Based on a novel by F. Paul Wilson, this strange film seems like wildly unlikely subject matter for director Michael Mann. Fresh off the success of crime films such as The Jericho Mile (1979) and Thief (1981), Mann was just ...
Read More »Smooth Kriminal: The Dead Eyes of London (1961)
Have you ever settled in to watch a movie and couldn’t decide whether you want a horror film, a crime movie, an old fashioned murder mystery, a Gothic thriller, something genuinely chilling and even downright grotesque, or maybe even something ...
Read More »On Murder as Fine Art: Lars Von Trier’s The House That Jack Built
In 1827, the brilliant if underrated Thomas De Quincey—who inspired Argento’s Suspiria—penned a satirical essay titled “On Murder Considered as one of the Fine Arts.” Over a series of pages, De Quincey relates a conversation at a gentleman’s club, during ...
Read More »Smooth Kriminal: An Introduction to the German Krimi Film
While there are a few subgenres adjacent to the horror film that have become beloved over the years—such as nunsploitation, poliziotteschi, or women in prison films—one of the few holdouts that still seems strangely neglected is the German krimi. The ...
Read More »In Fabric: A Conversation with Peter Strickland
From the release of Peter Strickland’s debut film, Katalin Varga, in 2009—a film I have been trying to get everyone to watch for years now with little avail—he has established himself as one of the forerunners of contemporary genre filmmaking. ...
Read More »Eyes Like Burning Coals: Lugosi Beyond Dracula
Recently in Heather Drain’s excellent piece on Count Yorga, Vampire, she referred to Robert Quarry’s character as a “leisure suit Lugosi,” which is a phrase I’ve been unable to get out of my head. It’s so apt because we all ...
Read More »Like a Woman Rising from a Tomb: Dracula’s Daughter (1936) and the Fin de Siècle
As part of Universal Studios’ ongoing explorations of monsters and the horror genre in the ‘30s, they soon embraced the idea of the sequel with the unexpectedly successful Bride of Frankenstein (1935), introducing a gruesome yet sympathetic female monster (Elsa ...
Read More »30 Days of Night: Hammer Horror’s Vampire Cults
“Transylvania, land of dark forests, dread mountains and black unfathomable lakes. Still the home of magic and devilry as the nineteenth century draws to its close. Count Dracula, monarch of all vampires is dead. But his disciples live on to ...
Read More »31 Days of Gialloween: Dario Argento’s Tenebre (1982)
“The impulse had become irresistible. There was only one answer to the fury that tortured him. And so he committed his first act of murder. He had broken the most deep-rooted taboo, and found not guilt, not anxiety or fear, ...
Read More »31 Days of Gialloween: Dario Argento’s Opera
To me, Opera (1987) is the last true masterpiece in Dario Argento’s long career filled with cinematic masterpieces. Though he occasionally stumbled, he produced consistently mesmerizing films from his debut, The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970), to this film ...
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