Television | Cagey Films

Ghosts, demons and cinematic experiments

Posted on May 29, 2024May 28, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Cruel doctor Age Krüger (Udo Kier) returns from the dead to sire a son in Lars von Trier's The Kingdom (1994)

The new MUBI seven-disk set of Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom provides an opportunity to re-visit the original two seasons from 1994 and 1997 and finally see the elaborate blend of satire, soap opera and ghost story reach some kind of conclusion with the third season made in 2022; while it proves impossible to attain the unique energy of the original, which achieved a perfect balance between horror and comedy, The Kingdom: Exodus does tie up many of the loose ends left dangling for twenty-five years. An even stranger piece of experimental horror has been restored by Le Chat Qui Fume with their 4K edition of Leslie Stevens’ Incubus (1966) in which a pre-Kirk William Shatner confronts demons while speaking Esperanto.

Fall 2023 viewing, part three

Posted on October 25, 2023February 5, 2024 by Kenneth George Godwin

Photographer Jennifer (Charlee Danielson) captures her lovers in the moment of fatal ecstasy in Frank Henenlotter's Bad Biology (2008)

Something for everyone this week – killer clowns, sea monsters, Gothic horrors, a high-speed ambulance and haunted buildings, werewolves, Nazi cannibals and anatomical abnormalities, murder and madness.

Vinegar Syndrome summer binge, part one

Posted on July 28, 2021July 25, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Young Elijah Wood watches as his father is murdered in Mike Robe's Child in the Night (1990)

I’ve recently been binging a lot of Vinegar Syndrome releases, including a box set of made-for-TV mysteries, an odd bit of exploitation-horror made in Florida by a French director, and one of the most brain-bendingly bad movies I’ve ever seen.

Recent Kino Lorber releases

Posted on January 13, 2021November 21, 2021 by Kenneth George Godwin

Gunslinger Drake Robey (Michael Pate) is at home in the graveyard in Edward Dein's Curse of the Undead (1959)

Kino Lorber’s prolific slate of releases is making a wide range of genre of genre titles available, some for the first time in decades – including some from the golden age of made-for-television movies like Paul Wendkos’ Fear No Evil (1968) and Jerry London’s Killdozer (1974)

My one sad shot at stardom

Posted on January 23, 2016December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Yes, that's me, the least convincing state trooper ever to appear on screen, hanging out with the very affable Ed Asner on the set of Paul Shapiro's Heads (1994)

In 1993, back when I was working at the Winnipeg Film Group, I was offered a few days work as an extra on a TV movie being shot here: which is how I became the least convincing state trooper ever to appear on screen in Paul Shapiro’s serial killer comedy Heads, starring Jon Cryer, Ed Asner and Jennifer Tilly.

October 30, 1938: When Welles Unleashed Wells

Posted on October 30, 2013December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

Although radio broadcasting arrived more than two decades after the birth of cinema – and movies were the dominant form of entertainment in North America for the first half of the century – radio was in some ways a far more important and influential medium. Looking back from the perspective of our wired (and wireless) […]

Binge Viewing

Posted on September 19, 2012December 10, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

I recently came across a comment (can’t recall where) that it’s wrong to binge on TV series now that we can get whole seasons on disk. The art form is designed to be watched and appreciated in installments and watching many episodes back to back prevents absorbing each one individually. I do see the point, […]

Reviewing documentary

Posted on August 3, 2011February 23, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

A while back, I signed up with BlogCritics. The idea was that writing regular reviews for them would keep me from getting lazy; in addition, cross-linking with my blog would, I hoped, boost traffic for my own site. But I’ve only posted four reviews with them since February, while keeping up a regular weekly schedule […]

Year End 2010

Posted on January 2, 2011December 8, 2022 by Kenneth George Godwin

I find that my viewing habits in recent years have become so random and eclectic that the idea of coming up with a “year’s best” list is not only difficult – it borders on the arbitrary and meaningless. Much of what I watch these days consists of older films either just caught up with, or […]

Tag: Television