Classic and James Bond films unite
There are spoilers ahead, so put away the wax cylinders if you don't want to hear all of the secrets. Ghosts can be of the mind and they can be of the world. Crimson Peak shows this in incredible detail through its setting and character. This is a ghost story that is all about how ghosts are not… Continue reading My Heart is A Haunted House: Crimson Peak (2015)
It is almost Halloween, the day of the year when the veil between our world and the next is supposed to be at its thinnest. A time of year when those departed, those of the spirit world walk amongst us freely. And so the Gothic Blogathon, celebrating that world of man's darkest desires and truths,… Continue reading Something Gothic This Way Comes: The Gothic Blogathon Begins
Although this film is over forty years old, some may still be concerned about spoilers in the walls, so please remove the plaster at your own risk. Giallo is a genre of film that has come to fascinate me fairly recently. I was largely unaware of it until I watched Twitch of the Death Nerve [insert alternate… Continue reading Tell Tale Voice: “Your Vice Is A Locked Room and Only I Have The Key” (1972)
The year before All That Heaven Allows was released, Joseph Breen left the position of head of the Hollywood motion picture censorship office. All That Heaven allows is not one of the films that truly marked the end of the code, films such as The Moon Is Blue, The Man With the Golden Arm and… Continue reading To Thine Own Self Be True: “All That Heaven Allows” (1955)
Licence To Kill (1989) has suffered from a bad reputation for years. Many have wrongly asserted that it bombed at the box office and that the film was critically panned. While the film did not perform as strongly in the US as past entries, the film still earned $156 million dollars at the box office,… Continue reading The Art of Vengeance: A Love Letter to “Licence To Kill” (1989)
Undercurrent (1947) is definitely not a film that many mention in connection with any of its three stars, which really is a shame, because it's a film that deserves more attention. I've read some reviews that have called it a Gaslight knock off, and while Undercurrent shares some elements with that film, it is decidedly different in others. For me, Undercurrent can… Continue reading Rolling in the Deep: Katherine Hepburn in “Undercurrent” (1946)
When I was younger, I was confused by my mother's love for Mia Farrow. But then I watched Rosemary's Baby when I was about eighteen and I saw it, something just clicked. I understood why my mom had always wanted to watch films that Mia was in, why she felt that she had had such an impact… Continue reading Announcing The Magnificent Mia Farrow Blogathon
The release of Rosemary's Baby in 1968 unleashed the full force of the audience's fascination with satanic panic, with such films as The Devil Rides Out, The Omen, The Exorcist, and To The Devil A Daughter being released. These films showed two groups who were perennially at risk: young women and children. In Polanski's seminal adaptation of Ira Levine's classic… Continue reading Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Seventies: Shelley Winters in ‘The Devil’s Daughter’ (1973)
I became aware of Phantom of the Opera (1943) through the purchase of my two Universal Monster boxsets, both of which featured the second English language adaptation of Gaston Leroux's famous novel. I was quite delighted to discover that one of my favourite classic film actors, the great Claude Rains, who was no stranger to Universal, starred… Continue reading Christine, Christine: Phantom of the Opera (1943)
The Phantom of the Opera (1925) is considered one of the greatest silent films ever made. That may be a bold claim considering that the majority of silent films are lost, perhaps forever, but the film's compelling central performance by Lon Chaney, its technical mastery and its fascinating plot make an extremely valid case. But the… Continue reading The Phantom of the Opera Is Here: “Phantom of the Opera” (1925)
Pale Writer 