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!
Classic Horror looks at a solid example of Italian Giallo, The Bird With the Crystal Plumage:
As a giallo, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage is an exemplary combination of all the things associated with this particular breed of Italian mystery-thriller. It features violence that is heavy on the crimson, stylized camera work, and sex and sexuality as major parts of the plot. One could argue that Bird is the film that defined these as characteristic of the subgenre, but in reality, it merely accentuates and clarifies an existing format.
Attentiondeficitdisorderly Too Flat peers into DC Comics' Blackest Night:
For as long as I've been reading it, Johns's superhero writing has consisted almost solely of finding ways to express through action and dialogue exactly what each of DC's superheroes means. As they fight, heroes will explain what it is that makes them tick and what iconic qualities they represent in DC's pantheon, while villains will berate them for failing to live up to those demands. If this sounds boring or precious, most of the time it's neither, because Johns just happens to be really good at identifying those core components of each character and basing fun action adventures around them.
TheoFantastique hits the road searching for post-millenial road horror:
The characteristics of this subgenre of film involve “the centralisation of a group of generally young protagonists; the journey of this group into an unknown and hostile location, and its resulting encounter with a murderous, perverse and often interrelated clan of killers, preceding vile and gory consequence.”
Cinema Suicide fearlessly looks into the Faces of Death:
Oddly, Faces of Death, a child of the Mondo film trend, spawned a subculture of atrocity reels that eclipse the old man, himself, in ways you can’t possibly imagine. Sure, Death Faces, Traces of Death, Death Scenes, Atrocities, etc., were packed to the f**king rafters with grisly newsreel footage of real murder, suicide and traffic accidents gone horribly awry but not one of them had the appeal of Faces of Death.
Dinner With Max Jenke pigs out on appreciation for Mother's Day poster art:
As a kid, when I first saw this poster reproduced in a newspaper advertisement (which in smudgy black and white newsprint only made it look cooler), at the height of the slasher fad, I was in thrall with its ghastliness. Even with as many outstanding posters as the early '80s boasted (hello, Happy Birthday to Me!), Mother's Day knocked everything else on its ass.
And room for one more...
Zombos' Closet of Horror reluctantly gets high on Shrooms:
None of the creative people involved in the film Shrooms apparently ingested any during its production, making it one big, unmagical, mystery tour. The mystery is how it ever got green-lighted in the first place.
Until next time, then...
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