In the long shadow of Basic Instinct, every hack with a camera and a half-dead libido tried to shoot the next big thing in silk sheets and saxophone scores. Some got lucky. Others ended up directing Snapdragon, a film so listless it makes a hangover feel like jazz. This one comes from director Worth Keeter—yes, … Read More “Snapdragon (1993): A Postcard from the Neon Graveyard” »
Let’s peel it back: The Wolf Hour slinks into your living room like a dusty bottle of bourbon no one wanted—smells promising, but empties without a scorched throat. Set in the scorcher of an unrelenting 1977 summer, Naomi Watts plays June Leigh, a debut novelist holed up in a South Bronx walk-up so decayed it … Read More “The Wolf Hour (2019) – Naomi Watts in a slow burn that fizzles” »
As a kid glued to the TV in the 1980s, professional wrestling was a staple in my weekend diet—equal parts spectacle and sweaty soap opera. The names were larger than life: Hogan, Savage, Andre…and among the women, there was only a few names that ever filtered down into my living room: The Fabulous Moolah and … Read More “Queen of the Ring (2024) – A Dive Into Wrestling With An Awkward Landing” »
Some films are so bad they circle back to charming. Deadly Illusion doesn’t quite make the loop. Directed by Larry Cohen—yes, It’s Alive, Q: The Winged Serpent, and the guy who somehow turned killer yogurt into a metaphor for capitalism—Deadly Illusion tries to be a noir crime thriller but ends up feeling like a fever … Read More “Deadly Illusion (1987): Lando Calrissian vs. Logic” »
There’s something uniquely American about Norma Rae—and by that, I mean its ability to confuse a mediocre domestic drama with an underdog story of “working-class revolution.” It’s a film that takes a soggy ham sandwich of blue-collar angst, sprinkles on some union propaganda, and serves it on a lunch tray of feminist martyrdom. For reasons … Read More “Norma Rae (1979): A Union Made in Heaven, and a Marriage Made in Hell” »
Let’s get one thing out of the way: if you’ve made it to the third It’s Alive film, you’ve already committed yourself to watching mutant killer babies scuttle across the screen like demonic crab cakes. At this point, you’re not here for subtlety or emotional nuance. You’re here because you want to see latex prosthetics, … Read More “It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive (1987): The Baby’s All Grown Up and So Is the Absurdity” »
Let’s set the scene. It’s 1987. You’re 17. Hormones are on high alert. You rent something from the horror aisle at your local video store called A Return to Salem’s Lot, expecting a Stephen King bloodbath, and instead you get: a cynical anthropologist dad, his surly brat of a son, a town full of bourgeois … Read More “A Return to Salem’s Lot (1987): The Weird, the Wild, and the Wonderful Waste of Hemoglobin” »
Let’s get this out of the way: The Stuff isn’t a great movie. It might not even be a good one. But damned if it isn’t the best movie ever made about a sentient dessert trying to conquer America through late-night cravings and lax FDA regulation. Directed by B-movie maverick Larry Cohen—who never met a … Read More “The Stuff (1985): The Snack That Eats You” »
Larry Cohen once again wades into the muddy waters of exploitation and emerges with something far stranger and more watchable than it has any right to be. Special Effects (1984) is a trash-noir daydream filtered through a cracked lens, smeared in sleaze, soaked in paranoia, and held together by the slow-burning sorcery of Zoe Lund’s … Read More “Special Effects (1984) – Sleaze, Smoke, and Zoe Lund’s Hypnotic Eyes” »
Larry Cohen’s career has always danced on the edge of brilliance and bad taste, like a drunken magician with a switchblade. When he’s on—It’s Alive, God Told Me To, The Stuff—he’s a maestro of high-concept pulp, a king of subversive B-movie madness. But 1984’s Perfect Strangers feels less like a wild swing at genre convention … Read More “Perfect Strangers (1984) – Cohen Misses the Mark in a Hitman-Loves-Mom Misfire” »
