If you have yet to see a Lon Chaney movie, it probably should not be THE MONSTER (1925). Made after his iconic turns in THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME (1923) and THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (which was filmed immediately before but released eight months after THE MONSTER), this silly Roland West joint is best [...]

This week, two screenwriter friends of mine were retained to write monster movies for a new production company called The Monster Machine. David Rosiak and Matthew Chernov have already written the made-for-TV chompalooza SHARK SWARM (2008) and are pushing forward to craft more supersized and hybridized horrors for the producers of DINOSHARK (2010) and SHARKTOPUS [...]

Yannick Dahan and Benjamin Rocher’s LA HORDE (THE HORDE, 2009) restages George Romero’s NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (1968) in a Paris slum, in the manner of a site-specific adaptation of a Shakespeare play done in some industrialized area whose concrete bleakness is supposed to underscore the authorial themes of fate and futility. If that [...]

Given the subject of this recent Johnnie To movie, it’s fitting that I barely remember what happened in the last Johnnie To movie I saw. ELECTION (2005) was a solid triad drama that reunited the Hong Kong-based filmmaker with a goodly number of his Milkyway Image Company stock players; the production was low key, true [...]

When younger, I always had the rum luck to come in at the end of something good. When I got to Southern Connecticut State College (now University) as a freshman in 1980, the smart money in the Theatre Department said that a mini Golden Age had just ended and that they were running on fumes; [...]

Some of us like to cut our Christmas with a little drop of poison – don’t judge. Or go right ahead and judge — we don’t care! The British have long had a tradition of ghost stories for Christmas and I wish Americans could get in line with that because I think it’s a capital [...]

Our friend Paul Gaita fills in for me today with something special: an exclusive conversation with composer (and film composer) Van Dyke Parks.

It’s always a pleasure when I find the new issue of Steven Puchalski’s Shock Cinema in the mailbox and I’m calling issue 41 an early Christmas gift this year. Because I write a lot about actors, directors, writers and what-have-you, I have to read a lot of interviews and so many of them are terrible [...]

While the leaves were changing color a couple of months ago, the good folks at Shout!Factory released the Warner Brothers Danny Kaye vehicle THE INSPECTOR GENERAL (1949) as a collector’s edition DVD. Just so we’re clear – this isn’t the Danny Kaye movie where he says “vessel with the pestle,” nor is it the one [...]