Among the wide spectrum of horror genres, there is one that stands out above the rest as quintessentially American: the slasher. Aside from the Universal monsters, the most famous horror icons came from the slashers of the late 70’s and early 80’s. Freddy Kreuger, Jason Voorhees, and Michael Myers have a whopping thirty films between … Continue reading A Bay of Blood (1971)
Before anything, I guess I should address my last review. I don’t really want to stop writing about horror movies, but my second run-in with Ranpo has certainly encouraged me to be more selective. For the time being, I’m just going to be writing one review a week, with the goal for it to be … Continue reading The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970)
I hate this. Really. I like horror films. That’s firmly established. I like watching horror films, and I do like talking about them. Is it frustrating that my site gets almost no traffic? That the day I got the most hits was the day after an old friend killed himself? Yeah, it’s fucking frustrating. … Continue reading Blind Beast (1969)
Have you seen Suspiria? Yeah, that. Okay, that’s not fair, but it doesn’t take very long to pick up on the large number of ways that The House that Screamed inspired the 1977 Dario Argento classic. A private academy for girls with a reputation for strange disappearances is terrorized by an unseen killer, who dispatches … Continue reading The House that Screamed (1969)
As of 2017, there are only 4 actresses who have received 8 or more Academy Award nominations. The top three are all household names: Meryl Streep, Katherine Hepburn, and Bette Davis. But number four is a bit more obscure, and I was rather gobsmacked to learn that this is the first live-action movie I’ve ever … Continue reading What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969)
2018 marked the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and as expected, every writer on the Internet had to get out their hot take. One of the spicier ones came from Britain’s The Sun, who took an earlier article by The Times and spiced it up with classic reaction right wing language. “FLAKENSTEINS: Snowflake students … Continue reading Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed (1969)
Even before I started watching Horrors of Malformed Men, I hit a wall. I do this column without any external financial support, so I have to find all movies for free. Foreign films can be particularly difficult to track down online, and the only version I found was one with Spanish subtitles. Thankfully, the first … Continue reading Butoh: the dance of vengeful ghosts
The Devil Rides Out Hour of the Wolf Kuroneko Night of the Living Dead Rosemary's Baby Witchfinder General Best Non-Horror of 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes are two of the best, most important science fiction films ever made. At the risk of sounding like a gatekeeper, they're essential viewing for … Continue reading 1968 Index
Aka Vargtimmen Though The Virgin Spring served as a template for one of the most infamous slashers of all time, most film historians consider Swedish director Ingmar Bergman to have only made one outright horror film. Hour of the Wolf follows Johan and Alma Borg, a young artist and his wife played by Bergman regulars … Continue reading Hour of the Wolf (1968)
Four years after the release of his critically acclaimed Onibaba, Kaneto Shindo once again returned to both the writer’s desk and director’s chair. The film’s original full title was Yabu no Naka no Kuroneko, literally translated as A Black Cat in a Bamboo Grove. This longer title references a 1922 story “In a Grove”, which … Continue reading Kuroneko (1968)
