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
MYRA BRECKINRIDGE
One of the most notorious Hollywood flops of the seventies, and indeed of all time
VROOOM VROOM VROOOOM
Very likely the most interesting post-1980 film made by the late Melvin Van Peebles
SKINAMARINK
A superbly evocative and unnerving horror-fest that’s also boring as shit
THE MUMMY (1932)
A rarity: a golden age horror film that almost holds up
CRY FOR ME, BILLY
One of the more obscure entries in the revisionist western craze of the 1970s, this quasi-art film (given new life by Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary) hails from 1972
WORMS
An example of the “nasties” model popular in the seventies, fused with the age-old psychological horror trope
WEEPING IN RAMAH
Evangelical fiction whose publishers clearly had outsized hopes
ZULMA
A sensation-packed concoction that reads like MIDNIGHT EXPRESS crossed with LET ME DIE A WOMAN
FALLING
I’m not sure that anyone was calling for a post-9/11 throwback to the airplane thrillers of old, but it’s here
THE HAUNTED DOLLHOUSE
This kiddie picture book is more ambitious than most
THE DOYLE DIARY
Here’s a truly amazing artifact for the ages, a sumptuous reproduction of a sketchbook kept by Charles Altamont Doyle, father of Sherlock Holmes creator Arthur Conan Doyle
DONALD CAMMELL: A LIFE ON THE WILD SIDE
The first and likely only biography we’ll ever see of the late Donald Cammell
DISPATCHES FROM ARMAGEDDON: MAKING THE MOVIE MEGIDDO
A “Devilish Diary” by the British actor Michael York about his experience playing the Devil in the Christian feature MEGIDDO: THE OMEGA CODE 2
THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY
This eminently readable slice of history alternates the accounts of Daniel Burnham, the director of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and Herman Mudgett, a.k.a. H.H. Holmes, the serial killer who haunted the event
THE DAY OF ST. ANTHONY’S FIRE
Here’s a real-life horror story that rivals just about any fiction
More Topps Trading Card Madness
In sifting through America’s pop culture detritus I’ve found Topps Trading Cards are elements that continually demand one’s attention
Dennis Etchison: 1943-2019
Dennis Etchison, who died on May 28, 2019, may not be particularly well known to the public at large, but he had an exceedingly large and dedicated following, and left a sizeable mark
TV Flashback: LES DOCUMENTS INTERDITS
2019 marked the 20th anniversary of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT, but I say it’s time for a look back even further, to that film’s true progenitor: the French TV program LES DOCUMENTS INTERDITS
1991: The Year in Bedlam
1991 wasn’t an especially auspicious year for movies, but it was a formative one for this (once) young cineaste
1992: The Year in Bedlam
For me the cinema of 1992 will always be shadowed by one all-encompassing real-life event: the rioting that took place on April 29 to May 4 in Los Angeles