Anna and the Apocalypse
“Horror” and “musical” are two terms that don’t exactly go hand in hand. Aside from the everlasting midnight phenomenon The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the growing cult-favorite Phantom of the Paradise, there aren’t many movies mixing those genres to speak of.
The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue
While it predates the entire Italian zombie phenomenon, the Spanish/Italian co-production The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue feels like an exemplar of Italian horror films of the 1970s…
Cemetery Man aka Dellamorte Dellamore
Directors love Magritte. William Friedkin modeled the iconic Exorcist streetlight image after the painting Empire of Light. Director Michele Soavi was inspired by the shrouded kiss depicted in The Lovers II for his 1994 film Dellamorte Dellamore (translation: Of Death, Of Love).
[REC]
Seen from the vantage point of the present, any film with the barest hint of a quarantine narrative can only remind its audience of the COVID pandemic.
I Walked with a Zombie
A nurse leads a catatonic through an expanse of moonlit cane. They pass displays of sacrificed animals before encountering the towering, shirtless, dead-eyed Black man who grants them entry to a private outdoor religious ceremony…
Pontypool
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was: “What?” This syllable, spoken by Grant Mazzy (Stephen McHattie), shock jock in decline, is in response to an encounter at a traffic light as he’s driving to work in the spiffy opening to Pontypool (2008), directed by Bruce McDonald and adapted by Tony Burgess from his book Pontypool Changes Everything.