The success of films like 300 started a trend that has not stopped since then. I’m not saying 300 was the first to do the historical warrior thing, but it seemed it be the film that kickstarted it all. Recently a film called Vikingdom was released. Just the title alone made wonder what I was getting myself into, but I went ahead and gave it a watch anyway.
It seems that every week a found footage flick is released. This is met with a lot of negativity and people tend to brush them off without even watching them. The style seems to get an automatic eye roll these days, which frustrates me because people just think that if they’ve seen one, they’ve seen them all. We also hear that they are cheap, silly, or just plain boring. Honestly, the same could be said for everything you watch. Found footage is just another way to tell a story and it’s no different from what we consider the norm.
Scream Factory has brought us another so-called gem from the horror vaults with Crawlspace. I wasn’t that excited when I found out about the release, but since it was from Scream Factory, I decided to give it a whirl. When I was younger I saw the VHS cover of Crawlspace wherever I went. It was one of those titles I never picked up because Klaus Kinski was in it. That might sound a little harsh but I’ve never been a fan. I don’t think he is a bad actor or anything; I just don’t like watching him on screen.
Having only recently seen Jorge Michel Grau’s Somos lo que hay, I was excited to see Stake Land director Jim Mickle’s reimagining of the story in his latest feature, We Are What We Are. I was not disappointed. It’s tempting to compare and contrast the two films, but that would be a disservice to both; while the core narrative is similar, each film explores the terrain of family and tradition in different ways, both culturally and tonally.
Admittedly, I haven’t been keeping up with teen movies lately, but Plus One is way better than the ones I remember from decades past.
In the early 1980s, Steve Wozniak had a dream and a whole lot of money. He wanted to marry music, technology, and community, and so created the US Festival. Showcasing new technology and the best acts in current music, the community created itself in the desert (in ungodly hot conditions, because, well, desert) on Labor Day and Memorial Day weekends in both 1982 and 1983. Now, you can relive those sweaty, dusty days of 1983 in the only DVD release sanctioned by Unuson (an acronym for “Unite Us In Song”).
John Carpenter is almost a household name in my opinion. Unfortunately, it is mainly for Halloween and The Thing, which isn’t bad, but there are many other excellent Carpenter flicks that get buried below his “commercial” hits. Even among your common horror fans some of his greatest works are not discussed; they mostly speak about the Escape flicks and Big Trouble in Little China.
I consider myself a huge Carpenter fan in many ways and one of those ways is that I’m a fan of everything he has ever done. Yes, that goes for Ghosts of Mars and The Ward. I know that many people look down upon some of his flicks but I just try to find the Carpenterness in each flick and find my own inspiration. I’m a writer of reviews, but I’m also a screenwriter trying to make it and if it wasn’t for John Carpenter, I wouldn’t be the person I am today.
Scream Factory has released another Carpenter flick on Blu-Ray and again, it is outstanding just like the rest. Prince of Darkness is a Carpenter film that I believe is forgotten about amongst the horror community. I know many would say that they know the flick but when is the last time you’ve actually seen it? I spoke my film friends and even they admitted they’ve forgotten the last time they watched it. I admit the film escaped me for a long time but I revisited it a couple years ago and fell in love all over again.
The Horror Show is a horror film that fell off my radar years ago but I still have the cut box VHS in my media room. It isn’t a bad film, but it just doesn’t do it for some people and that includes me. In a lot of ways the film reminds me of Shocker and feels almost like a prequel. (I might be alone on that one.)
Your average person may not know what a Brony is and neither did I until I stumbled upon this documentary. Bronies: The Extremely Unexpected Adult Fans of My Little Pony sought out male fans of the cartoon and followed them to the BronyCon convention.
At first Bronies seems like it might exploit these people and show the “weird” side of them. However, it doesn’t and actually dives into a little of the psychology side of things, going against what most people think of these Bronies. Don’t go into thinking you’re going to go into the house of some weird old dude who dresses up as a pony and prances around.
“It would be a privilege if you’d walk outside with me.”
—Lt. Ethan Bishop in Assault on Precinct 13
When I was younger I discovered John Carpenter. I was obsessed with Halloween and The Thing; this made me try to track down everything that he had done. Keep in mind that this was the middle of the ’90s so certain titles on VHS were scarce and DVD hadn’t hit it big yet. Tracking down Carpenter titles was very difficult for a little kid that loved obscure films.
I would go with my parents to every flea market that we could so I could scour the depths of boxes trying to find any horror or action titles that existed. Assault on Precinct 13 was one of those titles that I was searching for. I was determined to find it and consume it.