I had the honor of guest hosting this episode of Dead Times with Peter and Tim!
Hello and welcome to our giant episode on “The Exorcist!” I give up hosting duties on this one for Al, who brings a wealth of research and insight into the movie and its making. And wow, do we have a lot to talk about! Everything from how Super Mario is a perfect for the film to controversial theories about its content.
WARNING: THIS BLOG POST WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS for US
“…a big part of this for me was feeling like some of my favorite offerings in the horror genre work allegorically. Which, Get Out was not, really. It wasn’t an allegory. Get Out was about what it was about. It was about race. But horror that pops tends to do so because there’s a bigger picture behind the images.”
This comment was by Us writer and director Jordan Peele in an interview with Gizmodo. I love horror that codes for larger social anxieties. The more cryptic, the better. I love knowing that The Texas Chainsaw Massacre could be about the loss of the American dream and/or the gas crisis of the 1970’s, and that The Exorcist could be about the breakdown of the American nuclear family in the shadow of 1960’s counterculture.
Peele is someone that wants to give us the gift of entertaining, well-made and important horror films. And with Us, his average remains at 100%. Continue reading
It was not my intention to launch this blog with vampires. After many discussions with a friend and fellow horror fan who has begun to actively loathe the vampire genre, I’m starting to come around to his point of view that the bulk of current fictions about the creatures utterly drains them and their stories of anything original and compelling. I’m lying to you, of course – I’m a fan of True Blood, and I must, with great shame, admit that I enjoy the WB’s Vampire Diaries.
However, Martha P. Nochimson’s rather puzzling attack on Kathryn Bigelow and her excellent film “The Hurt Locker” now forces me to talk about one of my favorite films, Bigelow’s vampire romance/thrill ride Near Dark. Nochimson’s point that high-testosterone war films are often favored over “chick fare” is lost in her bizarre accusations of Bigelow ‘pandering to males’ and being a ‘transvestite director,’ as though Bigelow is obliged to make only romantic comedies or Jane Austen adaptations. Continue reading
Note: this post was originally written March 3, 2010 when I started this blog on the now-defunct platform, Open Salon. It was my second post ever. It’s a badly written piece but I’m interested in how I saw all the resentment and paranoia against President Obama mirrored in Lovecraft’s tales. There are certainly now in 2019 more dire parallels.
MARCH 3, 2010 8:41AM
“The general tension was horrible. To a season of political and social upheaval was added a strange and brooding apprehension of hideous physical danger; a danger widespread and all-embracing, such a danger as may be imagined in only the most terrible phantasms of the night.”
Chillerpop 