Celebrating 60 Years of Black Sunday

Mario Bava’s debut abounds with hypnotic visuals and nightmarish themes. A former painter and cameraman, it took a turn in the director’s chair to fully realize the horror maestro’s cold and harrowing vision. Clearly Black Sunday was a source of artistic liberation for the aspiring filmmaker.

The picture commences in brutally disturbing fashion. Asa Vajda (Barbara Steele) and her illicit lover Javutich (Arturo Dominici) are branded disciples of the devil and sentenced to death. Spiked masks are hammered onto their faces by imposing men with swelling muscles and black hoods. Dark liquid pops from their mouths and eye holes and soaks into the cloth of their tattered clothes.

Two centuries later, a pair of doctors en route to a medical conference accidentally resurrect the evil witch who plans to use the body of her beautiful descendant Katia to gain revenge against her family. 

The crisp black-and-white photography and marvelous set pieces evoke the creature features of the 1930s. Moonlit woods and baronial crypts conjure images of Universal’s mist-shrouded forests and bold castles. Gnarled trees fight against sodden Earth; cold stone stretches toward the radiant moonlight and disappears into black. Barbara Steele’s dark and mysterious look and regal voice recall the exotic performers that occupied Universal’s famed monster flicks.

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Celebrating 60 Years of Black Sunday

My Favorite Movies of 2019

What are your thoughts on the movies of 2019? Click the link to check out my favorite flicks of the year:

My Favorite Movies of 2019

Celebrating 35 years of Friday the 13th the Final Chapter

The Final Chapter marked Jason’s fourth appearance in the legendary Friday the 13th series, but, only his third as killer and second to don the titular hockey mask. Amusingly redundant, Friday 4 tackles the slasher paradigm with enough meta-humor and delectable gore to rise above most entries in the series.

Picking up after the events of part three, the picture commences with the seemingly dead body of the famed serial killer being carted off to the local morgue. It takes more than an axe to the head to keep the ol’ lummox down. Soon Jason is again feasting on the serene waters, pleasant air, and defenseless victims of Crystal Lake. His murderous rampage is cut short, however, when he runs into Trish (Kimberly Beck) and Tommy (Corey Feldman) Jarvis, siblings with a keen sense of survival and an unusual penchant for Halloween masks.

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celebrating-35-years-of-friday-the-13th-the-final-chapter

Celebrating 5 Years of “Starry Eyes”

“There must be thousands of girls like me dreaming of being a movie star. But I’m not going to worry about them. I’m dreaming the hardest.”

-Marilyn Monroe

Sarah Walker (Alex Essoe), the starry-eyed and bushy-tailed heroine of the 2014 body horror pic Starry Eyes would give ol’ Marilyn a run for her money. Her days are spent serving tater tots to middle-age sleazepiles. And nights? Squabbling with hopeful starlets and answering seedy casting calls. When Astraeus Pictures demands she perform a series of morally yucky behaviors in exchange for a role in their new fright flick, she reluctantly agrees. Her actions cause a change in her, both literally and figuratively.

For anyone who has ever aspired to do great things in their life, Starry Eyes will produce the sensation of butterflies in the belly and a whole lotta goose pimples on the flesh.

Our first meeting with Sarah is captured in close up, her cherry lips and ivory skin veiled by harsh light and sterile hues. The camera lingers on her as she examines her body for imperfections in the mirror, the soft curves of her figure lined by an unappealing bra and underwear. We should be aroused but are instead overcome by sorrow at the sight of the disenchanted actress too despondent to recognize her own beauty.

Moments later she’s at work, her thoughts and feelings buried alongside her round bottom and tight belly in a pair of leopard-skin yoga pants. The camera places us in the shoes (and behind the icky moustache) of her boss, forcing us to stare at length at her backside as she saunters across the room. Not two minutes into the movie and we’ve already seen Sarah in multiple states of undress. We know little about her other than she is sexy. There is a hurricane of emotions hollering within her, they just scream a little quieter than her gaudy stretch pants.

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Celebrating 5 Years of “Starry Eyes”

Celebrating Five Years of “Spring”

Directors Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead gained universal approval with their 2012 debut, Resolution. Serena Whitney of Dread Central gave the picture a perfect score, dubbing it a “remarkable achievement” that “provides the breath of fresh air the genre sorely needs.” An intricately constructed examination of the way horror stories are told, the film is witty and amusing, if a bit amateurish.

Their follow up is even stronger. An affecting love story camouflaged as a down and dirty horror fantasy, Spring skillfully blends the emotional complexity of a Linklater flick with the messy grotesqueries of early Cronenberg.

Really good horror tends to hold a mirror up to society and reflect some ugly part of our existence; they lay bare our hidden fears and anxieties to frightening effect. Spring leans on gore and grue to examine the apprehension of its central characters.

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Celebrating Five Years of Spring

Action Films of the 1980s and The Slasher Paradigm

Body count films of many forms found success in the 1980s. Slasher pictures dominated the horror market, generating major margins of profit on miniscule budgets (Parmount Pictures shuddered with eye-winking embarrassment when releasing the numbers on their senses-assaulting splatter flick, Friday the 13th). 

At the same time, major studios were redefining action movies for modern audiences. Hollywood had gone corporate. The social climate of the 1960s and 1970s had passed and was replaced by a more escapist form of entertainment. Instead of willfully challenging the political structure in America, Hollywood aimed to produce event pictures with wide popular appeal. 

Large-scale actioners offered adrenaline-filled thrill rides replete with dangerously exciting inclines and gratuitously violent plunges while echoing the structural framework and narrative tone of the slasher film. While the two genres may seem dissimilar, their themes and essential features bear scrutiny. 

Below are examples of three major action films of the ’80s and their contextual connection with the slasher paradigm.

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Action Films of the 1980s and The Slasher Paradigm

Don’t Call It That: Horror’s Peculiar Method of Selecting Titles

How often have you wasted the night away trying to decide on a movie to watch?  I remember spending hours as a kid perusing the shelves of the local mom and pop video store with my buddies in search of the perfect title to bring home. Finally, someone would say, “Here’s one that sounds good!” Nowadays we scroll aimlessly through Netflix.  “What should I watch…?”

Titles can do many things. They can convey themes or tones and provide narrative clues before a single frame of film is played. Mostly, they try to draw viewers in: they compel audiences to see a picture. Selecting the precise set of words to market a movie is a daunting task. What reads as promising to one may come off as less assuring to another. 

Hollywood’s creative juices have been evaporating for some time. The predictability of the movie industry even extends to the practice of naming films. The bottom line is profit, and Hollywood will exploit any strategy that promises success.

Below are a few peculiar methods used by horror filmmakers to name their movies. How many do you find annoying?

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Don't Call it That!