Blogging about my passion
I mostly enjoy writing about films that fit into the category „Cult“ in one way or another. It‘s, frankly, where my comfort zone lies. It would be easy to just focus on horror films (by far the most films labeled „Cult“ are horror films) but the category also includes so many films that are really un-classifiable. Many of these movies are so truly enjoyable and you don‘t even know exactly why. These are often films that are considered very poor, very cheap, very amateurish and some are just plain old studio films that got panned or performed very poorly when released. This is the stuff I like to write about and I hope you like reading about.
I was quite saddened by the news that genre legend Rutger Hauer passed away on July 19th. The local papers covered his passing and mostly mentioned that he had had a memorable turn in Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982) but for me he will always be best remembered as John Ryder; the infamous hitcher in director Robert Harmon’s 1986 B-movie “The Hitcher”.
Back in 1998 (or so) I heard about this upcoming slasher flick, directed by the same man who brought us “I Know What You Did Last Summer” (1997), and starring none other than big time A-lister Sylvester Stallone alongside such veterans as Kris Kristofferson, Robert Patrick and Tom Berenger. Described as a combination of thrills and slasher elements from the likes of “Friday the 13th” with a setting that reminded you of Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Indians” (with a nod to The Overlook Hotel); my interest was piqued and then some.
“Dark Night of the Scarecrow” aired on TV in 1981 and has been a horror favourite ever since. It’s quite low-budget and was shot in 17 days but veterans of old time television schedules worked fast and competently.
A rabid St. Bernard conducts a reign of terror in the small American town Castle Rock. Donna Trenton (Wallace) and her son Tad (Pintauro) are trapped in a malfunctioning Ford Pinto and the rabid dog, Cujo, has them cornered and nowhere to run.
“Satan’s Blade” is genuinely a likable piece of film-making that doesn’t for one second pretend it’s anything other than it is and on that strength alone it more than makes up for it’s (numerous) shortcomings
On March 23rd Mr. Larry Cohen passed away at the age of 82. A true auteur who left behind bucket loads of writing credits in a career than spanned five decades and along the way he directed a few gems. Always very witty but also concocting some truly original horror and suspense stories; Cohen’s legacy will live on with genre aficionados all over the world.
Arguably his greatest contribution to the horror genre was a trilogy of films concerning mutant baby monsters in the “It’s Alive” threesome. Cohen’s writing was spot on when it came to every parent’s fear of a child’s possible abnormality, society’s fear of all kinds of human made chemicals interfering with what Mother Nature intended and mankind’s cluelessness when it has to deal with something very different from them. Director Cohen also infused these semi-exploitation mutant movies with very adult and heartfelt drama and elicited some top-notch performances that really legitimized the material beyond B-movie schlock horror.
“Kingdom of the Spiders” was a low-budget production but a big portion of it was spent on procuring 5.000 tarantulas to stage the attacks and display a town riddled with them.
Deliciously wicked, fairly suspenseful and outrageously funny; “Theatre of Blood” is a one of a kind entry in the horror genre in that it assembles extremely talented thespians who do not shy away from gross imagery, gratuitous violence and general bad taste.
“Opera” is fairly giallo-esque with the black gloved killer, his black hood and preferred use of a knife but Argento basically uses the story as a springboard for some over the top set-pieces, wild and horrific imagery laced with bombastic music ranging from sweet ballads to famous opera numbers to heavy metal, tons of images of ravens and some incredible camera acrobatics.
