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Category: Movies and TV

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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Tubi Dive, Part VI

Tubi Dive, Part VI

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Under the Silver Lake (A24, April 19, 2019)

50 films that I dug up on Tubi.

Enjoy!

Under the Silver Lake (2018)

Just in case you’re getting the wrong impression, Tubi isn’t all hidden schlock from around the world, there’s actually some proper* movies on there too.

Under the Silver Lake is the follow-up film from It Follows director David Robert Mitchell, and it seems the suits loved his horror film so much that they gave him free rein to do whatever he wanted to do.

What Mitchell wanted to do was make a two-hour, surreal, ‘slacker-noir’ type mystery film, with plenty of sex, violence, conspiracy theories and Andrew Garfield’s bottom.

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Goth Chick News: Oh Deer – Bambi Goes Berserk in The Reckoning

Goth Chick News: Oh Deer – Bambi Goes Berserk in The Reckoning

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Bambi: The Reckoning (ITN Studio, July 25, 2025)

File this one in the “Why the F?” folder.

Bambi: The Reckoning is a British indie horror flick directed by Dan Allen and written by Rhys Warrington. It marks the fourth disturbing entry in The Twisted Childhood Universe (TCU), which brought us Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey and is now turning Felix Salten’s beloved deer into a forest-dwelling force of vengeance.

The Brits must really hate us.

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Life Lessons from David Cronenberg

Life Lessons from David Cronenberg

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Let me begin with two assertions, each of which is, in the immortal words of Vincent Vega, “a bold statement.” First: David Cronenberg is one of our greatest directors, and there is nothing he has done that isn’t worth seeing. Second: I am the dumbest, most suicidally foolhardy person you will ever meet. The first statement is arguable, ultimately a matter of opinion, but the second is not, because I can prove it. In fact, I can use the first proposition to establish the validity of the second one.

In case you’ve been living under a rock for the past fifty years, David Cronenberg is the Mutant King of body horror; in stomach-churning, Manson Family date movies like Rabid (an extremely icky form of vampirism), The Brood (nasty little “rage monsters” popping right out of poor Samantha Eggar), Scanners (you want exploding heads — you’ve got exploding heads), and Videodrome (I… I can’t even talk about it, and to this day, neither can James Woods) he set new standards in shockingly gross special effects and in the number of times he forced audience members to barf in their popcorn buckets or make panicked rushes to the restroom.

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