974 follow-up to FLESH FOR FRANKENSTEIN
HANSEL AND GRETEL (1983)
A “surprisingly scary twist” on “Hansel and Gretel,” designed and directed by a 25-year-old wunderkind named Tim Burton
NIGHTBREED
The second, and most ambitious, of Clive Barker’s self-directed features
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON
Not too many movies can be said to have attained success based solely on the quality of a monster suit, but in CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON that is indeed the case
NECROMANIA
This XXX-rated “Tale of Weird Love” was one of the final films directed by Edward D. Wood, Jr.
COMMITTAL CHAMBER
A horror novel? Not quite, although COMMITTAL CHAMBER is a dark and macabre piece of work
BRAINCHILD
Andrew Neiderman’s follow-up to PIN (1981), a novel that’s much better than this one.
PRINCE OMBRA
“If Stephen King wrote fairy tales”
MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN
This eighties updating of THE INVISIBLE MAN has been out of print for over thirty years, but was quite popular in its day
RED BRIDE
The late Christopher Fowler was and remains a writer worth reading, but RED BRIDE probably isn’t the best place to start.
WILLEFORD
This, unfortunately, is the closest thing that exists to a biography of the late Charles Willeford
HOW TO WRITE PORNO NOVELS FOR FUN AND PROFIT
A book that reads best as an enjoyable flashback to a more sexually frank era
NIGHT OF THE GRIZZLIES
This factual account of a double bear attack in the summer of 1967 was a groundbreaker in its day
ROOM TO DREAM
Far and away the most comprehensive David Lynch biography to date
THE STRANGE VOYAGE OF DONALD CROWHURST
Ronald Crowhurst was a deeply obsessive man, so it’s appropriate that this book about his doomed 1969 voyage is an extremely eccentric and obsessive piece of work in its own right
Weird and Wonderful Christmas Cinema from Around the World
A much-needed addendum to a previous essay, with an overview of weird holiday-themed films emerging from around the world
1982: The Year in Bedlam
What follows are the type of little-known films that tend to comprise my “Look Back in Bedlam” listings, of which this is the 1982 entry
TV Flashback: MAX HEADROOM
If ever a show shouldn’t have worked it was this one, yet somehow MAX HEADROOM emerged as one of the great American TV programs of the decade
On CITY ZERO and VERNANDA
Here we’re going back to a very particular time and place: the Soviet Union, circa 1988
Joe Kane: 1947-2020
In an age filled with self-anointed “B-movie historians” the now-deceased Joe Kane remains one of the very few writers who can truly be said to have earned that designation