Let’s start with the roundtable reviews:
Dead of Night (1945), the first classic horror anthology, released decades before there were enough of them to constitute a proper subgenre…
Dead of Night (1976), Dan Curtis’s somewhat feebler follow-up to the notorious Trilogy of Terror…
and…
Nightmares (1983), one of the rare failed TV pilots to get elevated all the way to theatrical release.
As for the rest, we’ve got:
Christiane F. (1981), in which the teens of West Berlin shoot a whole lot of smack…
Critters (1986), in which the Hopkinsville Goblins are reinterpreted as the galaxy’s deadliest Muppets…
Destroy All Monsters (1968), which far from destroying them, gave the monsters a new lease on life…
The Funhouse (1981), in which we can naturally count on Tobe Hooper to deliver the grodiest horror movie fun fair of all time…
Green Room (2015), in which “gifted” isn’t quite the right word the youth which Patrick Stewart is mentoring this time…
Microwave Massacre (1983), which flogs you with the dumbest jokes you can imagine until eventually you start to think they might, just maybe, be funny after all…
Sole Survivor (1982), in which just dying in the damn plane crash is arguably the better deal…
and…
Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), in which Melvin Van Peebles might’ve known that only Huey Long was really going to get it.
#1 by Elizabeth the Ferret on October 2, 2018 - 5:15 pm
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Critters was one of my favorite movies growing up, and I squealed with joy when I saw it on the update list.
#2 by ronald on October 3, 2018 - 9:15 am
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Hi. As you may or may not know, as of a few days ago, for whatever reason, the great and powerful internet refused to open your reviews. Not sure what that was about but I’m very glad to see that you didn’t simply close up shop and disappear. 🙂
#3 by Fuzzy on October 3, 2018 - 2:42 pm
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I was beginning to wonder why you hadn’t reviewed Destroy All Monsters yet, since you’d done pretty much all of the other pre-2000 Toho kaijuu movies. It’s funny that they tried for a grand finale to their beloved Godzilla as early as 1968; today, there have arguably been more “The Final Chapter” attempts in the Godzilla series than the Friday the 13th series.
I thought I had read your review of The Funhouse well before this update was posted, but maybe I just accidentally stumbled upon the review before the formal announcement.
And given your favorable remarks on Critters, I’d be curious to see an extended review of the two Gremlins movies; you’ve mentioned some of your thoughts on the first in other reviews (including this one), but the real-world hassles that befell it before, during, and after production could probably make for a meaty opening. Of course my love for practical effects, and slight nostalgia, might be influencing my own opinion of it quite separately from the film’s own merits and flaws.
#4 by ronald on October 4, 2018 - 1:54 pm
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A couple of trivia items that you probably noticed but didn’t mention:
Warden Zanti is almost certainly named after the Outer Limits episode “The Zanti Misfits,” which also involved imprisoned extraterrestrials.
Grover’s Bend is a variation on the name Grover’s Mill of Orson Welles’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast fame.
#5 by JASON FARRELL on October 22, 2018 - 10:59 am
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El Santo,
You and I share an interest in the proto-slasher film. Well, I am pointing you toward the Lorre CRIME & PUNISHMENT. The very fact that its so dumbed down and Americanized helps to get it to the territory
#6 by El Santo on October 29, 2018 - 9:18 pm
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Ooh… Thanks for the tip. I would never have thought to look in that direction.
#7 by lyzard on October 24, 2018 - 8:09 pm
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Apologies if I’m telling you what you already know, but the Christmas story in Dead Of Night is a re-working of the Kent murder case of the 1860s, wherein a three-year-old boy had his throat cut and was dumped down the outside toilet of his family’s country house. So basically Sally Ann Howes has bumped into the ghost of one of England’s most famous murder victims.
It’s a measure of how well the story was known at the time that they don’t bother to explicate this; it’s had a revival recently via Kate Summerscale’s The Suspicions Of Mr Whicher and its adaptations.
#8 by El Santo on October 29, 2018 - 9:15 pm
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No, I’d never heard of that case. That’s really interesting– yet another example of the centrality of true crime narratives to pre-Hammer British horror cinema!