“The ‘Poltergeist’ films will remain eternally relevant as long as America and other countries keep making the same tragic mistakes over and over again, building their own haunted houses for spirits to eventually consume from within.”
“The six major theatrical adaptations of Phantom’s story cover a wide realm of romantic horror, fully exploiting the themes and concepts within the character.”
“Santa Sangre’s themes of empathy and hope are uniquely personal for Jodorowsky, and they help bring the film’s horrors and bloodshed into perspective…”
“‘Madman’ frequently flirts with boundary-pushing concepts but ultimately settles for clichés or, worse, just weasels out completely and falls flat on its face.”
“Having the killer unmasked and identified is a fresh take on a well-worn trope, while the accidental matricide angle offers a unique, strong premise to kick-start the eventual mini-massacre.”
“Deerskin’s methodology might be new, but the central tenets of its 77 minutes are part of the same cinematic heritage that created Jim McBride’s indie darling ‘David Holzman’s Diary’ (1967) and Krzysztof Kieslowski’s ‘Camera Buff’ (1979).”
“No director has been able to replicate Nobuhiko Ōbayashi’s iridescent, hallucinatory and infectious passion for film.”
“While ‘The Black Cat’ does not share many explicit connections with Poe’s 1843 story, both texts use archetypal symbolism to explore painfully intimate experiences (in Poe’s case, addiction and mental disarray, and in Ulmer’s case, psychological trauma).”
Part Three of a Four-Part Disaster Movie Series by Bill Bria
“Even though ‘The Psychic’ and ‘The Black Cat’ don’t exist as prominently in the cultural consciousness as ‘The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ and ‘Halloween,’ there is a sense that the Final Girls do exist in the wider world of horror…”
“While ‘Teorema’ and ‘Visitor Q’ share a common DNA, what’s most striking is the way each film uses The Stranger. Both figures bring with them a kind of new order, as if they were missing puzzle pieces for the families that they integrate themselves into.”
“In order to fully engage with horror films, it’s important to look at the monster and the world that’s being upended by that monster.”
“Not quite comedies, not entirely horror movies and not normal family films, Dante’s work continues to impress with the layers each work reveals over time, a key factor in their lasting power.”
“There is a danger and dynamism to 20s cinema which was gradually eradicated by the standardisation of production processes.”
