Retrospectives
Why Jason Lives is a Near-Perfect Horror Comedy
Audiences were disappointed with Friday the 13th Part V: A New Beginning. They wanted Jason, doing what he does best. Despite the film’s other merits, they couldn’t get over the absence ...
‘A Nightmare On Elm Street 4’: How Freddy Became The Pop Culture Boogeyman
A Nightmare on Elm Street was a success that spread through word of mouth. It was made for very little money and was released on a limited number of screens. A Nightmare on Elm Street 2 was a hit in c...
Why ‘Return of the Living Dead’ Is the Ultimate Punk Rock Horror Movie
Dan O’Bannon’s Return of the Living Dead is, in many ways, the 1980s horror film. It represents everything about the decade boiled down into one complete package. The m...
Why Behind the Mask is Still One of the Smartest Horror Films of the Past 20 Years
It’s hard to believe that Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon is already 17-years-old. Unlike many horror films released in the 20 years, I saw this one when it was still relatively new....
Why ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’ Deserves Greater Acclaim
The 1990s gave us a lot of great films. From big studio releases like Silence of the Lambs, Candyman, and Jacob’s Ladder, to smaller, more obscure releases like Castle Freak, The Ugly, and Audi...
How Alien Raised the Bar for Visuals in Horror
Throughout most of the 1970s, horror was very focused on realism. There was a transition period in the previous decade that moved the genre away from the Gothic Hammer films, truly cementing horror in...
Why Werner Herzog’s ‘Nosferatu’ is Actually the Better Movie
F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu is a masterpiece of silent cinema. It’s one of the all-time great horror films. While it did not get the rights to the characters of the novel Dracula from the St...
In the Mouth of Madness is a Tragically Underrated Meta Horror
Scream and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare are widely regarded as the two movies that kicked off meta-horror in the 1990s. Both were, in their own way, deconstructions of the genre. But despite havi...
How ‘Poltergeist’ Destroyed the American Dream (And Why That’s Great)
Filmmakers in the 1980s had a serious obsession with the American dream. Part of it, I think, was due to the fetish-like obsession with ‘50s Americana. People wanted a very Norman Rockwell view...