Carol Borden was editor of and a writer for the Toronto International Film Festival’s official Midnight Madness and Vanguard program blogs. She is currently an editor at and evil overlord for The Cultural Gutter, a website dedicated to thoughtful writing about disreputable art. She has written for Mezzanotte, Teleport City, Die Danger Die Die Kill, Popshifter and she has a bunch of short stories published by Fox Spirit Books including: Godzilla detective fiction, femme fatale mermaids, an adventurous translator/poet, and an x-ray tech having a bad day. Read and listen to her other shenanigans at Monstrous Industry. For her particular take on gutter culture, check out, “In the Sewer with the Alligators.”
There were a lot of things I did not like in 2025. Here’s ten things I did, or at least then things I haven’t written about at the Gutter yet. Gotta remember what we’re living for while we fight. Usually, I’d writes something about how these books, games, […]
Hitchcock gets a lot of credit for his mystery and suspense films, rightfully so, but sometimes that credit goes as far as erasing the writers who came up with the mysteries, twists, dark jokes, thrills and stories Hitchcock built his films on. Hitchcock himself gave credit where it was due. He put writers’ names on screen for everyone to see. But if film history has taught us anything, it’s that credits, dedications and acknowledgments are not enough to keep women both trans and cis, genderqueer and nonbinary people from disappearing from memory and history.
thought that I was done writing about terrible people for the year. But I need to ponder just one more, Dr. Louis Judd. Judd is a supporting character played by Tom Conway in two RKO horror movies: Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (USA, 1942) and Mark Robson’s The Seventh Victim (USA, 1943). Dr. Judd while suave, sophisticated, sardonic and lightly mustachioed is a remarkably bad psychiatrist. He drifts into and out of Manhattan’s occult and supernatural demimonde. Like many a tourist, he is not careful and he leaves more than memories.
At Fantastic Fest this year, I was not only fortunate enough to receive accreditation so I could see movies and report back, but I was also lucky enough to see four very different films that I might not see otherwise. I am back now, my fedora with the […]
The Gutters own Carol Borden finishes up Fantastic Fest 2025 with Taratoa Stappard’s Mārama. In 1859, an orphaned Māori woman, Mary Stevens (Ariāna Osborne) has traveled from New Zealand to Yorkshire, England to meet a man. She has received a letter from a Mr. Anthony Boyd, who claims […]
A 4K restored version of Mamoru Oshii and Yoshitaka Amano’s Angel’s Egg screens at Fantastic Fest this year and the Gutter’s own Carol Borden was fortunate enough to see it! “I always struggle a bit when writing about masterpieces. And Mamoru Oshii and Yoshitaka Amano, masters already, collaborated […]
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The Cultural Gutter 