My third Hooptober begins!

The Ghost Cat and the Mysterious Shamisen is one of the last remaining pre-war films from Japan. I am extremely privileged to have access to a subtitled copy and wonder how the film itself survived. Perhaps it was preserved due to sheer luck, but it eerily uses techniques seen many decades later in Japanese horror classics. Its survival must have been something supernatural. For example, director Kiyohiko Ushihara seems to channel the mastery of camera and…

Somewhere among the different versions of Dawn of the Dead I've seen is the film that's consider a great zombie film. Argento's cut achieves its faster pace by cutting scenes short, but its musical cues feel a bit repetitive. George Romero's theatrical cut tries to be more selective with Goblin's score and fills out the other scenes with more traditional production music. Sometimes it gives the theatrical cut a strongly defined tone that Argento's cut doesn't quite match. Other times…

Last time I watched The China Syndrome I was in the mood for nuclear fear. Its a type of film that exploits fear of science, at varying degrees of seriousness. James Bridges' film isn't nearly as somber as Threads, or as thrilling as Fail Safe, but it does well with the technical aspects of deadly nuclear power.

While I was born well after the 70s, something about the intricate design and dizzying complexity of the Cold War era style Ventana…

Films like Safe can feel almost impossible to write about or describe. It’s basically a story about a lonely WASP housewife trying to figure out what is causing her to feel sick. At a deeper level, it can take on any number of interpretations.

The latter half of the film is very tense as it transitions into a cult like setting. I want to stress that I only say "cult like" because there is an expectation for a horrible reveal.…

I wish I had seen Little Shop of Horrors in better health. As I'm writing this, my voice is all shot to hell. It was made worse by the film starting just after midnight and a scratched 35 mm print. Despite all that, the songs were a blast and the puppetry was beyond my expectations.
Just how in the hell did they pull off the scene where Audrey II (fantastically voiced by Levi Stubbs) tries to take a bite out…