It Takes a Village, and other lessons children teach us
VILLAGE OF THE DAMNED may have a rotten remake but it has an excellent sequel. (Remake it now, and you can digitally recolour the kids’ hair instead of relying on wigs, and you can have one boy and one...
View ArticleRubber Biscuit
Was discussing something with Anne Billson on Twitter. Those shots where either a character moves on a dolly independently of the camera — Examples: Belle in Cocteau’s LA BELLE ET LA BETE, gliding...
View ArticleBlood from the Dummy’s Tomb
DEAD SILENCE (2007) is the film that helped steer director James Wan away from the softcore torture porn of SAW and into the supernatural realms he’s mainly been exploring since. But at this early...
View ArticleMishigothic
First up! Veteran Shadowplayer and Late Shower Brandon Bentley contributes a rip-roaring entry to Project Fear — the quasi-blogathon that’s now more of an empty grave — or death ditch, if you will —...
View ArticleGhostlight
Theatrical lighting change from THE DEMON OF MOUNT OE (1960). One thing Fiona and I don’t have time to get into in our forthcoming video essay on KWAIDAN (1964) is the extent to which some of the...
View ArticleUlysses’ grunt
I was intrigued about the 1954 Italian ULYSSES by Mario Camerini and boy it’s handsome — Harold Rosson (THE GARDEN OF ALLAH) as cinematographer, Mario Bava operating, production design by Flavio...
View ArticleNiche Interest
Really enjoyed seeing CALTIKI IL MOSTRO IMMORTALE on the Arrow Blu-ray. It comes with two excellent commentaries by Mario Bava experts Tim Lucas and Troy Howarth. Bava shot the film and did the special...
View ArticleHouse Warning
One reason Damiano Damiani might be more obscure than he deserves, despite his easy-to-remember name, is that his two biggest films were artistic disasters. The Leone-produced A GENIUS, TWO PARTNERS,...
View ArticleEvil-Eyed
I first encountered Mario Bava’s THE GIRL WHO KNEW TOO MUCH aka THE EVIL EYE on a hotel television in Paris in my twenties. The film had already started and there seemed no way to find out what it was....
View ArticleThere’s a Thwap! for That
Continuing my summer of actually going to see films. Edinburgh currently lacks a real art cinema — Filmhouse closed but will reopen, YAY! — Cameo is mainly showing multiplex stuff — so I’m booking a...
View ArticleDummy Images
Mario Bava’s BLOOD AND BLACK LACE has one of the greatest opening credit sequences ever — greater than anything else in the film, in fact, though the film has magnificent stylistic tour-de-forces...
View Article“Horror Films No Longer Had to Make Sense”
An interesting observation by Stephen R. Bissette when I interviewed him for my Bill Rebane piece — the understanding that seemed to pervade horror movie makers in the early eighties that logic and...
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