Bernard Rose’s Clive Barker’s Candyman is an intensely 1990s film. Characters smoke a LOT inside public places. A senior professor, Philip Purcell, refers to our main character Helen (Virginia Madsen) and research partner/Black Best Friend trope Bernadette (Kasi Lemmons) as “my two most beautiful graduate students” and there […]
Happy Death Day (2017) and Happy Death Day 2U (2019) together tell the story of bitchy sorority sister Theresa “Tree” Gelbman (Jessica Rothe), a slasher film trope with a difference. Shallow, flighty, and rude, Tree courts exactly the kind of cosmic justice that usually comes at the end […]
I was selected to be the Fool in a ritual sacrifice by a secret government cabal that is part of an international effort to satisfy the requirements of ancient gods in exchange for not rising and destroying the world. After escaping death, I reconnected with the Virgin, when […]
In his first two films, Hereditary (2018) and Midsommar (2019), insidious cults with insidious plots are to Ari Aster as disease is to David Cronenberg and differently horny monsters are to Clive Barker: a mechanic to pry under conventional assumptions and morality to prepare the way for something […]
In the world of underappreciated Indian films, Youtube spelunking often leads to treasures. Years ago, while looking for cabaret songs by one of my favorite 1970s and 80s stars (Rekha, seen frequently on The Gutter), I happened across a number from Chehre Pe Chehra, an adaptation of…. Dr. […]
Spoilers! Not just for the BBC’s Dracula, but also any Dracula, and the BBC’s Doctor Who, going all the way back to the Steven Moffat-penned 2008 episode “Silence in the Library,” and weirdly enough, Dune Messiah. If I can say one wholly positive thing about the BBC-Netflix Dracula […]