Once upon a time, long before streaming platforms and specialty channels, network television movies were kind of a big deal. Yes, made-for-television movies and two-part special event movies that premiered on a Sunday or Monday night meant something in the day. And in those days, there was a clear distinction between a television movie and […]
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Gothic writer Edgar Allan Poe may have passed away in 1849, but his legacy continues to loom over horror. Later this year, Mike Flanagan’s latest Netflix series adapts one of Poe’s works – The Fall of the House of Usher. Both Universal Studios – in an adaptation starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff – and […]
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Eli Roth occupies something of a precarious position among horror fans. Like Quentin Tarantino and Rob Zombie, Roth finds much of his inspiration from a specific time period and style of filmmaking – 70s Grindhouse thrillers. Most of Roth’s filmography recalls the Grindhouse visual and narrative styles. Eventually Roth directly indulged his filmmaking tastes when […]
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The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Black Christmas rightly have earned acknowledgement as early slashers paving the way for John Carpenter’s Halloween. Though it’s a much smaller entry in the horror genre, the 1976 The Town That Dreaded Sundown is something of a proto-slasher itself. Based loosely on a series of 1946 killings in the small […]
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Sixty years after its release, Robert Wise’s 1963 adaptation of The Haunting of Hill House remains a horror classic. In addition to Wise’s haunted house chiller, author Shirley Jackson’s Gothic novel provided the source material for the critically acclaimed Netflix series. Somewhere in between those two interpretations, action director Jan de Bont (Speed, Twister) delivered […]
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Hollywood remakes of 80s horror movies defined the early 2000s alongside ‘Torture Porn‘ and J-horror. Many of these remakes pillaged from the VHS shelves of the slasher subgenre. Terror Train, Prom Night, When a Stranger Calls, and The Stepfather all received forgettable retreads. Not surprisingly, John Carpenter’s illustrious filmography has seen a handful of remakes […]
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Found-footage, Torture Porn, J-horror, and remakes defined horror in the aughts. Not surprisingly, the remake craze eventually moved on from 80s slashers to the hot Japanese horror market. Things started off well enough as Gore Verbinski’s American update of Ringu proved to be a great horror movie in its own right. And The Grudge – […]
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Nearly 40 years have passed since Children of the Corn stalked cineplexes. Among Stephen King adaptations, the 1984 mix of supernatural horror and slasher basics falls slightly on the lower end of the scale. Yet somehow Children of the Corn has become a B-horror movie franchise similar to the Hellraiser and Puppet Master series. To […]
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