With our tax refund this year we bought a new TV, a 50″ Samsung plasma television and a significant upgrade from our previous television, an early HD-ready set, much smaller but not flat-screen, that weighed about a thousand pounds.  This, in conjunction with recently inheriting my parents’ cast-off surround-sound speakers, has resulted in a “home [...]

Susana (Mexico, 1951)
D: Luis Bunuel
Criterion’s relatively-new Eclipse series releases box sets of overlooked films, free of special features but cheaper than a Criterion Collection “special edition” equivalent. My wish list of what Eclipse should cover is growing. I would still like them to do a Jacques Rivette set, but oh, how I would relish a [...]

October 31
#28 House of Dracula (1945)
#29 God Told Me To (1975)
#30 Madhouse (1974)
#31 Bedlam (1946)
#32 Feast (2006)
#33 Halloween (2007)
It’s all a blur to me now, as I stagger out of bed to set all the clocks back one hour, and notice the plastic cauldron stuffed with candy still sitting on the coffee table, and the dining room table [...]

October 30
#26 The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
#27 Isle of the Dead (1945)
Today on NPR’s Science Friday, Ira Flatow was interviewing Steven Schlozman, Co-Director of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, professional child psychiatrist, and author of a new paper on the science of zombies.  Inevitably a caller asked [...]

October 28
#25 Orphan (2009)
One has to begrudgingly admire Dark Castle Films, which, since 1999, has been consistently producing moderately-budgeted, slickly-produced, perfectly respectable horror films, none of them all that great by any means.  The original purpose of the company was to remake the films of William Castle, the legendary gimmickeer of 1950’s horror (The Tingler); [...]

October 27
#24 The Body Snatcher (1945)
In our Val Lewtonathon, we now enter phase 2, or Phase Karloff.  The Body Snatcher in a strange way feels like a more complete film, or a more fleshed-out story, than the previous Lewton entries; based on a story by Robert Louis Stevenson, it’s sharply focused, and delivers more of the [...]

October 25
#23 Ghostbusters (1984)
When I was eight years old, my father took me to see a movie called Ghostbusters.  I knew nothing about it, but I was eight, and we were going to a movie, so I was easily pleased.  What I witnessed sautéed my brain.  Terrifying librarian ghost!  Weird-cute green slimy ghost!  Jokes that [...]

October 24
#22 The Seventh Victim (1943)
This is my favorite of the Val Lewton-produced films, a very curious mixture of horror and film noir that fans of either genre should embrace with equal zeal.  Mark Robson was not as naturally gifted a director as Jacques Tourneur, and he even steals from Tourneur’s Cat People for a scene late in this film (a [...]

October 22
#18 Spirit Trap (2005)
#19 Theater of Blood (1973)
October 23
#20 Trick ‘r Treat (2007)
#21 REC (2007)
Running a marathon like this, aiming for 31 horror “programs” to watch during October, I have the advantage of making up my own rules, but nonetheless I struggle to decide whether I should include, say, all the episodes of Kolchak: The Night Stalker [...]

October 20
#17 Masters of Horror: Imprint (2005)
Showtime’s Masters of Horror was, on paper, my favorite idea for a television series ever.  It would be a one-hour anthology series, with each installment directed by a recognized name in the genre of the horror film.  Since this was not Tales from the Crypt, they would not be constrained by [...]