I spent this morning watching a compilation DVD that was sent to me by filmmaker/artist/musician Cory McAbee. It was titled “TnT” (which stands for Titles and Trailers), and it was the focus of a presentation he did a few months ago for the UnionDocs Collaborative in Brooklyn in conjunction with Rooftop Films (whose byline is: “Underground Movies Outdoors”). Their program notes that short films have now become a predominant form of entertainment, thanks in part to the growing popularity of video-sharing websites. But long before everyone was glued to YouTube or their cell phone, we were (and are still) watching short films on the big screen in the form of trailers and credit sequences – both being made, for the most part, by “outside parties (who) were hired to create a short interpretation from the film itself or from unused elements.” Cory’s TnT collection were specific “short films” that had influenced his own work in meaningful ways. While I can’t think of title-sequences that have influenced my life, I can certainly think of more than a few trailers that had a big impact on who I am now.  READ MORE

“My name is Victoria Winters. My journey is just beginning. A journey that I am hoping will somehow begin to reveal the mysteries of my past. It is a journey that will bring me to a strange and dark place. . . to a house high atop a stormy cliff at the edge of the sea. . .to a house called Collinwood.”

So began the first episode of Dark Shadows, a gothic soap opera with supernatural plotlines that ran from 1966 through 1971. I remember racing home from school each day to catch the show at 4:00pm, sandwiched between the traditional soap opera General Hospital and Dick Clark’s daily rock ‘n’ roll show, Where the Action Is.  Viewers of my generation will be setting their Tivo and home-recording devices for this Wednesday, May 11, at 3:00am EST, because TCM is airing House of Dark Shadows, the feature film based on the soap’s most popular character, vampire Barnabas Collins.

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On September 9, 1823 Mary Shelley wrote a letter to her friend and confident, the writer Leigh Hunt, in which she enthusiastically proclaimed, “But lo & behold! I found myself famous! Frankenstein had prodigious success as a drama & was to be repeated for the 23rd night at the English opera house.” Mary Shelley was referring to a play she had just watched titled Presumption; or, the Fate of Frankenstein by Richard Brinsley Peake. It was based on her original novel, Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus, which was only moderately successful until Peake decided to adapt it for the stage. Mary’s letter to Hunt continued with, “The story is not well managed – but Cooke (the actor playing the nameless creature) played ___’s part extremely well – his seeking as it were for support – his trying to grasp at the sounds he heard – all indeed he does was well managed & executed.” While watching the latest stage adaptation of Frankenstein written by playwright Nick Dear and directed by the Oscar winning filmmaker Danny Boyle, I couldn’t help thinking of Mary’s letter and the initial excitement she must have felt while watching her creation brought to life. Like the doctor in her novel, I imagine that Mary Shelley must have been both proud of her accomplishment and somewhat surprised when she realized how little control she had over her own book. Frankenstein had become what it proposed. A wild and willful beast bound to no one and destined to haunt the memory of its creator, as well as audiences, for centuries.

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Last week I saw 20 films in five days at Sundance. With just over 200 films listed in the index, that means I barely covered 10% of the slate. Documentaries are a Sundance forté, so it’s not surprising that almost half of the films I screened fall into this category. Similarly, as most docs these days never get transferred to film that accounts for why about half of all my screenings were digital projections. Happily, despite many rumblings by industry pundits regarding the eminent death of 35mm film, most of the narrative features were still on celluloid. Huzzah! READ MORE

I was able to see more movies during the year than this guy. To honor him, I’m going to run down my favorite Genre Films of 2010. As top-ten lists rain down upon us, a general consensus emerges and recurring titles get chewed over like regurgitated cud. So while I greatly admire The Social Network (#2 on my year-end list here), I feel no need to spill more metaphorical ink over it. What doesn’t get recognized during the awards season hullaballoo are the disreputable action/sci-fi/horror movies that earn profits and low Rotten Tomatoes scores. I’m using the colloquial definition of “genre films”, of macho flicks with b-movie scenarios, but in reality everything that’s produced slots into one genre or another (David Bordwell persuasively argues that even the art film is one). So forgive my semantic fudging for the sake of headline-writing brevity. In any case, anonymous disfigured corpse from The Crazies, this is for you.

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Most of us are familiar with the Yeti or Abominable Snowman. This large ape or man-like creature has populated animated films, television shows and movies for decades. Unlike it’s North American relative Sasquatch or Bigfoot, the Yeti is rumored to inhabit the snow covered Himalayan mountains and it’s often depicted with a white furry coat, which gives the Yeti the ability to easily blend into its natural surroundings. When I was growing up in the ‘70s I was bombarded with news stories and fictional depictions of the Abominable Snowman and Bigfoot. Like a lot kids I became fascinated with these man-like monsters so I watched and read everything I could about them. Unfortunately this led to a lot of disappointment. The Yeti will always be one of my favorite monsters but the movies and television shows depicting this mythological creature rarely lived up to my high expectations. In fact, most of them are abysmal and have undoubtedly sullied the Yeti’s questionable reputation over the years. As bad as many of these movies are they still maintain a soft spot on my heart and during the winter months when the temperature starts to drop and snow begins to cover the ground I always start thinking about the elusive Yeti.

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Halloween has always been my favorite holiday and I usually glut myself on horror films during the whole month of October. This long procession of cinematic and horror-related indulgences will be topped off tonight with a Blu-Ray screening of Hitchcock’s Psycho (advance word on the transfer is very positive), but my Morlock contribution today will focus on the double-feature I put on last night titled Head to Head. Allow me to now assume the tone of a carnival barker at a freak-show wrestling match that pits two disturbing creations against one another… READ MORE

There’s nothing like a monster movie from your childhood to keep hold of your imagination LONG after you’ve grown up — waaay up!  Though it isn’t a horror movie per se – not a mummy or a ghost in sight — Universal’s 1956 feature The Mole People has some creepy scaly reptilian underground monsters that give the Morlocks of The Time Machine a run for their money.  

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EYE OF THE DEVIL (1966) opens with a minute long montage that reduces the entire film down to a series of disorientating images. It’s an impressive and beautifully edited beginning that you might expect to see at the start of an Ingmar Bergman film or in the middle of an Eisenstein picture and it sets the tone for the entire movie. This leisurely paced occult thriller wants to unsettle you as well as enchant you and it manages to do just that in its first few minutes. Most horror films will take their time building suspense or they’ll bludgeon you over the head with a few shocks to get your heart racing but EYE OF THE DEVIL takes an entirely different approach to terror that I deeply appreciate. It taps into your imagination immediately and before the title sequence even begins you know that EYE OF THE DEVIL is going to be a very different kind of horror film. And while it does make use of predictable elements found in classic gothic literature including a cursed family, a tormented heroine, an old dark house and flamboyant villains, these gothic trappings work to the film’s advantage. They give the viewer something familiar to cling to while the movie works its magic.

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