Jan 15
Martial arts movies (kung fu in Hong Kong, wu xia pian in Mandarin) burst onto the international scene in the 1960s and early 1970s with the rise of charismatic actor Bruce Lee (he’s at the center of the pic above wielding nunchucks.) If you were not alive at the time, it’s hard to understand the …
Dec 02
An early 20th century representation of a Scandinavian frost giant, from the silent movie Conquest of the Pole by French film pioneer Georges Méliès. To me the creature looks more like a goofy Russian ventriloquist’s dummy. Which is no less horrible than a bloodthirsty spirit to my eye, but probably not what the director intended.
Oct 30
Witches are a staple of fantasy and horror fiction. In their broad definition, they mean any kind of magic-using female. But for this list I’m going to use a more narrow definition: the Halloween type of witch, evil, cackling, out to do no good. The kind that brews potions in a big black cauldron and …
Oct 12
Easy-to-comprehend diagram of Horror genres. Some changes I’d make: Move “Creepy Kid” under the Monster genre The genres at the bottom aren’t really genres, they’re more like themes… …with the exception of Goth, which is a legitimate genre IMO. The Supernatural subgenre under Paranormal is just wrong. I’d call it Metahuman or Mutant and class …
Sep 11
The first movie stars to appear were not the glamourous creatures of today. They were experimental subjects, warm bodies whose only requirement was to do what the operator of the camera told them to. They were anonymous for the most part. Some of the earliest experimenters in film, like Georges Melies, used themselves as the …
May 29
Uhhh… Casey Kasem was in this? Well, he was the voice of Shaggy in Scooby-Doo… B-movies have long been with us, but after the deregulation of the Hollywood production code in the 1960s, the gateway was open for all sorts of lurid, sensational content. Happily it also coincided with the counterculture, and the two produced …
May 23
In the early 1960s James Bond was the coolest fictional character ever. He weathered life-threatening situations with humor and aplomb, handled fisticuffs as well as martinis and expensive suits, and was always able to bed beautiful women. Dr. No, released in 1964, inspired a whole trend of spy movies and parodies of spy movies, like …
