The late 1980s were a cornucopia of slasher films, with 1988 and 1989 featuring films that either launched or continued some of the most venerable horror franchises: Hellraiser, Pumpkinhead, Maniac Cop, Child’s Play, Poltergeist, and Return of the Living Dead, ...

In an early episode of scholar Peter Labuza’s podcast The Cinephiliacs, critic/programmer/filmmaker Kent Jones laments what he sees as an unfortunate tendency in film culture: namely, the inability of audiences to “confront a movie head-on.” Jones observes that rather than ...

While Ewald André Dupont’s Varieté (Variety, 1925) and William A. Wellman’s Beggars of Life (1928) come from two different studio systems—Weimar Germany’s legendary UFA in the case of Varieté, while Beggars of Life was a Hollywood production—they have a striking ...

What if the cannibalistic clan depicted in The Hills Have Eyes (1977) were not lurking in the Nevada desert, but instead living in the abandoned tunnels of the London Underground? The latter scenario is the essential premise of Gary Sherman’s ...

While porn has often gotten a bad rap from feminists over the years, a few women have worked tirelessly to change perceptions of female desire — and how that desire plays into art and performance. Key examples include porn and sex-positive ...

“Her exultant dream of freedom ended—a helpless captive in the desert wastes.” —The Sheik The legacy of Italian-born star Rudolph Valentino seems to be largely relegated to silent film fans and early Hollywood aficionados, thanks in part to his highly ...

With Night of the Living Dead (1968), George A. Romero rejuvenated the horror genre by reinventing the now iconic figure of the zombie in popular culture. His 1978 film Martin – a realistic interpretation of the vampire mythology – was ...

The fairy tale is a popular form of folk tale with fantastical characters and magical elements. Madame d’Aulnoy coined the term ‘fairy tale’ in her 1697 collection of tales, when such stories were in fact a form of adult fiction. ...

Written and directed by publicist Ted Geoghegan, We Are Still Here (2015) has been described as many things: a ghost story, a New England folk tale, and an homage to body horror – due to its bloody climax and casting of horror ...

Directed by Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) and written by Diablo Cody (Juno) Jennifer’s Body (2009) is very much a feminist feast. In tackling the Western conception of patriarchal power through plurality and demonic possession, one could argue that it’s monstrously feminist. Jennifer (Megan ...