Tough Films For The Rough Crowd

    The current political climate has many calling out both the disparities between and the cannibalizing effect of the rich on the poor. As such, the horror subgenre of variations on “The Most Dangerous Game” is evergreen and ever-growing. Directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett add another banger to…

    Ostensibly a sequel to her earlier, and justly well-received, The Song Of Aglaia, French cartoonist Anne Simon’s newly-released-in-English (and in color!) The Empress Cixtisis (originally published in 2014 under the title Cixtite Imperatrice) is something rather more than that, in actuality — I mean, yeah, Aglaia’s back and all, but she’s…

Mike Nelson and Kevin Murphy have been making fun of bad movies for over three decades as part of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and now RiffTrax. This August, Mike, Kevin and the gang are taking to the stage for a live riffing of the 1975 regional sci-fi flick, THE GIANT…

  The increase in globalization giving us an influx of foreign horror films to check out and enjoy at the price of a ticket or click of a mouse brings such light to my spooky little heart, especially when they’re done by directors and writers who put so much of…

        On the heels of a wildly successful set of screenings, and an award for Best On-Screen Kill at Cinepocalypse 2019,  for their short film Brutal Realty Inc., writer Joseph Mueller, director Erik Boccio, and principal actor London May sat down for a short roundtable about creating short…

    “In Mexico, even atheists are believers.” — BELZEBUTH.       When one thinks of Mexican horror, the immediate thought goes towards the work of Guillermo Del Toro, and understandably so; his work is iconic, masterful, and in many cases transcends genre entirely.   But wearing Del-Toro-shaped blinders…

  Set in a grim urban Chicago, MOLLYWOOD follows a modern-day Jack the Ripper serial killer who lures his victims from the club scene by promising to offer them high-end drugs. Micah Fitzgerald turns in an enigmatic performance as Chase, the mysterious killer, who cites religious motivation and a moral imperative…

            The first movie I ever remember scaring the crap out of me was POLTERGEIST (1982). This film was the first major mainstream haunted house film to frighten the pants off audiences in a wide release. The top-notch team of director Tobe Hooper (THE TEXAS CHAINSAW…

  James Gallanders (BRIDE OF CHUCKY, THE SKULLS II) makes a departure in the starring role in the sci-fi/thriller PROJECT ITHACA, written by first-time screenwriters Anthony Artibello and Kevin C. Bjerkness, and directed by Nicholas Humphries. Gallanders plays the straight man and leader in a claustrophobic ship filled with six…

  It’s an odd discussion, to be sure, but a regularly recurring one about what was the “best” year (so far) for film. 1982 is always a contender, and it’s not hard to see why — there are a bunch of classics and cult classics released that year that would…

  Video Violence is a weekly column dedicated to genre films recently released to home video. This week’s column takes a look at Bruno Mattei’s PREDATOR/ROBOCOP knockoff ROBOWAR.   The Movie: Bruno Mattei made an art out of the shameless rip-off. Harnessing the same creative energy as a kid smashing…

    There’s a sickness at the heart of what used to be called the “American Dream,” and we all know it : the consolidation of wealth among the so-called “one percent” has left a wide swath of devastation in its wake, entire regions of the country cast aside as…

    DEADSIGHT is a low-budget zombie film that sets itself apart in an overcrowded genre by featuring a blind man and a pregnant woman as leads. Thrusting the audience right into a twenty-four-hour zombie apocalypse, it makes clever use of its limited set pieces and cast. Daily Grindhouse got…

        A sure way to win me over is to subvert typical movie tropes. I love when the expectations of what the audience expects in a film isn’t what we get. Better yet is when filmmakers give us what we expect, but in a completely different way….

    As someone who watches hundreds of crime films a year, I tend to run out of recommendations fairly quickly and often find myself taking chances on poster art, or titles, and finally at the mercy of algorithmic suggestions when deciding what to try next. It’s not really a…

  2019 marks the 23rd edition of Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival, which has become one of the most prominent genre film festivals in the world over those twenty-plus years. Boasting 130+ films screening over the course of three weeks, Fantasia is the largest genre fest in North America and…

  As I sat down to watch Penny Lane’s HAIL SATAN?, I knew the doc would be covering many different things about this black goat religion, but I was hoping to hear concrete answers to the very pointed question, “Do Satanists actually believe in Satan?” Even before that question is…

  1989 was a banner year for fans of the Big Three fright franchises. Earlier in the year, Crystal Lake junkies got their slasher fix when their favorite hockey masked maniac took a cruise to the Big Apple. Then, towards the end of the year, Haddonfield’s prodigal son picked up…

  This month Shout! Factory is releasing the Blu-Ray of that notorious ‘80s sleaze-fest VICE SQUAD. Wings Hauser stars as Ramrod, the killer pimp – and he sings over the opening titles. So, we’ve rounded up a baker’s dozen of Stars Singing The Theme Song.   THE ACTOR: Lon Chaney,…

    This article was originally published in Daily Grindhouse on August 22nd, 2003. The author has graciously returned with updated thoughts.     VANCOUVER, BC – Freddy Krueger wants everyone to know he’s the toughest terror titan on the block. The charred child killer stood on the freezing set…

    The ’80s are a revered time for horror nerds for many reasons. Nostalgia, a bumper crop of ridiculously talented artists — directors, screenwriters, F/X artists, authors, musicians and more—rising to prominence, and incredible strides in practical effects and emphasis on films trying to outdo each other. But one element…

    With his debut graphic novel, Bicycle Day, Brooklyn-based cartoonist and commercial illustrator Brian Blomerth has set for himself a fairly daunting challenge: Not just to illustrate, but to visually communicate, a historical “first.” And not just any historical “first” at that, but one that involved entering another state of consciousness altogether…

  Co-director Ira Steven Behr was a head writer and executive producer on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the subject of his new documentary, WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND: LOOKING BACK AT DEEP SPACE NINE. It’s important to keep this in mind while viewing the film. While it’s not all smiles…

    My unending love for The Muppets started back in 1993 when my mother purchased THE MUPPET MOVIE for my sister. It was a clamshell VHS that came with a little digital watch. It was purchased alongside THE GREAT MUPPET CAPER and between those two films, I must have…