Category: movies/tv

• Best line, by far: Samuel Jackson’s SNAKES ON A PLANE one, here
• Best monster kill: that last one in FEAST
• Best justice: in the bathroom stall at the end of HOSTEL
• Best subtitle: “[Zombies Panting],” from SLiTHER
• Best remake: THE HILLS HAVE EYES
• Best prequel to a remake: TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE: THE BEGINNING
• Best tanning bed death(s): FINAL DESTINATION 3
• Scene you (I) most wanted to look away from:¹ either that rib-splitter early on in SAW 3 or Jigsaw̵

Showed up at the wrong bookstore Halloween night to do a DEMON THEORY signing — kind of awkward when you’re wearing a Jason mask, carrying a big fake knife — but finally found the right one, had a blast (notice all the LISEY’S STORYs behind me there, yeah?). Rented FEAST that night as well, though of course had to watch HALLOWEEN instead, just because I’m sentimental, and half-trying to study it, I suppose, to see where there’s room for Ro…

Man, if everybody doesn’t have a list, right? I’d guess, if I took the time to look, somebody’s already got one like this, I mean: things they’re tired enough of in horror to make a public plea that those things stop, lest the whole genre cave in or something. Or, really, those things we get tired of in our chosen reading areas (assuming we use the marketing terms [Western, Horror, Romance, Thriller, Mystery, Erotica, Historical, ‘Literary,&…

Of all the footnotes I cut from DEMON THEORY, there’s an OLIVER TWIST / ANIMAL HOUSE one that I maybe miss the most. There was this fun, ceramic-pig oriented Pynchon-one too though, I suppose, which scuttled through PLAYBOY and I forget all-where. And more and more. This, though, it’s one that I never actually put to paper, only considered: getting to LOST via MILLENIUM via X-FILES or something — Terry O’Quinn seems to be in about everything I like. E…

• if someone at a party gets some kind of news that makes them drop what they’re drinking, the glass won’t shatter
• if two people are fighting and one of them has a pistol, then that person with the pistol will win. Which is to say we won’t have to have that shot of the gun sliding away
• if anybody’s carrying a bag of groceries, then not only will it have toilet paper instead of a loaf of French bread, but the bag won’t be paper either
• if a character is despon

First, as this is just all about the end of THE DESCENT, then, yep, it’s just chock full of spoilers. So stop here if:

• you’ve not seen it
• you’re going to see it
• and you don’t like to know how a thing’s going to end

Not meaning to say THE DESCENT has a gimmick-ending or anything — we don’t change perspective and slowly become aware that these are just action figures in a toy bin. But the two endings it does have, in being at odds with each oth…

Finally rigged it up, here. It’s in Javascript, so hopefully your browser’s got that turned on. No cookies, though. And, the only possible glitch I can see, really, aside from not knowing the answers, is that if you’ve got your screen-resolution set too low, then things might get a little bit hinky. Which is the first time I’ve ever used that word. And yeah, it’s not set up to take comments/corrections/answers, so, if you’ve got any, ju…

well, okay, Pinhead’s maybe not a true and classic slasher. but he’s got the look, anyway, and has been pretty vital to this project we call horror. was going to synch some music up with this, but have no clue how, without going the Flash-route. anyway, the bigger version’s here.

as to why I killed two hours of my afternoon making this:

• it’s lead-in for a Horror-IQ type quiz I’ll be posting here, as soon as I get a copy of Demon Theory, so I can track d

Just because I don’t write reviews anymore. Just because they seem to use the same part of my brain I use to write. Anyway, The Omen: a remake in a year of remakes, yeah. Not quite as ‘reinterpretive’ as When a Stranger Calls and not quite as ‘faithful’ as Psycho, but, too, I’m not yet confident it’s the ‘improvement’ The Hills Have Eyes might have been (not that Craven messed up or was hamstrung by budget or any of that, …

1. Another BLEED INTO ME review. Montana Magazine. Here.
2. This, from up front in Amy Taubin’s BFI book on TAXI DRIVER:

Really, it is not violence at all which is the ‘point’ of the western movie, but a certain image of man, a style, which expresses itself most clearly in violence. Watch a child with his toy guns and you will see: what most interests him is not (as we so much fear) the fantasy of hurting others, but to work out how a man might look when he shoots or is shot