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Category: Movies and TV

You Can’t Handle the Tooth, Part III

You Can’t Handle the Tooth, Part III

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Boys from County Hell (Six Mile High Productions, April 2020)
and Twilight (Summit Entertainment, November 21, 2008)

20 vampire films, all first time watches for me.

Come on — sink ’em in.

Boys from County Hell (2020) – Prime/Shudder

Ah, British and British-adjacent horror comedies. When they’re done right, there’s nothing better, and this one is done right.

I had a blast with this one, I’d put it right up there with the likes of Dog Soldiers, Grabbers, Shaun of the Dead, Doghouse, Severance, and The Cottage. They all have something in common; a close-knit group, localized setting, extreme gore, and flowery language.

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You Can’t Handle the Tooth, Part II

You Can’t Handle the Tooth, Part II

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Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters (Film Workshop, 2002)

20 vampire films, all first time watches for me.

Come on — sink ’em in.

Tsui Hark’s Vampire Hunters (AKA The Era of Vampires) (2002) – Prime

The original title is Era of Vampires, but for the North American release we end up with a spectacular bit of bait and switch trickery. Anyone who knows Tsui Hark’s work would be excited, after all, he gave us Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain and the Once Upon a Time in China series — but we have been fooled. He produced this film, and wrote the story, but the director is Wellson Chin, better known for romantic comedies. For those of you who don’t know what this means, imagine going to see Steven Spielberg’s Jaws: The Legend Returns, and it’s directed by McG.

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A Hand-Crafted World: Karel Zeman’s Invention for Destruction

A Hand-Crafted World: Karel Zeman’s Invention for Destruction

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Is there anything more dispiriting than the ceaseless quest for novelty, especially when it seems bound to end in disappointment? It’s something I feel just about every time I turn on the TV. We’ve never had so many viewing choices, but so often everything feels reheated, recycled; we’ve seen it all before. The genuinely different is so rare that when you do see it, you know it — and you never forget it.

Sometime in the 70’s I saw an old black-and-white movie on television; it was called The Fabulous World of Jules Verne and it was the most extraordinary-looking thing I had ever seen. Guess what? I never forgot it.

A few years later I saw a movie on the late-night tube about the world’s greatest liar, Baron Munchausen. This time I couldn’t say that I had never seen anything like it because there was one thing that it reminded me of — The Fabulous World of Jules Verne. It was only years later that I learned that both films were the work of the Czechoslovakian director, Karel Zeman.

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You Can’t Handle the Tooth, Part I

You Can’t Handle the Tooth, Part I

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Scream, Blacula, Scream (American International Pictures, June 27, 1973)

20 vampire films, all first time watches for me.

Come on — sink ’em in.

Scream, Blacula, Scream (1973) – Tubi

I’ve seen Blacula (1970) plenty of times, but somehow never got around to watching the sequel, and thank the stars I did, because it’s excellent. I think I like it even more than the original.

If you are new to this nonsense, the original film told the tale of an African prince who is bitten by Dracula and becomes a bloodsucking fiend on the streets of L.A., tapping all jive turkeys he comes across. It’s obviously a product of the Blaxploitation era, but its dodgy premise is saved by the presence of William Marshall. For my money, Marshall can stand toe-to-toe with Christopher Lee as one of my favorite depictions of the count (so to speak). Like Lee, he brings much gravitas, animalistic savagery, and raw sex appeal to the role, along with one of the best voices in the business.

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Nosferatu: Was It the Time Change What Killed The Beast?

Nosferatu: Was It the Time Change What Killed The Beast?

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Nosferatu, written and directed by Robert Eggers, based on Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922), written by Henrik Galeen, and Dracula, penned by Bram Stoker in 1897.

Reboots and Adaptations

Okay. So I finally got around to watching Eggers’ version of FW Murnau’s classic from 1922, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. By now, I think everyone knows the story behind FW Murnau’s Nosferatu, but here’s a brief summary: Murnau’s Nosferatu was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, changing character names and locations but retaining the core plot elements. The film, which originally claimed to be adapted from Stoker’s novel, was made to avoid copyright issues and was eventually subject to legal action that nearly destroyed all prints.

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Four Things I Think I Think: May 2025

Four Things I Think I Think: May 2025

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Time to share a few things I Think I Think.

I mean, what’ the point of having your own blog column if you can’t share your opinion on whatever you want to? Right???

1 – The Black Company Remains One of My Favorite Series’

I’ve written multiple times that audiobooks fit my lifestyle these years. I still enjoy reading a print book, and the digital format has made a LOT of long out-of-print Pulp, available. But I listen to audiobooks while I work, write, game, drive, and even fall asleep. I get to stuff I’d not, otherwise.

Last year I listened to the entire Black Company series (minus Port of Shadows). I have read the entire thing at least three times through, and this was my first listen. Last month, as I was doing a couple of long runs, I decided I wanted to listen to The Black Company (book one). during them. And here I am a month later, on Water Sleeps, the second-to-last book (I only have Port of Shadows in hardback, so excluding that from the discussion at present).

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Tubi Dive, Part VII

Tubi Dive, Part VII

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Hellbenders (Lionsgate, October 18, 2013)

50 films that I dug up on Tubi.

Enjoy!

Hellbenders (2012)

I really should have saved this for later, for my exorcism watch-a-thon What Possessed You, but the mere thought of not watching a Clancy Brown movie kicked off my hives.

Hellbenders is an unholy romp written and directed by J.T. Petty (who brought us The Burrowers, among others) based on the graphic novel of the same name.

It concerns a secret order of multi denominational priests who are trained to defeat unbeatable demons. They do this by sinning as much as possible, then inviting the demon to possess themselves before committing suicide and dragging the entity to Hell. It’s a fantastic premise, and the numerous references to their sins (ranging from stealing newspapers and having disparaging thoughts, to committing adultery and colourful blasphemy) is a lot of fun. Priests aren’t sent out on exorcism missions if they’re not guaranteed to go to Hell.

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The Suspension Bridges of Disbelief

The Suspension Bridges of Disbelief

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A friend and I have been watching The Wheel of Time adaptation on Amazon. Both of us expressed surprise not at the open casting, which we agree is wonderful, but at how that production choice plays out in small hamlets like Rand al’Thor’s “home town” of Two Rivers. After observing that every possible racial group is represented in this isolated, insular mountain community, my friend had an epiphany.

“I had to remind myself,” said my friend, “that if I suspend disbelief to accept that there’s magic in this world, then I might also have to suspend my disbelief in genetics.”

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The Lost World

The Lost World

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You may have heard about the recent statements made by Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos, a man who combines all the best qualities of Dr. Jack Kevorkian and Alaric the Goth in one natty package. As reported by Variety on April 28th, the streaming mogul declared that the precipitous decline in in-person movie attendance which began several years ago and has reached near-catastrophic proportions in the years following COVID is easily understandable; indeed, it communicates a clear message:

What does that say? What is the consumer trying to tell us? That they’d like to watch movies at home, thank you. The studios and the theaters are duking it out over trying to preserve this 45-day window that is completely out of step with the consumer experience of just loving a movie.

Relegating the theater experience that has defined the industry (to say nothing of wider American culture) for the past nine decades to the dustbin of history, Sarandos shined a dazzling light on our murky cultural landscape:

Folks grew up thinking, I want to make movies on a gigantic screen and have strangers watch them and to have them play in the theater for two months and people cry and sold-out shows… It’s an outdated concept.

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Belated Movie Review #9: Corey Feldman’s The Birthday

Belated Movie Review #9: Corey Feldman’s The Birthday

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The Birthday (Arcadia Motion Pictures, November 10, 2006)

What are you doing right now? Whatever it is, stop it. Stop it and watch the Corey Feldmen vehicle The Birthday. Watch it. Right! Damn! Now!

“Woah, Simmons,” you may be saying to yourself. “Where’s the fire? What’s the rush?”

The rush is twofold. Fold First — while this is a belated movie review, it isn’t my fault that it is so late! We are lucky that this move is viewable at all. Forces, dark forces, have tried to keep The Birthday down, to keep you, the peoples, from seeing it.

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