No plot recaps: that would be tedious reading. For a summary of what happens in these chapters, click here. Instead, I offer what I noticed, what made me curious and what made me react.
Let me add that when I first read Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus I may have been in 7th or 8th grade, and as much as this type of literature can be a pain in the ass to a feckless tween boy in search of horror thrills, I fell head first into it and got through it smoothly. I loved it. Continue reading
Screenshot from The Curse of Frankenstein, 1957 (source: Wikimedia commons)
I settled on a theme for my 31 Days of Halloween blogging project, and it will revolve around a classic monster and one hell of a novel.
I don’t know what kind of place Frankenstein has in modern horror movements (it does have a very important one) but at the dawn of horror cinema and Gothic literature, the man and the monster were there. The novel’s transcendent ideas have seeped into all kinds of fictions, possibly more than we can imagine.
I’m going to take a dive on this blog (not a terribly deep one), but I’ll start with some basic, 9th grade English class research – a Google of all kinds of thematic guides to help you write papers.
He had a carefully styled beard, horn rimmed glasses, a beret and an affected vintage shirt, but his most notable accessory at the moment was the cheap tin fork sticking out of the back of his bloody hand.
The hipster had committed no crime other than trying to make conversation with Sister Lucretia Dismas, who was enjoying a 10 a.m. plate of cheese fries and a shot of patron accompanied by a Belgian lager. But the nun, who considered Rudy’s Bar & Grill on 44th her office, could not take his officious yammering, his thinly veiled condescension and wonder at her being a nun in a bar, his annoying opinions on fashion, film, fat people, religion, music, and his own looks, opinions she neither asked for nor engaged.
When she had enough, with reflexes born of years of fighting crime and supernatural menaces, the nun picked up her fork and put an end to his prattling. Continue reading
October 17, 2017 – Do we have a witch problem in recent horror cinema? Or are some filmmakers taking a mirror to something around us? I’m referencing three semi-recent films that look to me like a brutal, radical trifecta of witchcraft. Are they more Malleus Maleficarum, or more like a horror movie Valerie Solanas might have cared to make? Continue reading
October 16, 2017 – (originally published October 4, 2012) Tree hugging peaceful pagan hippies, you say? Perhaps, perhaps…but the horror genre hasn’t always seen it that way. Given their association with the Celtic S’amhain, our Halloween, it’s only natural that the ancient Celtic priest class would find their way into our tawdry terror tales without any sort of critical eye. Continue reading
source: https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781498519090/Possessed-Women-Haunted-States-Cultural-Tensions-in-Exorcism-Cinema
October 13, 2017 – When I first stumbled onto the blog It’s Playing, But With Research, I was jealous. Jealous! With envy as green as the pea soup streaming out of Regan’s mouth! Academics CarrieLynn D. Reinhard and Christopher J. Olson not only studied exorcism cinema for a living, but they compiled a comprehensive list movies featuring an exorcism (the list is continually revised).
What?! Someone has watched more exorcism cinema than me?? Impossible – I wasn’t having it! So I went on a bender thanks to their list, and we began a correspondence that ended with me having a credit on their book Possessed Women, Haunted States. What a lovely honor. I urge you to read the book (which analyzes the tropes of exorcism cinema and puts them in sociological context), check out their blog and listen to their podcast, Pop Culture Lens. Continue reading
October 12, 2017 – As I’ve chronicled on a prior version of this blog, satanic panic is de rigeur in recent horror cinema. From the possession and exorcism genre revived by The Exorcism of Emily Rose to retro satanic cult thrillers like House of the Devil. From the franchising of Ed & Lorraine Warren’s infamous devil-busting “true stories” to the conflation of witchcraft with devil-worship (Lords of Salem, The VVitch). From flirtations with affirming the 1980s moral panic of Satanic Ritual Abuse (HBO’s True Detective) to challenging it (Regression).
My suspicion is that current filmmakers are as fascinated as I am with it, some of them having studied its history and some of them having lived it. But I also suspect it’s failing to strike any basic nerve or chord with today’s audiences, except perhaps in the more insane conspiracy theory circles out there.
So I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight six made for TV movies made straight out of the Satanic Panic era! I chose these primarily because they earnestly traffic in the lurid prurient headlines of the times with zero irony and Lifetime TV Production panache. Some have very high profile actors involved, which makes them simultaneously awful and delightful. Continue reading
October 11, 2017 – This will be a short one, and please be warned that there are heavy SPOILERS for Exorcist The Series. Season 2 has already begun airing on Fox. I started an “Exorcist Retrospective” on this blog and I’ll take this opportunity of the 31 Days of Halloween to catch up by covering last year’s Season 1. Continue reading
(This post was originally published May 13, 2010 and is part of an ongoing serial of fiction stories about Sister Lucretia Dismas, aka the ‘Noir Nun’, a violent foul mouthed nun fighting crime and occult menaces)
Heart racing violently, tears threatening to burst forth in relief, the woman observed Sister Lucretia Dismas walking up the stairs and down the long corridor of the drab concrete hallway. As the nun strode forth in sweeping steps, her habit and robe billowed splendidly, sentient, living extensions of the holy woman’s will. Continue reading
October 9, 2017 – If all goes well, what I write below (plus some sort of introduction and minus the more spoilery parts) I’ll submit in a sound file to Gary Hill of Legion Podcasts, who has requested short horror reviews for his October 2017 project. Check out Cinema Beef Podcast and all of the great podcasts on the Legion network which have been keeping me sane in tough times.
I was excited to watch 2016’s No Estamos Solos (directed by Daniel Rodriguez) on Netflix, released as We Are Not Alone. It is a Peruvian horror movie, something I have never seen. I may dedicate next year’s 31 Days of Halloween to covering international horror. Continue reading
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