With so many options to rent/buy/stream movies, it’s amazing how many titles still linger in Never-never Land. And, with so much content, it’s even more remarkable that so many film fans remain curious about those strange little shot-on-video regional oddities ...
Read More »Fantastic Fest Review: Suspiria (2018)
At the beginning of Dario Argento’s 1978 horror opus Suspiria, a young American woman named Suzy Bannion (Jessica Harper) finds herself a foreigner in a foreign land. Overwhelmed by the long trip and the violent storm around her, she finds ...
Read More »Fantastic Fest Review: Halloween (2018)
At the beginning of the newest Halloween entry, two investigative journalists are sitting inside Laurie Strode’s (Jamie Lee Curtis) compound, hoping to get a few words from her about the ordeal she suffered forty years prior. They ask her if ...
Read More »“Terrible thirst. Water! Flood me waterfalls, I’ll drink all the fountains dry”: Miraculous Virgin (1966)
The first time I started Slovak director Stefan Uher’s The Miraculous Virgin (Panna Zázracnica, 1966), it didn’t end. I started the film over before it was finished, but it was the right call because the second time I decided to ...
Read More »‘The Predator’ Review: Bigger, Not Better
Two alien ships exchange laser blasts amongst the stars. One rips a tear in the fabric of space and flies through a wormhole. The other lands a killing stroke before the portal closes, blocking pursuit. Our blue orb welcomes a ...
Read More »Regarding “Henry”…and Mark Finch
With special thanks to leading LGBT film historian and activist Jenni Olsen, we at Diabolique are going to publish past pieces from writers and critics who left a super important legacy in film culture. One such artist is the late ...
Read More »‘The Nun’ Review: A Bad Habit of Standard Scares
Catholics have the best scary movie paraphernalia: crucifixes, rosary beads, holy water, relics, scapulars. Priests walk into films strapped like Rambo. The power of Christ compels them to kick ass and chew guilt, and they’re all outta guilt. As an ...
Read More »“We’re all animals, Dave.” Who Killed Teddy Bear
The new Network release of Who Killed Teddy Bear conjures up one question aside from the film’s title–why isn’t this movie better known? About Norah (Juliet Prowse), a woman in New York City who is receiving obscene phone calls from ...
Read More »Marxism and Sexuality in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s ‘Teorema’ (1968)
Sexuality was a key element in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s body of work. While certainly not the first to explore the subject, the director chose to utilize it in a variety of ways. In his first feature, Accattone (1961), prostitution plays ...
Read More »‘Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich’ Does Not Care About Your Snowflake Feelings
Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich is disreputable cinema at its most unapologetic and tongue-in-cheek. Full of gratuitously violent slaughter, bad taste jokes, and a shameless disregard for moral decency, the film is 90 minutes of riotous politically incorrect mayhem that ...
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