LITERAL REMAINS

For my money, Lady In White is one of the best movies to watch at Halloween.  Yes, it takes place at Halloween.  It has a kid, a ghost, a murder to solve, and a killer on the loose.  It’s nostalgic, suspenseful, sometimes funny, and maybe a tad too sweet for some.  It is also a reminder, in some [...]

I don’t know how it happened, I’m not aware of any childhood trauma (it could be repressed), I don’t know exactly its origin, but scarecrows have always scared the hell out of me.  Now that I think about it, I can remember back when I was very, very, young, maybe three or four, when my grandfather [...]

Captain Kronos is one of my favorite vampire movies.  The thing I really love about it is that it’s a little different in its vampirism, and it mixes mystery with its horror.  The good Captain, shady to a degree himself, is kick butt bad, charms the ladies, has a cool hunchback sidekick, and  he is the [...]

In the backwoods, if you have a problem and are desperate enough, you can raise a demon to mete out revenge.  That’s exactly what Ed Harley does in Stan Winston’s classic, Pumpkinhead. Ed is a single father doing the best he can to provide for his son.  They live way in the back woods, one of those [...]

Prepare for fun.  Night of the Creeps has freshly escaped to DVD.  We can all live life a better now.  I’ve only seen this movie one time, uncut, and that was on IFC or something.  The only other times I had seen it was years ago on some syndication channels; that was after its little [...]

The Fog is the first horror movie I ever remember seeing.  This is the one that hooked me and made me a horror devotee.  Although there may be better films to come down the line over the past few decades, there is still a power in this simple little ghost story, and I would be remiss [...]

Did you and your family ever have family game night?  Maybe you still do.  Can you remember those times when you were a kid and the family would pile into the car and go bowling, or to the movies, or go play miniature golf, raid the mall, or watch a midget battle royale on pay-per-view?  That’s good [...]

A group of girlfriends meet every year on vacation to do some extreme sport or other.  The year of their rafting trip is tragic for Sarah; returning home, there is a traffic accident, and her husband and young daughter are killed.  It’s a long year of recuperation. Finally, though, Sarah relents and joins her friends for a [...]

I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t put Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) somewhere on this Halloween countdown.  Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is one of my favorite stories, and Fredric March’s Oscar winning star turn at the dual role is one of the great performances of horror.  [...]

All hell breaks loose on a stormy night for two different groups of people. First, Dr. Malick arranges a last minute hearing for his patient, serial killer Malcolm Rivers, who is set to be executed in a matter of hours.  Malick convinces the judge to hear new evidence and to consider sparing Rivers’ life.  Malick believes [...]

You read that correctly, I am suggesting  Tales From the Crypt Presents Bordello of Blood.  You wanna be startin’ somethin’? If there ever was a guilty pleasure, it’s Bordello of Blood.  It is filled wall to wall with cheeky humor, gross outs, Dennis Miller in what has been his best movie so far, scantily clad vampire [...]

Ralphie is a traveling businessman who is also a big kid at heart.  While traveling one dark and stormy night, he happens upon two punk rock girls hitchhiking.  He picks them up and they find themselves seeking refuge in an old mansion, after the car is stuck in mud, owned by elderly couple who make dolls. Ralphie [...]

After The Howling II, me and the series parted ways.  I didn’t visit those hairy little darlings again for a long time.  The original, love it.  The second one, forget about it–I don’t call and we walk down opposite sides of the street to avoid meeting. Smash-Cut to about five years ago.  I was convinced [...]

Lets continue with a little more family fare this weekend.  If you can’t share the scare with the ones you love, who can you share it with? Who Done It? isn’t a horror film, let me say that up front.  It’s a comedy mystery.  It’s Abbott & Costello; for that alone, you should watch it. [...]

Today I thought I would suggest something the whole family can enjoy:  The War of the Worlds. I was in middle school when I first saw The War of the Worlds (1953).  I can remember sitting in my seventh grade English class watching the sequence at the dance hall when the power fails.  It disturbed [...]