Posts

Foxy Brown (1974)

Image
A tried and true method to stretch out a series or genre is to do the same thing as before, but with a woman.  The Universal horror films did it, the Japanese Street Fighter series did it and, of course, so did blaxploitation films.  Many of them went for humor or turning the heroine into an impossible secret agent type, such as with Cleopatra Jones  and a number of cheap imitators.  No female star from this genre has had a greater staying power than Pam Grier. Grier had already starred in a number of exploitation films produced by Roger Corman and filmed in the Philippines, but when director and writer Jack Hill jumped into to the blaxploitation market with Coffy her career took off.  It was successful and American International Pictures originally wanted Hill and Grier to do a sequel.  They then decided that they wanted something different, so the script was rewritten as Foxy Brown , creating a new character for Grier but with the same street cred. Foxy Brown is a middle-class black
Post a Comment
Read more

Book of Blood (2009)

Image
Books of Blood is a series of volumes of short stories written by Clive Barker, and they have been responsible for providing the stories that have inspired the movies he has directed as well as others' adaptations of his work.  Although he has written full novels it is within his short stories that everything from Hellraiser to Candyman got their start.  An anthology movie called Books of Blood , also based on Barker's stories, was released in 2020.   Book of Blood is unrelated, instead focusing on the collection's wraparound story. Simon McNeal (Jonas Armstrong) is a young man whose skin is covered in lacerations, most still fresh and many forming words.  He is captured by Wyburd (Clive Russell), a bounty hunter who has been hired to collect his skin for an unknown client.  Wyburd becomes curious about Simon's skin and asks him to tell the story, promising a quick death if he does. Simon's story is about a professor named Mary Florescu (Sophie Ward) who is an exp
Post a Comment
Read more

Rawhead Rex (1986)

Image
Early on, when he was still an up-and-coming horror author, two of Clive Barker's stories were adapted into movies by director George Pavlou.  The first, Underworld, got little attention.  However, Rawhead Rex, a low-budget monster film based on the story of the same name, became a bit of a cult favorite.  Although not as freaky as the story nor as engaging as Hellraiser , Rawhead Rex still manages to be a quite entertaining b-movie. Howard Hallenbeck (David Dukes) is an historian traveling through Ireland researching the ancient origins of worship sites as well as the truth behind local legends.  He has brought along his wife Elaine (Kelly Piper) and kids Robbie (Hugh O'Connor) and Minty (Cora Venus Lunty), all of whom are anxious for him to finish up his studies so they can visit Dublin.   Howard soon gets more than he expected when a local farmer unleashes an ancient, violent creature called Rawhead Rex (Heinrich von Schellendorf) when he removes a standing stone from his fa
Post a Comment
Read more

The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

Image
I remember seeing The Shawshank Redemption in the theater when it came out.  To look at the initial returns I was one of the few.  I was part of the built-in audience, being a huge Stephen King fan and, by this point, wanting to see more of his stuff that wasn't horror.  The Body had already been adapted by Rob Reiner as Stand by Me , but all the other Stephen King films up to The Shawshank Redemption remained within his most well-known genre despite the success of that film.   To say this was a flop is an understatement.  Its first weekend in the theater netted less than a million dollars.  Keep in mind that the 1990s are considered one of the best decades for movies, on par with the 1970s for the mix of independent and studio films, so many art films were pulling in bigger audiences than Shawshank did.  Whether it was the weird name or the fact that, unlike most of the films from his stories before it, King's name wasn't plastered all over the poster, it is really hard to
Post a Comment
Read more

The Brood (1979)

Image
Life can be an inspiration for art and, with The Brood , this came from writer and director David Cronenberg's divorce and custody battle.  I wasn't aware of this the first time I watched it, but even without knowing the background it was clear that Cronenberg was mad at some woman, if not all, about something at the time.  It was his fourth feature film and, while his body issues had been evident since Shivers , he had never really explored anything as personal as what is in this movie. Frank Carveth (Art Hindle) is concerned that his ex-wife Nola (Samantha Eggar) is abusing their daughter Candice (Cindy Hinds) during her visits to see her mom at the private hospital where she is being treated.  The hospital is run by Dr. Hal Raglan (Oliver Reed), a psychiatrist pushing a controversial method of treatment called Psychoplasmatics, which through roleplay causes the patient to manifest symptoms of their rage on their bodies.  When his mother-in-law Juliana (Nuala Fitzgerald) is k
Post a Comment
Read more

It's Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987)

Image
In the late 1980s, with home video becoming ever more popular, Larry Cohen was asked to do a movie to go straight to VHS.  He instead contracted to do two of them, one being Return to Salem's Lot  and the other being a third and final chapter in his saga about killer babies, It's Alive III: Island of the Alive.  This time around he decided to explore what happens when the babies grow up as well as the connection they may have with their parents. Stephen Jarvis (Michael Moriarty) is one of the many parents of the mutant babies.  The aim has been to kill them when they are born but a court case finds Jarvis proving that there can be a bond with the creatures despite the fact they are still dangerous.  Instead of ordering their extermination, Judge Watson (Macdonald Carey) orders that the surviving infants be gathered and placed on a deserted island where they can do no harm. For the most part the plan works despite a visit from Cabot (William Watson) and his hunting buddies.  It
Post a Comment
Read more

Fantastic Four (2015)

Image
There had been an attempt at a Fantastic Four movie in the 1990s, but the ones that really mattered were the two from the 2000s.  Fantastic Four managed to rake in some decent dough so, despite horrible reviews and fan backlash, Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer followed in 2007.  It didn't do as well, but well enough that another sequel was being talked about.  This was before the Marvel Cinematic Universe was a thing.  The sequel, of course, never happened.  Chris Evans got poached by Marvel Studios for Captain America: The First Avenger , Jessica Alba decided to pull back from acting and Michael Chiklis went back to being a character actor on television, finishing up The Shield and playing a significant role in the fourth season of American Horror Story.  The problem was 20th Century Fox still wanted to make money off the franchise and only had until 2014, with a release date of 2015, to do so before the rights went back to Marvel, meaning that Disney (who had not yet
1 comment
Read more