Where Horror Lives
Scream 4 would have been a better film if it had been Scream 3. Okay so that’s not the only problem with the belated entry into the Scream franchise. Butit’s definitely one of the bigger issues with a film where the whole doesn’t end up being greater than the sum of its parts. Scream Re-Invigorated […]
Read More
A ‘phantasm’ refers to something illusory, an apparition, or a figment of the imagination. What’s not illusory is the surprising legacy of Don Coscarelli’s low-budget masterpiece, Phantasm. Earlier this week, the incomparable surreal horror celebrated its 40th anniversary. In the years since its release, Phantasm has spawned four sequels across four decades. Angus Scrimm’s ‘The […]
Read More
By 1986, the ‘golden age’ of the slasher movie was coming to a close. Sure the major franchises, like Friday the 13th and Halloween, kept pushing out more sequels. An the occasional independent slasher film would sneak into theatres. But the peak of the glory years had past. April Fool’s Day was one of the […]
Read More
Vampires, werewolves, zombies, clowns …. and middle-school kids. Almost an entire subgenre of horror itself, ‘creepy kid’ movies have been kicking around since The Bad Seed in 1956. Not surprisingly, ‘Master of Horror’ Stephen King has penned his fair share of terrible tykes. In 1984, King adapted short story, Children of the Corn from his […]
Read More
From Twilight to True Blood, vampires enjoyed a brief renaissance several years ago. Zombies shuffled back into public consciousness in the early 2000’s and have refused to die. In spite of a long horror legacy, werewolves haven’t enjoyed the same career resurgence. But back in the early 1980’s, the werewolf was as big as it […]
Read More
Has it really been a decade? Times flies by fast. Or maybe it’s just knowing that this will be the first decade without a Friday the 13th movie since the original. Indeed, it’s been 10 years since Jason Voorhees slashed his away across a movie screen. And the last time we saw him it was […]
Read More
Thirty-nine years ago, on Feb. 8 1980, legendary horror film director, John Carpenter, released The Fog, his follow-up to Halloween (1978). A minor hit at the box-office (Box Office Mojo, n.d.), The Fog hasn’t received the same affection as other Carpenter films. Halloween is rightly held up as a classic of the horror genre. Over […]
Read More
Canadian director, David Cronenberg, has a truly eclectic filmography. Though his films cross genres, Cronenberg has largely staked out his fame in horror and science fiction with movies like Scanners. Today, he is synonymous with ‘body horror’. Academic Philip Brophy coined the term, body horror, in an article entitled Horrality – The Textuality of Contemporary […]
Read More
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remains a pivotal modern horror film. Tobe Hooper’s nihilistic masterpiece was a forerunner to the 80’s slasher craze. Yet as compared to the film franchises it inspired, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre has a pretty spotty franchise track record. There are bad Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Elm Street movies. But those […]
Read More
When I decided to include a section of the blog entitled The Vault, the intent was to explore movies that have significantly impacted horror. In the last 25 to 30 years, has any horror movie had as much impact as Wes Craven’s Scream? Released on December 20, 1996, Scream is arguably one of the most […]
Read More