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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In between the release of Saw and Eli Roth’s Hostel, Oz-ploitation flick Wolf Creek put itself at the forefront of the Torture Porn cycle of the early 2000s. Writer and director Greg McLean (Rogue) shocked and divided critics with his brutal and loose take on Aussie backpack serial killer Ivan Milat. Though it was a […]
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In the opening week of 2023, M3gan looks to kick off the year for horror at the box office. Meanwhile a handful of indie horror movies have made their way to streaming and VOD platforms. On Vudu and Apple TV, an indie mix of slasher, Grindhouse, and religious horror, Candy Land became available today to […]
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It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve seen the premise before, there’s just something about a good revenge movie. And as much fun as A-list revenge thrillers, like Taken, are for audiences, the format seems tailor-made for B-movies. From Massacre at Central High to The Toxic Avenger to Mandy, the Grindhouse format and themes around […]
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Today, horror fans may have a hard time understanding the controversy that met Silent Night, Deadly Night. And it stirred up plenty of angst amongst critics and some parent groups. Nearly 40 years have passed and we’ve seen a handful of ‘Killer Santa’ movies that have elicited collective shrugs. Instead, audiences have mostly ignored movies […]
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In a Jan 26 2006 New York Magazine article, David Edelstein coined a now familiar phrase – ‘Torture Porn‘. Though he was initially commenting on Eli Roth’s Hostel, Edelstein stepped back and identified what he saw as a new horror trend. Following Saw’s unexpected box office success in 2004, a handful of movies released in […]
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Though re-quels – or soft reboot sequels – have been the biggest horror trends over the last few years, a few others have lurked in the background. Yes, Cabin in the Woods hit theaters over a decade ago. Nonetheless, meta-slashers haven’t completely gone out of style. The occasional Giallo-inspired thriller still turns up. And the […]
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Along with The Last House on the Left and I Spit On Your Grave, I Drink Your Blood is one of the more controversial exploitation movies of the 1970s. Its story of a Satanic hippie cult on a rabies-fueled rampage clearly took cues from the Manson Family murders. At the time of its release, the […]
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