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.”
Space: 1999 taught me two valuable lessons. The first is that space is depressing and best represented by the color taupe. The second is that, with few exceptions, aliens are jerks. At least in the first season, Space: 1999 (UK, 1975-77) captures malaise, chronic low-grade depression and inertia […]
Tamiya Iemon is the absolute worst. I have seen multiple adaptations of Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, from Keisuke Kinoshita’s Shinshaku Yotsuya Kaidan / Yotsuya Kaidan Part 1 & Part II (1949) to Nobuo Nakagawa’s 1959 adaptation, Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan / The Ghost Story of Yotsuya (1959) to Takashi Miike’s […]
This year, I have actually received “for your consideration” emails from publicists. They are emails asking you to add a particular film to your year end lists, or if you are fancy enough, to vote for the films in various awards. All these emails were promoting Hundreds of […]
The Gutter’s own Carol Borden isn’t available this week. Maybe she’s tracking down leads. Maybe she’s lying on a cot in some tattered hotel watching the ceiling fan and thinking about the fallibility of human nature. Maybe she’s looking for answers at the bottom of a tumbler of […]
A dilapidated mansion. An eerie, mist-shrouded forest. A lone samurai making his way home late at night meets a seemingly defenseless beautiful and refined young woman. So begins Kuroneko–Kaneto Shindo’s tale of cats, vengeance, and the wrongs visited upon women (and powerless men) by entitled men. Kuroneko is […]
My friends in film, Fantastic Fest 2024 is over. The awards have been handed out. The writers at more reputable outlets are sharing their thoughts. And here at the Gutter, even though I attened remotely, my brain is tired from watching movies, thinking about movies and writing about […]
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The Cultural Gutter 