In the 1970s, nature fought back against humanity in a plethora of eco-horror movies. Sometimes it was spiders (Kingdom of Spiders) or ants (Phase IV, Empire of the Ants) or rats (Willard). Giant killer rabbits (Night of the Lepus) and giant, well, everything (Food of the Gods) occasionally turned up. Other movies just shamelessly imitated […]
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By the end of the 1970s, the eco-horror subgenre was slowing down as the counterculture movement gave way to a conservative resurgence that defined the 80s. Most fans of 70s horror recognize title like Orca, Piranha, or Grizzly. Lovers of ‘cheese cinema’ have likely seen Frogs, Tentacles, or Day of the Animals. But the 1979 […]
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In a summer where Barbie and Oppenheimer – or Barbenheimer – have changed box office rules, it’s a good time to remind ourselves that Jaws was the first true summer blockbuster. Not surprisingly, countless imitators tried to cash in on Steven Spielberg’s game-changing formula. Several of these imitators, however, were particularly shameless in their ‘borrowing’. […]
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Apparently, in 1985, a noted drug smuggler named Andrew C. Thornton II dropped duffel bags of cocaine over a national park in Georgia. A poor black bear stumbled on one of the bags, helped themselves to some of white powder, and died shortly thereafter. It’s a bizarre footnote in history appropriately coined ‘Cocaine Bear’. Not […]
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Even before Jaws changes the box office rules forever, eco-horror was a somewhat popular horror subgenre in the 1970s. Frogs, Phase IV, and Night of the Lepus found nature in a foul mood with humanity. And technically, Jaws isn’t really an eco-horror in its narrative design. But Spielberg’s classic killer shark movie inspired a host […]
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As Avatar: The Way of Water continues to chug along at the box office, James Cameron has now directed three of the five highest growing movies of all time. Certainly, it’s an impressive feat that confirms few filmmakers understand better than Cameron how to create visual spectacle. Before he was immersing audiences on Pandora or […]
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Things are slowly returning to normal at the box office. Maybe it’s not completely ‘back to business’. But the current movie release schedule certainly look like mid- to late-August. If you need some proof look no further than Universal Pictures’ latest release, the Idris Elba-starring survival thriller, Beast. It’s another late summer round of ‘when […]
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Few movies can claim to have the impact of Jaws. In addition to scaring people away from the beach, Steven Spielberg re-defined blockbuster movie-making. And yes, Jaws had a pretty adverse effect on the shark population. Though eco-horror movies were around before its release, Jaws predictably triggered a wave of killer animal movies. It didn’t […]
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