Expelled Grey Matter

The late George Romero is known largely for his contribution to the modern concept of zombies being shambling, flesh-eating mirrors of ourselves. Despite their popularity at this point, all of the Dead movies were low-budget features that did modestly well at the box office due to Romero's (and the series's) core fans.  Romero himself made quite a number of different films in his career, but only one became a truly massive hit: Creepshow. Part of the reason for this is that he teamed up with Stephen King, who was just as popular in the early 1980s as he is now.  Perhaps even more so, since a number of his books had been adapted at this point, to mixed success.  What Creepshow did was allow King to team up with one of his idols and write the script as well.  The film ended up being both a tribute to the old-fashioned horror anthology as well as EC Comics, using several of their artists for the poster art, comic panels and animation in the film. The result was not ...

With all the recent talk of nuclear destruction, it's easy to forget the many ways we can destroy the human race without the benefit of someone pushing a big red button.  In fact, the fact that it is humans with families manning those buttons that have many times saved us from accidental destruction. But what if a determined maniac (or group of maniacs) got their hands on something much more subtle than a nuclear weapon?  Truth is, there are a lot of diseases that we pat ourselves on the back for eradicating sitting on ice in various places around the world and it is the height of naivety to believe it hasn't crossed someone's mind on how to turn it into a weapon. And what if someone with the resources to do so got their hands on that weapon?  That is the scenario we are confronted with in The Satan Bug . At a remote California research facility called Station Three, Dr. Baxter (Henry Beckman) has created a new weaponized strain they nickname the Satan Bug.  ...

"The third one is always the worst."  Jean Grey (Sophie Turner) makes this comment after seeing Return of the Jedi and the conversation turns to which Star Wars movie (as of 1983) was the best.  It's also a not-so-subtle swipe at X-Men: Last Stand , the disappointing third chapter that wrapped up the original set of X-Men movies.  I wonder if Bryan Singer knew what he was doling out with X-Men: Apocalypse, or if that line is just a case of unintentional irony. Not that this movie is as bad as Last Stand.  On the contrary, it is still entertaining, but it caps off a series of films that redeemed the entire franchise.  The DC comic movies have largely been garbage, the main Marvel Universe is stuck in a rut even if some of the films do have quality elements, but X-Men , until this movie, was able to do much more with its material. En Sabah Nur (Oscar Isaac) is worshiped as a god in Egypt, along with his four compatriots.  With the aid of a pyramid using...

More and more it seems that movies with lower budgets are turning toward horror.  I know there is still a large soft-core porn market as well, but that has existed forever, and probably will as long as Cinemax and direct-to-video (or, in the modern sense, direct-to-streaming) is there to carry it.  Horror is typically where it is at in any medium if you want to do something relatively on the cheap and get some attention. This is a rather recent phenomena, as exploitation films tended to be largely action-based in the past.  I can understand why they are not these days.  Budgets are typically too high, and many of the typical topics are now multi-season series on FX or Netflix.  No matter how much inspiration you take from The Wild Angels , Hell's Angels or even Born Losers, your biker film is still going to be compared to Sons of Anarchy. It is with great surprise (and happiness) that there is still room for something like Nightcrawler.   Louis...