Looking back, the year 1997 was not a good one for superhero movies. Of course, Joel Schumacher’s (Flatliners) Batman & Robin is the fiasco with which cinephiles are most familiar. But 1997 is also the same year that dropped Mortal Kombat: Annihilation later in the fall. Somewhere in between these two turkeys, New Line Cinema […]
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Traditionally, horror movies, particularly the slasher genre, have played fast and loose with rules the serial killer that populate their movies. Neither Jason Voorhees or Michael Myers are supernatural killers. Yet that hasn’t stopped the Friday the 13th and Halloween series from bringing their respective killers back from sequel to sequel. Other horror movies skirted […]
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If Silent Night, Deadly Night is something of a Grindhouse cult classic, its sequel inexplicably became a belated meme classic. What you may not know is that the sequels kept coming. Like other B-level horror franchises, Silent Night, Deadly Night lived on with a handful of straight-to-video sequels. Bill Moseley (The Devil’s Rejects) turned up […]
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By and large, director Brian De Palma is largely known for his crime and psychological thrillers. To date, The Untouchables, Scarface, and Dressed to Kill remain genre classics. On a handful of occasions, however, De Palma has ventured into ‘near horror’ territory (Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise) and outright horror (Carrie). In addition to his […]
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To date, The Howling remains one of the best werewolf movies ever made. What you may know is that The Howling was followed be several sequels. Like The Puppet Master or Children of the Corn, The Howling spawned a seemingly never-ending series of straight-to-video sequels. Unlike those B-level franchises, The Howling sequels have absolutely no […]
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In the late 1980s and early 1990s, safe psychological thrillers had mostly supplanted the edgier resurgence of neo-noir. Thrillers like Pacific Heights, Sleeping With The Enemy, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle were suspenseful star-laden affairs that were tailormade for wide theatrical releases. None of the chills were likely to disturb mainstream audiences and […]
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No, the Child’s Play franchise isn’t as successful as Friday the 13th, Halloween, or A Nightmare on Elm Street. Yet its history might be more interesting. And Don Mancini’s creation has shown remarkable longevity. Following a ‘so so’ remake, Mancini got a new series off the ground last year that’s actually pretty damn good. With […]
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Several months before The X-Files debuted on television, Fire in the Sky invaded movie theaters hoping to exploit tabloid interest in alien abductions. Promotional materials boasted its ‘based on a true’ premise and promised a frightening abduction scene. In addition, the cast included plenty of recognizable faces including a rising star in DB Sweeney. Despite […]
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