Homesick For Sadness: The Night Porter

By Less Lee Moore

As a film exploring the sadomasochistic relationship between a former Nazi officer and a concentration camp survivor, The Night Porter has received its share of controversy. In an article about The Night Porter called “Ideas of Sex,” writer and film scholar Nick Impey describes how its “detractors accused [director Liliana] Cavani of exploitatively using the Holocaust as a backdrop for salacious spectacle.” At times, watching The Night Porter feels less like an erotic journey than a particularly gore-free horror movie. It is frequently almost difficult to watch. Yet, persistence provides evidence that The Night Porter is not “Nazi porn” but an examination of the grey areas in a black and white world.
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Too Much Perfection Is Not A Mistake: Sound And Landscape In El Topo

By Less Lee Moore

Preface

For those who have never seen an Alejandro Jodorowsky film, describing one seems a daunting task. Furthermore, once you have seen a Jodorowsky film, such descriptions prove to be a poor substitute for the experience itself.

At present, Jodorowsky is 82 years old. With a life full of many artistic accomplishments, a description of them all is beyond the scope of an analysis of his films, but some introduction is needed in the hopes of illuminating how his background has informed his art.
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The Holy Mountain: Does Real Life Await Us?

By Less Lee Moore

Preface

For those who have never seen an Alejandro Jodorowsky film, describing one seems a daunting task. Furthermore, once you have seen a Jodorowsky film, such descriptions prove to be a poor substitute for the experience itself.

At present, Jodorowsky is 82 years old. With a life full of many artistic accomplishments, a description of them all is beyond the scope of an analysis of his films, but some introduction is needed in the hopes of illuminating how his background has informed his art.
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The Killing Floor: What Happened At Rue Morgue Festival Of Fear 2011

By Less Lee Moore

Every August, Rue Morgue hosts its annual horror convention Festival Of Fear as part of FanExpo Canada (which also includes Gaming, Comics, Sci Fi, and Anime). Every year, I await their list of guests and schedule of events. This year they presented a Near Dark screening with Lance Henriksen (read more here), a Q&A with Tom Savini (read more here), a 30th Anniversary cast and crew reunion for My Bloody Valentine (read more here), and much more, like events and panels with Malcolm McDowell, Robert Englund (Freddy Krueger), Elvira, and John Waters. There are literally too many things for one person to do. If ever there were a compelling reason to clone myself, it would be for Festival of Fear.
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Greetings Traveller: Tales From Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace

By Paul Casey

Greetings traveller. Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace was a Sci Fi/Horror spoof aired on Channel 4 in Britain in 2004. Created by Matthew Holness and Richard Ayoade—who you may be familiar with as Moss from Graham Linehan’s The IT Crowd—Garth Marenghi did not receive the mainstream love of The Mighty Boosh or Peep Show, and yet of all of the sublime, interconnected comedy to come from Britain in the last decade, it may be the greatest.
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Skating The Edge With Aeon Flux

By Kai Shuart

At first blush, television seems a grossly distorted lens through which to examine philosophical questions. Every television show that comes through our tablets, computers, and (decreasingly) television sets is so overblown, and, well, downright Hollywood, how can it be the catalyst for examining the deeper questions of life? It’s entertainment; it’s only supposed to hang around between the time the opening credits start and the closing credits end.
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Ten Reasons Rock & Rule Is Here To Slay

By Less Lee Moore

Back in the ’80s, USA’s Night Flight, a late-night “variety” show, played a mix of weird videos and cult movies on weekends, essential viewing for kids who thrived on that kind of stuff. It was Night Flight that first introduced me to the wonders of Fantastic Planet (La Planète Sauvage), Smithereens, Ladies and Gentlemen . . . The Fabulous Stains, Urgh! A Music War, and Rock & Rule, an animated, epic sci-fi musical.

I’ve been watching it for more than 20 years now and Rock & Rule is still one of my all-time favorite movies. Here are ten reasons why.
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Alien 2: On Earth

By Ann Clarke

Midnight Legacy films, for some fucked-up reason only known to them, felt the need to re-release the Italian film known as Alien 2 Sulla Terra. That translates to Alien 2: On Earth. After wasting 84.25 minutes of my life watching this . . . I have to wonder why they even went through the trouble.
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Mockbusters: The Limitless And Lazy World Of Rip-Offs

By Eric Weber

“Gremloids?”
“No, Mom. Gremlins. It’s about these creatures that take over a town. It’s really good.”
“Gremlins?”
“Yes. There should be this sort of . . . lizard monster on the front of the box.”
“Ok. Well, I’ll see if they have it.”

It was my thirteenth birthday and I was planning on having some friends over to watch one of my favorite movies. However, when Mom came back from the store and dropped the craggy, sun-bleached box on the dining room table, I thought I was going to cry.
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It’s Not Nice To Fool Mother Nature: Tarantula, Piranha, Inseminoid

By Less Lee Moore

This article originally appeared in The So Bad It’s Good Movies Fanzine, Issue #2.

Godzilla (1954) is perhaps the first horror movie to depict the dire consequences of tinkering around with nature, and it inspired decades of thematic impersonators. Although it warned of the dangers inherent in the H-bomb, as environmental and sociopolitical concerns transformed, so did the types of movies which addressed these issues.

American films from the 1950s, such as Them! (giant killer ants), Beginning of the End (giant killer grasshoppers), and The Creature From The Black Lagoon (killer fish/man/beast) all point out how “tampering in God’s domain” (to paraphrase MST3K) can really screw things up.

But what about the womenfolk? How do they fit into this? From Tarantula to Piranha to Inseminoid, let’s look at what happens when we try to fool Mother Nature.
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