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.”
The Gutter’s own Carol Borden really enjoyed the campy, lo-fi body horror of The Cramps: A Period Piece at Fantastic Fest. Here are some quick thoughts. (There are more thoughts on it at Monstrous Industry): Brooke H. Cellars’ The Cramps: A Period Piece (USA, 2025) is a period […]
The Gutter’s own Carol Borden has some thoughts on Kenichi Ugana’s The Curse (Taiwan / Japan, 2025), now screening at Fantastic Fest 2025! Kenichi Ugana’s The Curse has the punk sensibility—down to its scratchy opening title card that looks like a punk zine cover—the gleeful gore, the dark […]
It’s Fantastic Fest time again and the Gutter’s own Sachin Hingoo and I were lucky enough to receive press accreditation again. We are cub reporters no more.We hang out in the virtual lounge and tip our fedoras at passing fancy people. We write at late hours and at […]
The past is very present in writer/director Jang Jae-hyun’s Exhuma (South Korea, 2024). There is familial and imperial history reaching back to World War II and even further. And if there are not precisely demons in the film, well, there are things that are close enough.
Rygel: This is madness. Crichton: Could be genius, Sparky. You know there’s a very fine line between the two. Rygel: Geniuses make plans. Crichton: “That’s your plan? Wile E. Coyote would come up with a better plan than that!” Last spring, throughout the day—at lunch, before bed, whenever—I […]
Sometimes you just want to watch a quirky investigator irritate people—especially wealthy and powerful people—into revealing they’ve committed crimes. Especially murder. I’ve been enjoying some new and new-ish mysteries lately, Poker Face, Elsbeth and The Residence. All three feature women investigating murders. All are series produced after Rian […]
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