OHMC

So sadly I did not get a chance to undertake the October Horror Movie Challenge in proper this time around, “in proper” meaning for me not only watching the requisite 31 films but watching 31 films that were completely new to me that I would later blog about here as well. I love holding myself…

US / 1991 Though I’m not very big on Valentine’s Day as an actual celebration, I have a huge soft spot for Valentines that come in the form of movies. CAST A DEADLY SPELL is a love letter to the genre if ever there was one, right up there with CREEPSHOW in its unadulterated affection…

US / 1966 Do you remember that recurring bit from the Three Stooges where a couple of innocent diners would look on in horror as one of the boys chased a rascally cat or dog from the kitchen and would later return with dishes whose contents were highly suspect? Watching THE UNDERTAKER AND HIS PALS is not so very…

Canada / 1983 “Will I be this way when I am dead?” asks the old woman all skin and bones, and John Vernon is there as the ringmaster to this circus of trick poodles all vying for the same treat and says that, yes, this is what your dead face will look like but it’s…

Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain, US / 2013 As Hurricane Matthew surges forward and brings with it the grim reminder that October might as well be Summer Part II for residents along the East Coast, I find myself wanting to tap into that chilly root of autumnal bliss and despair that never taints the incessant greenery of my…

US / 1995 Despite what you might assume from that screenshot and the fact that FROSTBITER: WRATH OF THE WENDIGO was released under the banner of Troma Entertainment, that bastion of questionable tastes, this film is actually rather wholesome in its own bizarre way, not unlike another wintry favorite of mine released from the same…

2005 / Japan One of the special joys of watching Kôji Shiraishi’s found footage docu-horror NOROI: THE CURSE is playing detective alongside Jin Muraki as reporter Masafumi Kobayashi, a specialist in the paranormal with a healthy catalog of spooky videotape investigations and a name hearkening back to Masaki Kobayashi, the influential director of one of the country’s earliest ghostly classics, KWAIDAN (1964). Like…

US / 1958 Low-budget films trade in a certain breed of claustrophobia. The single-digit casts, the  cramped sets, the largely stationary cameras capturing everyone’s soul on flat, static celluloid; the shining gristle of Hollywood is scraped away, the dull gray bone beneath exposed. I BURY THE LIVING largely focuses on a lonely man in a small room. The…