Category: horror

Horror Comedy Trivia: High Spirits

I am a long-time devoted fan of High Spirits. I can’t count the times I have watched it throughout my life. It is one of those movies I go to when I need cheering up, and it stands up as a great and perfectly silly movie each time I watch it every decade I grow older.

I learned from IMDb Trivia that writer and director Neil Jordan maintained that the released version of the film was very different from the one that he shot. He was more or less excluded from the editing process of the final cut. He insists that his version is still locked away in a vault.

I am not sure how I would react to seeing the director’s cut of High Spirits, but I would be curious to find out! I hope that version still exists somewhere to be shared one day.

Image from Film on Paper

Horror Cinema: Terrifier 2

While I am a fan of gore, I found Terrifier 2 intense. Its saving grace and what kept me watching it through the most shocking scenes was its campiness. The clown villain’s playfulness and silliness during gross moments made the violence comical, like life is a sick joke, which I can relate to. I enjoyed Terrifier, and I found its sequel to be a great addition to the franchise. It not only brought the senseless gore that made the first movie good, but it went further with a creepy new character and scenes of purely senseless gore — scenes that were only added to the narrative to show the wildest kills. Not a horror movie for a weak stomach!

Leone, Damien. Terrifier 2, Bloody Disgusting, 2022.

Horror Cinema: Our House

Ghost stories are my favorite, and I was excited to discover Our House, a full-on supernatural, ghost-story movie. While I love ghost stories, a good one is difficult to find, and I was impressed by this one. The incorporation of the ghosts into the narrative was natural and sympathetic at first, and their slow growth into sinister forces was suspenseful and interesting. A solid take on a ghost story and a good movie!

Scott Burns, Anthony. Our House, IFC Midnight / Elevation Pictures, 2018.

Horror Cinema Trivia: Night of the Living Dead (1968)

The original idea for George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead was for an alien comedy.

In early 1967, Romero, along with writer John A. Russo and actor Rudy Ricci, were working together at the Latent Image, their Pittsburgh-based commercial film company, when they decided it was time to try their hand at making a feature film. Though the effort eventually produced Night of the Living Dead, early concepts were very different. Russo initially thought of making a horror comedy about “hot-rodding” alien teens who would visit Earth, meet up with human teenagers, and generally cause mischief with the help of a cosmic pet called “The Mess.” The group’s budgetary constraints made this concept impossible, so Russo instead dreamed up an idea about a boy who runs away from home, only to discover a field of corpses under glass, which were rotting to the liking of alien creatures who would eventually consume them. Russo presented this idea to Romero, who latched on to the flesh-eating angle.

Find more insights on Romero’s zombie classic at 10 Facts About George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead on Mental Floss.

Horror Cinema: There’s Something Wrong With the Children / The Ruins

There’s Something Wrong With the Children succeeds in creepy, unsettling moments. The story, however, fails to satisfy, and I left the movie with more questions than answers. Throughout the movie, I kept thinking about a much better film that had what felt like a similar premise of nature as the villain, The Ruins (2008). I’m not sure, though, if nature was the villain in There’s Something Wrong With the Children, or if it was supernatural. If the story had provided more background on the mysteries it introduced, I think the whole would have been better.

Benjamin, Roxanne. There’s Something Wrong With the Children, Paramount Home Entertainment, 2023.

If you have not yet seen The Ruins, I highly recommend it. The horror is a slow build, but, once it hits its peak, you will be in for a gore show that you could never imagine.

Smith, Carter. The Ruins, Dreamworks / Paramount Distribution, 2008.

The Menaced Assassin

René Magritte, The Menaced Assassin (1927)

“In this eerie surrealist painting, a murderer nonchalantly haunts the scene of his crime, unaware that it is surrounded by detectives who wait to pounce on the perpetrator. How long have they been watching? It seems that the voyeurs at the window and the bowler-hatted men, one armed with a club and another with a net, who stand concealed in the room must have been there when the woman was killed. They are complicit. Magritte’s deadpan art unsettles by melting boundaries between reality and fantasy. Here he reveals that crime and punishment are mirrors of each other, that detectives and police officers are mysteriously dependent on the existence of crime.”

From The Guardian: The top 10 crime scenes in art