Sony’s Icons of Horror Collection: Sam Katzman DVD set presents an entertaining selection of low-budget genre movies from the mid-’50s. While they’d never be mistaken for art, they’re undeniably entertaining.
A grab-bag of recently watched movies, some old, some new, covering a wide range of genres and styles.
A variety of approaches to horror are on display in Guillermo Del Toro’s new film Crimson Peak; a book about Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Stephen King’s The Shining which gathers together articles, essays and interviews from the ’80s to the present; and a disturbing 1983 Austrian film based on a real-life multiple murder, Gerald Kargl and Zbigniew Rybczynski’s Angst.
Since the end of the studio system, the term B-movie has come to refer more to content than budget; recent viewing covers a wide range of styles within this nebulous category.
Hard to Be a God (2013), the final film of Russian director Aleksei German, more than a decade in the making, is a dense, obscure, visually stunning adaptation of a novel by the Strugatsky brothers. While German’s storytelling is extremely oblique, this depiction of a brutal medieval world which eventually corrupts Earth scientists who have traveled there to study a Renaissance which failed to happen, is realized with such visceral power that the viewer becomes immersed in the filth, madness and horror, occasionally gleaning brief moments of transcendent beauty.
Cagey Films publishes the second volume of The David Lynch Files, this one featuring a journal of the production of Dune in Mexico during the summer of 1983, plus a number of previously unpublished interviews with Lynch and others working on the movie.
While Mario Bava paved the way for Italian horror, directors who followed him pushed the limits of violence, foremost among them Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci.
The visual master Mario Bava virtually invented the Italian genre called giallo, influencing generations of filmmakers who followed and built on his stylistic and thematic example. Arrow video has been releasing a series of impressive editions of Bava’s films on Blu-ray, offering alternative versions and a rich array of supplements to provide a critical and historical context for his work.
The visual master Mario Bava virtually invented the Italian horror film, influencing generations of filmmakers who followed and built on his stylistic and thematic example. Arrow video has been releasing a series of impressive editions of Bava’s films on Blu-ray, offering alternative versions and a rich array of supplements to provide a critical and historical context for his work.
Cagey Films has begun to issue content from the site, as well as new material, in a projected series of eBooks, beginning with a volume devoted to David Lynch and the making of Eraserhead.