The bedroom was illuminated only by a clouded Apollo in a silver cage. At a glance, Anja could identify a number of unusual things about this creature. For one, the fact that it was glowing at all, a flame of blue indignation licking at the dusty darkness. Not only that, the colour of its light … Continue reading The Night Guest

In “La représentation de la mort dans le cinéma américain,” eccentric sociologist Roger Caillois examined the depiction of the afterlife in a handful of postwar American films. He was surprised to find a seemingly coherent mythology emerge, one which seemed to easily map onto the collective imagination. According to Caillois, the films suggested a consistent collapse of the old … Continue reading Miss Jones and the Designs of the Devil

Known as “The Godfather of Gore” (a title he shares with Herschell Gordon Lewis), Lucio Fulci’s oeuvre is actually far more complex than his sobriquet might suggest.  Fulci’s work, like those of his contemporaries in post-war Italy, ran the gamut from sword and sandal to polizioschetti to gialo to sex farce. Italian filmmakers were working … Continue reading Fulci The Pessimist

Good horror, like good love, is hard to find. And as we hurl toward Halloween the hunger for heinous haints hooks the heart like Pinhead’s chains. But where can you get that ferocious fix in these trite and troubled times? Lord knows the movie morlocks at Netflix and Amazon have double-dipped a well that’s bone … Continue reading Corn on Macabre – An Appreciation of Robert McCammon