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.
Linda becomes obsessed with a Ouija board trying to contact the spirit of a 10 year old boy who died many years ago. Her former lover becomes worried that the spirit is in fact an evil one who intends on possessing her and convinces Linda’s boyfriend to help find out the truth.
Give “Night School” the benefit of the doubt is you’re a slasher fan. It’s very competently made, has some inventive kill scenes, a killer looking head chopping villain, some good dialogue, overall solid acting performances and a polished look. The meanness of the villain and some sleaze compensate for the lack grisly gore on display.
When Agatha Christie wrote and published “Ten Little Niggers” in 1939 (imagine that title today!) she couldn’t have fathomed how influential her relatively short book would become. The film adaptations are numerous, but the basic plot has been copied too many times to count.
A group of people arrive at an abandoned mansion on a remote island. All of them are relatives of a money mogul who is believed to have perished in a plane crash somewhere in Panama. The host, Peterson, is nowhere to be found and all the guests have individual letters upon arrival and are assigned to a specific room. The only other person there is a male maid who serves them dinner and seems to be in love with one of the guests.
A maniac dressed as Santa Claus is picking off the citizens of the Midwestern town Cryer he deems as naughty. Sheriff Cooper (McDowell) is understaffed so he calls in Deputy Aubrey Bradimore (King) to work on Christmas Eve. Aubrey has a host of personal issues to deal with, not least the fact that this will be her first Christmas since her husband’s passing.
“Prom Night” is one of my personal favourites and this flick can stand up to multiple viewings. The plot is as simple as they come but that doesn’t prevent director Lynch from trying his best to serve up red herrings as to who’s doing the killing. It takes it’s time in the build-up and firmly establishes it’s characters and the film is all the richer for it.
“The Dark Half” is definitely a second tier Romero film when you think of his classics and it’s most certainly a middle of the road novel for King. But the film improves markedly on the book by making some subtle changes and further cementing the otherworldly relationship between author and his fictional creation which (with no agreeable explanation in book or film) suddenly springs to life.
Halloween is approaching and it’s that time of year that horror junkies start popping in John Carpenter’s “Halloween” (1978) and some of it’s sequels. While some horror franchises have colourful continuations (say…”Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Friday the 13th”) none have the insane history of reboots or re-imaginings as “Halloween”. It’s easily a novella length task of compiling the franchise history of the series but recently I checked out the two separate reboots; the 20th anniversary “H20” and the 40th anniversary “Halloween” (both headlined by Jamie Lee Curtis) and wanted to put some thoughts down and compare the two.
I’m not going to suggest that “A Kiss Before Dying” is some forgotten masterpiece but this little studio title has become somewhat of a cult item and it’s a film that I keep revisiting at regular intervals. The end product shows obvious signs of post production tinkering; the engrossing story leaves a number of interesting avenues unexplored and it’s overly rushed.
“The House on Sorority Row” is slowly becoming one of my all-time favourite slashers in the “best of the rest” category. It only gets better with repeat viewings and the atmosphere combined with a mixture of gratuitous kills alongside some that are bloodless but big on the build-up; this film gets most things completely right.
