Next Level Horror, Exploitation and Cult Discussion
By Eli LaChance Toho took Hollywood to school on long-running franchise movies with a fraction of the budget. After a long year of Blockbuster duds, Godzilla Minus One proves the problem isn't inherent to franchises or genre, it's Hollywood's cookie-cutter approach. https://youtu.be/d79dUsPZKL0 Credit: Toho With Godzilla Minus One, writer/director Takashi Yamazaki delivers a deeply emotional... Continue Reading →
Every good deal begins with a handshake. Talk to Me, the new A24 distributed indie from the land down under, seeks to provide gothic horror for the 21st century. And while the first act mostly delivers on the marketing promise, we don't spend long in the film's clutches before it becomes clear that YouTube's RackaRacka creators turned directors, Danny Philippou and Michael Philippou, are working with a more timeless metaphor.
What does it mean to have a body, and what does it mean to be mortal? How do we factor sense pleasures into a bodily experience that is unpredictable, into a body that will eventually wither and that will invariably experience agony? What do we do when we find out that dignity is an illusion that only holds if circumstance and luck hold as well?
By Charles Evans There exists a form of received wisdom in popular culture which can be deadly for a work of art or entertainment. Essentially, if enough people decide in advance that something is true, it becomes the de facto truth, and little can be done until a reevaluation occurs. If one occurs at all.... Continue Reading →
These are films that I saw for the first time in 2020, not necessarily new films.
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 →
It isn’t that I believe Toho and co. were making a Godzilla film about the coronavirus in 2016, that would require a tin-foil hat and perhaps an antipsychotic prescription.
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.
I know it came after this film, but when I watch Humanoids From the Deep, something always catches in the back of my mind, and I finally figured it out this time: this film is Redneck C.H.U.D. So imagine the premise of C.H.U.D. but instead of urban homeless victims, we get rural fishermen, and instead of sewer mutants, we get somewhat Lovecraftian river mutants. And some Billy Jack-esque themes. And a lot of T&A
Nazis were bad. Like really bad. There is nothing in the whole of human history that you could have been that was worse than a Nazi. If you had to choose between a Nazi and a serial killer to be on your bowling team, you’d pick the serial killer.
Channel 31 