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Reviews & Commentary by Adam Groves
SMILE
Overrated!
THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING
One of the more notable box office flops of 2022 was this ambitious ARABIAN NIGHTS themed fantasy from the great George Miller
EXOTICA
The foremost film ever made by Canada’s Atom Egoyan, an elliptical, provocative and altogether fascinating 1994 drama
MIGRATING FORMS
Probably the most memorable film yet made by James Fotopoulos, whose career-long debt to David Lynch’s ERASERHEAD is most evident in MIGRATING FORMS
GHOSTWATCH
Purportedly the most controversial telefilm ever broadcast by the BBC, a mock documentary about ghosts that aired on Halloween night, 1992
AFRO-6
Fans of “Kill Whitey” fiction of the 1960s and 70s will note that the premise of this 1969 novel is nearly identical to that of SIEGE by Edwin Corley
MINDBLOWER
This counterculture-infused oddity is far and away the rarest, though definitely not the best, Essex House book
THIRD INSTAR
Another dreamy fantasy from Eibonvale Press, a tantalizing glimpse of a city located quite literally at the edge of the world
TOMORROW, WHEN I WAS YOUNG
A most peculiar fantasy about a woman who finds herself in a world that corresponds to our own but for the fact that life, death, past, present and future all co-exist
THE MAN WHO MURDERED HIS MUSE
The always-eclectic Eibonvale Press is, unsurprisingly, the source for this pleasingly eccentric horror novella
MOONCHILD: THE FILMS OF KENNETH ANGER
I strongly doubt this book will be of interest to anyone who’s not already a Kenneth Anger fan, but for those of us who value Anger’s films it’s a must
MIRACLES OF LIFE
MIRACLES OF LIFE, the long-in-coming autobiography of the great J.G. Ballard, is grounded in an extremely sad reality: in 2006 Ballard, author of THE DROWNED WORLD, HIGH RISE and other brain-rattling masterworks, learned he was near death
THE MAKING OF DUNE
DUNE is of course the world famous science fiction novel by Frank Herbert that was turned into a hellaciously expensive 1984 Universal Pictures movie. This is the studio-approved book about the production of that film…
SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE
From one of the foremost horror scribes of all time comes perhaps the finest, most concise recounting of the genre I’ve ever encountered
STANLEY KUBRICK’S THE SHINING: STUDIES IN THE HORROR FILM
This exhaustive (and frankly exhausting) 750 page anthology can safely be termed the definitive resource on Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING
I’LL DO ANYTHING, With Songs and Without
Amid the inexplicable success of LA LA LAND, I think it’s a good time to look back at a like-minded film whose fortunes weren’t nearly as rosy.
2016: A Look Back in Bedlam
Here we have The Bedlam Files’ first-ever “Look Back,” covering the previous year’s noteworthy happenings in the world of cult/horror film and literature.
2016: Bedlam in Print
Here it is, the first installment of my “Bedlam in Print” overview of the previous year’s publishing output.
2016: The Year in Bedlam
Welcome to the first installment of my “Year in Bedlam” end-of-the-year movie rankings.
The Spawn of EL MARIACHI
In the past decade there was one film above all others that inspired filmmakers in and out of the horror genre, and it isn’t even a horror movie.