These are films that I saw for the first time in 2020, not necessarily new films.
The Top 10 New (To Me) Horror, Cult, and Exploitation Films of 2020
DJANGO KILL… IF YOU LIVE, SHOOT!
Ask any two horror fans why they’re fans in the first place expecting similar answers, and I think you’re in for some disappointment. We come to horror for as many different reasons as there are fans in the first place. But if you’ll forgive my armchair psychologizing, I think that all horror fans are, at... Continue Reading →
ISLAND OF THE LIVING DEAD
The producers of Italian genre cinema are often accused of stealing from successful movie trends from around the world, especially from America. Fulci hopped on the bandwagon started by Romero, Leone did the same thing with John Ford. And then there’s the late career work of Bruno Mattei who was just breathtaking in his thievery. Other films from this period of his career are talked about as (Name of a Film) crossed with (Name of a Different Film) because of the sheer audacity of their weird mish-mashing. Want to see Cannibal Holocaust (Lite) mixed with Predator? In the Land of the Cannibals (2003) is for you. But if you want to see something that stays mostly inside the horror genre for the mixtape it crafts, Island of the Living Dead is the one.
Schlock-O-Rama: The Films of Al Adamson
I’d bought this book years ago and somehow managed to never get around to actually reading it. I had a cursory knowledge of Adamson’s work, having seen Dracula vs. Frankenstein (1971) and Satan’s Sadists (1969), but that was really about it. I decided some months back that thanks to their stellar track record of running exactly parallel to my tastes that in general I would give Severin Films the benefit of the doubt on any release that they chose. The fact that company owner David Gregory has decided to not only make a documentary about Adamson, but that Severin also recently announced a mega box set release of 30 Adamson films AND the documentary, I decided that now was the time to pull this slim volume off the shelf and give it a go.
Alone in the Dark: A Manifesto on the Power of Watching Films at Home
By Aaron AuBuchon There’s a truism amongst cinephiles that runs so strong and so deep that to suggest otherwise is to risk ridicule, banishment, ritual torture and summary execution. And that is that it is best to watch a film in a theater with a large audience. This is always presented as an a priori... Continue Reading →
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