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Science Friday talks with a researcher who has studied (harrumph, harrumph) the zombie brain. Listen to the story or read the transcript at that link.
The picture above can be found here and is not connected in any way to the NPR story.
various and assorted miscellany
Shortly before the start of World War 2, the German high command began a secret investigation into the powers of the supernatural. Ancient legend told of a race of warriors who used neither weapons nor shields and whose super-human power came from within the Earth itself. As Germany prepared for war, the SS secretly enlisted a group of scientists to create an invincible soldier. It is known that the bodies of soldiers killed in battle were returned to a secret laboratory near Koblenz, where they were used in a variety of scientific experiments. It was rumored that, toward the end of the war, Allied forces met German squads that fought without weapons, killing only with their bare hands. No one knows who they were or what became of them, but one thing is certain. Of all the SS units, there was only one that the Allies never captured a single member of.The opening credits begin at this point. It's interesting how many horror films feature Nazi Zombies.
I wouldn’t go as far as the overheated blurbs on the cover of the old VEC videotape (“One of the most elegant horror pictures ever made,” my ass!), but Daughters of Darkness undoubtedly is worthy of more measured praise.
... bad voice – bad, bad, bad, bad, bad voice. There’s a peculiar sort of tonedeaf sci fi voice sung with chalkboard scratch “wrong” notes, and then there’s a separate, cheap tonedeaf knockoff of noir film narration that I think got its start during the “cyberpunk” years. That one won’t die, and I think over time, it has been a very big nail in adult-oriented written science fiction with that label on it....
the people who were charged with buying and offering the material to the public ... promoted “the voice” as good, gave awards to it, and through the combination of low pay, poor treatment and social cooties-by-association drove off anybody with any sense of storytelling, talent or gift.
The plot never settles into being much more than its collection of influences – the various players are brought together, there is a journey, some martial arts battles, Dracula appears at the end and that is about all there is to the film.Images Journal calls it "one of Hammer's most underrated movies, with several truly macabre sequences."
The real trouble with The Astro-Zombies is that Mikels’s inattentive, scattershot approach to storytelling robs the movie of most of its interest by fixing it so that we never have any idea what we’re seeing until well after it’s already happened. Characters are routinely introduced after they’ve been killed. Motives and agendas remain shrouded in mystery until after the schemes predicated upon them have failed. Whole subplots are simply forgotten about without ever reaching any sort of fruition. And through it all, the movie drags and drags and drags.Stomp Tokyo describes it as "landfill".
is a taut, 73-minute thriller, and looks nothing like the visually flat, so-called semi-documentary style look of most American sci-fi films of the period. Rather, visually it's more of a bridge between film noir in the (cinematographer) John Alton mode, and the limitless imagination and ingenuity Bava would soon be applying to his own, "official" movies.
A great winter fell across the Earth. Corum of the Silver Hand had slain the gods so that Man might rule: the last of the Vadhagh, he had saved the race that had betrayed his own, and he had earned his rest. But it was not to be ... for new gods, and fiercer ones, strode the land. Corum took up the moon-coloured sword with sorrow. For to him fell the task of defeating the Fhoi Myore, the Cold Gods - who yearned for death but could not be slain!
A tale of exceptional and mythic power, The Chronicles of Corum follows The Swords Trilogy and completes the saga of Corum Jhaelen Irsei, who was not a god and yet was not a man.
Whatever you think of Bava’s work as a whole (and he’s one of those directors whom people seem either to love or to hate), I just can’t imagine anyone finding much to complain about in this movie.Senses of Cinema says,
Beginning in the late 1960s, Bava's The Mask of Satan/Black Sunday has often been cited by film critics and historians as an example of an influential and effective horror film of lasting artistic value.10/31/2009: Barbara Steele's scream in this film is examined by Arbogast on film.
The gore is completely over the top and as arresting as an auto smashup. ... If the aesthetic of slasher horror is to investigate the ways a human body can be outrageously violated, The Beyond may be the front-runner.
The experts who were on a bird-ringing expedition in the Shiant Isles in the Hebrides said they have discovered a puffin first ringed over 34 years ago.
It is not that the picture is cheaply sensational, artistically: that is a standard condition which one might overlook. It is rather that, in telling a fraudulent and unhealthy tale, it tends to excite apprehension against the treatment of nervous disorders.
The film is really something more akin to the climactic tanker chase in Mad Max 2 (1981) extended to a feature-length film and with hooded Devil worshippers instead of mohawked wasteland crazies.
An absolute knockout of a movie in the psychological horror line has been accomplished by Roman Polanski in his first English-language film.Moria gives this a top 5-star rating and says,
Repulsion is a film where Polanski rather disturbingly makes no distinction between where the real world leaves off and where hallucination begins. Watching the film we are entirely sitting inside the mind of a mad person.11/23/2009: Horror Movie a Day has a review, focusing on the Criterion release.
Especially in comparison to the current crop of vampire movies, 30 Days of Night is a great deal more aggressive than the majority of what we’ve seen lately,
...
It is as unashamedly gruesome and violent as any post-Dawn of the Dead zombie movie, and treats its heroes just as harshly.
...
It also could justly have been promoted with the tagline, “Vampires— they’re not just for goth girls anymore!” These vampires are animalistic monsters in the finest antique tradition
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They’re not pretty, not sexy, not tragic or romantic or sensitive or any of those other annoying things that vampires have tended to be since people unaccountably decided it was a good idea to emulate Anne Rice...
The Abominable Dr Phibes is like a Rolls-Royce among horror films. It has an ornate wit that seems to be an epitome the tail-end of the Anglo-Horror cycle was heading towards. And it features what is possibly the best performance that Vincent Price ever gave. Dr Phibes is a camp masterpiece of sublime elegance1000 Misspent Hours ends with this: "You won’t be disappointed. It’s much better than any of the Bond films whose overall tone it rips off."
Every time I watch one of Chaney’s silent movies, I find myself flabbergasted at the extent to which his talent towers above that of virtually anyone on the Hollywood scene in the early decades of the sound era.
Although it has strength and undoubtedly sustains the interest, "The Unknown," the latest screen contribution from Tod Browning and Lon Chaney, is anything but a pleasant story. It is gruesome and at times shocking, and the principal character deteriorates from a more or less sympathetic individual to an arch-fiend.
Though most elements of this film are things which a longtime horror fan will have seen many times before, they have been combined here in such a cockeyed, counterintuitive manner that The Devil’s Rain comes across as being far more original than it actually is. It’s a case of the familiar made very, very strange.Moria gives it 1 star, describing it as "one of the more lunatic and dire among the films jumping on the mid-70s occult bandwagon inspired by the successes of Rosemary’s Baby (1968) and The Exorcist (1973)" and says,
The Devil's Rain is usually referred to in Golden Turkey terms. It gives the impression of being written and directed with a haphazard indifference. It doesn’t make any particular sense on a narrative level.DVDTalk has kind words:
How did so many talented tendencies get accused of being one of the worst movies ever made? Perhaps, the truth is a little more telling. ...what we have here is actually an ambitious miscalculation that functions just fine after three decades removed from its unremarkable debut.
The Other is a film that was in its time regarded as a minor genre classic. It’s eminence has faded somewhat three decades later but it is still a strong and interesting work.
There’s a good chance that Duel is the best horror movie ever made for American TV. The sheer efficiency of it is breathtaking; barely a second is wasted anywhere, and there isn’t a single scene or minor secondary character that isn’t somehow necessary to maintaining the mood of escalating panic or keeping the story in motion.
Father Damien challenged the stigmatizing effects of disease, giving voice to the voiceless and ultimately sacrificing his own life to bring dignity to so many.
Proceed at your own risk, we warn you, if you are at all afraid of the dark. For this fiction about two young people who buy an old seaside house in England, only to discover that a couple of banshees have taken up residence first, is as solemnly intent on raising gooseflesh as any ghost-story weirdly told to a group of shivering youngsters around a campfire on a dark and windy night.
Mr. Clayton and Miss Kerr have neglected to interpret the tale and character with sufficient incisiveness and candor to give us a first-rate horror or psychological film. But they've given us one that still has interest and sends some formidable chills down the spine.
The face of all the world is changed, I think,and
Since first I heard the footsteps of thy soul...
“Guess now who holds thee!” — “Death,” I said. But, there,Lorre is perfect as the obsessed, rejected madman.
The silver answer rang — “Not Death, but Love.”
it is highly entertaining, and by watching it, you’ll get to see Peter Lorre in the role that would haunt him for the rest of his career. This is honestly one of his best performances (no actor I’ve seen has ever captured the emotional state of Lunatic Dejection better than Lorre does here), and whoever it was who came up with the character’s look made absolutely optimum use of Lorre’s physical appearance, but this is still the role that Lorre never lived down, in much the same way that Bela Lugosi never lived down Count Dracula.10/11/2009: Bowen's Cinematic has a review.
1. My Neighbour Totoro (1988) Hayao Miyazaki
2. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) David Hand
3. The Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Movie (1979) Chuck Jones and Phil Monroe
4. Fantasia (1940)
5. Toy Story (1995) John Lasseter
6. Spirited Away (2001) Hayao Miyazaki
7. Yellow Submarine (1968) George Dunning
8. Belleville Rendez-vouz (2003) Sylvain Chomet
9. South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) Trey Parker
10. Robin Hood (1973) Wolfgang Reitherman
11. Bambi (1942) David Hand
12. Grave of the Fireflies (1988) Isao Takahata
13. Dumbo (1941) Ben Sharpsteen
14. Gandahar (1988) René Laloux
15. The Iron Giant (1999) Brad Bird
16. Akira (1988) Katsuhiro Ôtomo
17. The Brave Little Toaster (1987) Jerry Rees
18. The Jungle Book (1967) Wolfgang Reitherman
19. When the Wind Blows (1988) Jimmy T Murakami
20. Pinocchio (1940) Hamilton Luske & Ben Sharpsteen
21. Whisper of the Heart (1995)
22. The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) & Coraline (2009)
23. Perfect Blue (1997)
24. The Incredibles (2004)
25. Watership Down (1978)
26. Princess Mononoke (1997)
27. 'Antz' v 'A Bug's Life' (both 1998)
28. Persepolis
29. The Secret of NIMH (1982)
30. Porco Rosso (1992)
31. WALL-E (2008)
32. Kirikou and the Sorceress
33. Aladdin (1992)
34. Ghost in the Shell (1995)
35. Beavis and Butt-head Do America (1996)
36. The Lord of the Rings (1978)
37. A Soldier’s Tale (1984)
38. Ratatouille (2007)
39. Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film For Theatres
40. Animal Farm (1954)
41. FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992)
42. Fritz the Cat (1972)
43. Happy Feet (2006)
44. Waking Life (2001) / A Scanner Darkly (2006)
45. Transformers – The Movie (1986)
46. Paprika
47. Sleeping Beauty (1959)
48. Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001)
49. Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009)
50. Heavy Metal (1981)
If "The Lodger" was designed to chill the spine—as indeed it must have been, considering all the mayhem Mr. Cregar is called upon to commit as the mysterious, psychopathic pathologist of the title—then something is wrong with the picture. But, if it was intended as a sly travesty on the melodramatic technique of ponderously piling suspicion upon suspicion (and wrapping the whole in a cloak of brooding photographic effects), then "The Lodger" is eminently successful.
1. Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897)
2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (1818)
3. "The Raven" by Edgar Allan Poe (1845)
4. Salem’s Lot by Stephen King (1975)
5. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft (1931)
6. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stephenson (1886)
7. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (1959)
8. Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury (1962)
9. The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (1971)
10. "The Dunwich Horror" by H.P. Lovecraft (1928)
11. It by Stephen King (1986)
12. The Shining by Stephen King (1977)
13. "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Edgar Allan Poe (1849)
14. "The Black Cat" by Edgar Allan Poe (1843)
15. I Am Legend by Richard Matheson (1954)
16. Ghost Story by Peter Straub (1979)
17. Books of Blood by Clive Barker (1984-85)
18. "The Monkey’s Paw" by W.W. Jacobs (1902)
19. "The Cask of Amontillado" by Edgar Allan Poe (1846)
20. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James (1898)
21. The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (1764)
22. Pet Sematary by Stephen King (1983)
23. "The Colour Out of Space" by H.P. Lovecraft (1927)
24. The Hellbound Heart by Clive Barker (1986)
25. Who Goes There? by John W. Campbell, Jr. (1938)
26. "The Call of Cthulhu" by H.P. Lovecraft (1928)
27. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe (1841)
28. Psycho by Robert Bloch (1959)
29. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1890)
30. Carmilla by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
in the mad rush to squeeze in the maximum possible number of monsters, the folks in charge of the project forgot to include one thing— anything even remotely resembling a coherent, unified story.Moria doesn't like it and has a how-the-mighty-have-fallen take on the film.
I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,
And all my pleasures are like yesterday (Jonne Donne)
The Seventh Victim is one Lewton film that has been acclaimed whenever it has been seen. And it was influential – its effect on Rosemary’s Baby (1968) is unmistakeable. Its relative obscurity can perhaps be attributed to its taking up an audacious topic like Satanism during a time of strong censorship.
The greatness of this movie lies mainly in that it manages to make the Satanists seem threatening without making them demonstratively evil or putting any obviously legitimate infernal power into their hands. It’s a difficult trick, and the filmmakers execute it beautifully.
If the Hays office feels it has a duty to protect the morals of movie-goers by protesting the use of such expressions as "hell" and "damn" in purposeful dramas like "In Which We Serve" and "We Are the Marines," then how much more important is its duty to safeguard the youth of the land from the sort of stuff and nonsense that their minds will absorb from viewing "I Walked With a Zombie"? ? ?
A lot of people consider I Walked with a Zombie second only to Cat People among RKO’s Lewton-produced thrillers from the early-to-mid 1940’s. The main basis for all this praise seems to be the “poetry” of the film, with its juxtaposition of family dysfunction and black magic against the scenic beauty of the idyllic West Indies setting. Call me boor and a knuckle-dragger, but I frankly couldn’t care less about such things. This is a voodoo movie, damn it! If I want poetry, I’ll watch Swedish art films,
It might be termed a morality play, so direct and uncomplicated is it. But for all its directness and simplicity—its barrenness of plot and perplexities—it is far from an easy picture to watch...Senses of Cinema says,
Bergman's film stands almost as an archetypal film version of this “story”, and shows us how so-called ordinary, civilised people can be reduced to carrying out acts of barbarism similar to those of the criminals who committed terrible acts against them.10/12/2009: Classic-Horror.com has a review.