Day of the Dad
One of the many marks of a good dad is that when Dad is having a bad day, he continues to be a good dad. He’s duty-bound to nurture, protect, and offer strength to those he loves.
Deathdream
Bob Clark, the director who gave us unforgettable accounts of both sides of the Yuletide coin from mine to mint with Black Christmas (1974) and A Christmas Story (1983), was pledged to range. The best artists are. If you can describe what someone does in a stock phrase or slap on a one-size-fits-all genre label, their work won’t last, and nor should it.
Behind the Veil of the Vale
So many of us talk about winter as though it were this vampire with ice in its veins. We blame it for our lethargy and depression, complaining we can’t go anywhere, as if Jack Frost had locked us inside our homes, where we’re forced to make like Bob Cratchit and coerce every degree of heat from a potbellied stove that isn’t up to the task. But if only it were spring!
The Masque of the Red Death
Smart, sinister, colorful (back to this in a minute), nuanced, expansive, repellent, beckoning, dastardly, placating, and inspiring, Roger Corman’s 1964 The Masque of the Red Death isn’t only the apotheosis of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, but of mid-1960s horror as well.
The Pit and the Pendulum
Edgar Allan Poe wasn’t exactly a lover of plausibility. He may not have been a lover of anything, despite popular culture’s love of him, preferring to wander dark streets at ungodly hours and converse with ravens while dreaming up unique ways to die. Fanfare for the common dyspeptic man.
April Fool’s Day
Horror initiates are sometimes thrown into the deep end of the fright pool scarcely before they can keep themselves afloat, as with the child whose father says, “Sure, you can watch with me,” resulting in everyone being up past their bedtime as dad consoles a girl who saw A Nightmare on Elm Street before she ought to have.
The Most Dangerous Game
A formative horror-watching experience from the horror medium’s own formative years, 1932’s The Most Dangerous Game is the kind of film that resonates in a viewer’s mind like some acquired primal memory.
A Christmas Dream
Christmas: a dream for some, a nightmare for others, and conceivably either for each of us, depending upon the time in life.
The Wizard of Oz
On Christmas 1950, Judy Garland reprised her role as Dorothy for a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast of The Wizard of Oz. One wonders what this must have been like for her.
Santa Claus Conquers the Martians
Have you ever noticed how frightening the absurd can be? The less something holds with what we regard as the operating standards of reality, the more it troubles us, especially when the situation is personally, rather than communally, affecting.