Beware! Once again, the archives have been unburied, and the hideous horrors unleashed! For your entertainment and edification pleasure, of course. Members of the League of Tana Tea Drinkers dig six feet deep to find their past misdeeds...and reveal them to you, one favorite and notable post at a time!
Slasher Speak shrinks in terror from The Invasion:
In this third retread of the 1956 sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers (based on Jack Finney’s 1955 novel The Body Snatchers, critics and audiences will likely be caught up in the backstage brouhaha that had director Oliver Hirschbiegel’s original cut deemed “too cerebral” for studio execs, the much-ballyhooed Wachowski brothers of Matrix fame being brought in for eleventh-hour rewrites, and up-and-coming action director James McTeigue V for Vendetta adding extra action sequences to the mix.
Goblin Books shows us Dark As It Gets in short fiction:
“She collected her entire life, but acquired almost a third of them – more than a hundred – during the last two years of her marriage. Those weren’t pleasant years.”
“Where are they from?”
“All over the world. She stacked them on specially-made bookcases that line the room. You might want to prepare yourself. It’s a bit of a shock, walking in and seeing them all…”
The Uranium Cafe goes nutty for the Jekyll and Hyde comedy of Jerry Lewis's The Nutty Professor:
What many people do not realize is the body of work Lewis did behind the camera as producer, writer and director as well as a developer of technogloies still used today. One is the directors video assist system, once referred to as “Jerry’s noisy toy” that he basically invented and owns the patent to after having worked in the television medium in the 60’s. Lewis has become an object of ridicule in the last couple decades and his often crass behavior and sexist and anti-gay remarks have done little to endear him to our newer world. I don’t really care about any of that and I think he is a sadly forgotten talent.
Unspeakable Horror peeks at Michael Jackson's Ghosts:
I'm happy to say that Michael Jackson's horror-themed short film, Ghosts, is now available through the wonder of YouTube. As I watched the film this morning, I was thrilled to discover that it completely fits in with my critical analysis of the Queer Horror genre. Like Thriller, Ghosts also contains many interesting alignments between the monstrous and the social alienation of queer difference.
Vault of Horror shares their top movies of the 1960's with us:
In the grand tradition of my previous decade-favorite lists, I'm moving right along to the era when your parents used the Vietnam War as an excuse to smoke dope and get on the pill! That's right friends, it's the 1960s--quite possible the most tumultuous age of horror. This is quite an interesting list if i do say so myself, a telling mix of traditional terrors and more modern-style flicks. This was, after all, the decade in which the Hays Code and studio system died, and all the rules went out the window.
Dinner With Max Jenke takes on Manhattan along with Jason in Friday the 13th Part VIII:
For horror fans, the decade of the '80s did not end on a proud note. By 1989, the titans of terror - Jason, Freddy, Michael Myers - who had once ruled over the box office had all frittered away their popular appeal along with their street cred. Arguably the most grievous fall of the bunch was with Jason and Friday the 13th as the series disappeared up its own ass with Jason Takes Manhattan.
Cinema Suicide takes on commies in space with First Spaceship on Venus:
In the then future of 1970, an alien artifact is uncovered in the Soviet Union that is unlike anything here on earth. Deep analysis of this object reveals that it is a severely damaged piece of equipment containing some recorded voices from an alien race. Earth’s greatest communist scientists determine that it is one of the only remains from the Tunguska meteor crash in Siberia from 1908 and that it originates on Venus. This being mankind’s first encounter with an alien race, they assemble a crack multinational team of scientists, biologists and linguists and prepare for their journey to Venus in a rocket originally intended for Mars.
TheoFantastique sees The Lost Boys as the Brady Bunch, and lives to tell about it:
One of my favorite vampire films is a “cult” classic, Joel Schumacher’s 1987 film The Lost Boys. I was therefore pleased to find a paper presented by Jeremy Tirrell at the national convention of the Popular Culture Association that deals with the film titled “The Bloodsucking Brady Bunch: Reforming the Family Unit in the The Lost Boys. The paper is found on Tirrell’s “print archive” section of his website, and he considers it a “work in progress.
The Drunken Severed Head explores why monsters make good friends:
A friend of mine (I'll call him "Bill") lost his mother very recently, and I sent him my wishes for "many lasting solaces, great and small." Knowing my friend, it's likely one of the solaces he'll turn will be his love of classic horror films.
Classic Horror teases us with Lisa and the Devil:
The story of Mario Bava’s Lisa and the Devil is the stuff from which cinema legends are made: brilliant auteur is given carte blanche to make his masterpiece, but the end result can’t find a distributor. To recoup costs, the film’s producer pressures the director to add scenes of demonic possession to cash-in on a popular American film (in this case, The Exorcist).
And room for one more...
Day of the Woman finds the 13 most bad ass zombie killers:
However, everyone has that moment of clarity where they realize that if you see a zombie, you gotta kill it. Some of us may use a simple bullet through the head, but some people are a little more creative. So if I had to be killed by someone, I'd hope it'd be someone a little B.A. So I've compiled a list (with the help of B-Sol of The Vault of Horror) of the 13 Most Bad Ass Zombie Killers.
Until next time, then...
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