A Heist With Wrinkles and Romance By 1987, Peter Falk had already perfected the art of looking like a man who knows more than he’s letting on. In Columbo, it made him an immortal TV detective. In Happy New Year, it makes him an aging jewel thief disguised as a cranky grandpa. Either way, Falk’s … Read More “Happy New Year (1987): Columbo Goes to Palm Beach” »
Lovecraft, If Lovecraft Had Been Very Tired On paper, Forever Evil sounds like a solid idea: take Lovecraft’s Colour Out of Space-style cosmic dread, throw in zombies, occult books, and a cult bent on reviving an ancient god, and set it against the backdrop of the Eighties horror boom. In reality, the film plays like … Read More “Forever Evil (1987): Yog-Kothag and the Case of the Exploding Cow Budget” »
Snow, Secrets, and Severed Digits If you’re going to set a thriller in the middle of nowhere, in the dead of winter, you better make sure it earns the title. Arthur Penn’s Dead of Winter delivers exactly what it promises: snow that never stops falling, secrets piled as high as the drifts, and at least … Read More “Dead of Winter (1987): Mary Steenburgen Loses a Finger but Steals the Show” »
A Lovecraft Adaptation Nobody Asked For H. P. Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space is one of his most haunting stories: cosmic horror, madness, decay, and the slow poisoning of everything familiar. It’s about despair on a planetary scale. The Curse, directed by David Keith in his first—and tellingly, last—directorial effort, is an “adaptation” in … Read More “The Curse (1987): The Colour Out of Competence” »
When Anthologies Go on Sale The first Creepshow (1982) was a giddy tribute to EC horror comics: bright colors, lurid tales, and George A. Romero’s eye for ghoulish humor. It was lightning in a bottle. Creepshow 2 is what happens when someone drops that bottle on the floor and decides to scoop up the shards … Read More “Creepshow 2 (1987): The Comic Book Nobody Wanted to Read Twice” »
A Cult Classic… or Just Cult Behavior? Every generation has a movie they insist is a “masterpiece,” and for Hong Kong audiences in the late 1980s, A Chinese Ghost Story became that movie. It had romance, comedy, martial arts, Taoist exorcisms, and a ghost story all rolled into one. Unfortunately, it also had tonal whiplash, … Read More “A Chinese Ghost Story (1987): Boo! Now Hand Me My Hair Gel” »
A Thanksgiving Tradition: Family, Football, and Fratricide Most holiday slashers pick the obvious ones: Christmas (Silent Night, Deadly Night), Halloween (Halloween), Valentine’s Day (My Bloody Valentine). But Blood Rage—shot in 1983, buried until 1987—had the audacity to say, “No, let’s do Thanksgiving.” Why? Because nothing says gratitude like a carving fork lodged in your throat. … Read More “Blood Rage (1987): Turkey Day With Extra Gravy (and Brains)” »
Movie, Inside a Movie, Inside a Nervous Breakdown If most horror films are roller coasters, Anguish is a funhouse mirror dropped on your head. Bigas Luna’s metafictional experiment is a horror movie that watches you watching it. It’s Inception for people who think dreams should involve scalpels and optometry. The structure is absurd: a movie … Read More “Anguish (1987): Cinema Eats Itself Alive” »
Ghost Rider With a Better Car The Wraith is the kind of movie you stumble across at 2 a.m. on cable, and you stay because you can’t quite believe what you’re seeing: Charlie Sheen as a ghost in a race car, Sherilyn Fenn looking so beautiful the desert itself blushed, Nick Cassavetes playing a bleach-blond … Read More “The Wraith (1986): Death, Dodge, and Desert Moonlight” »
When the Weather Is the Star There are horror films where the villain is iconic (Halloween’s Michael Myers, A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Freddy Krueger), and then there are horror films where the villain is… the weather. Nico Mastorakis’ The Wind sets itself on a picturesque Greek island, then asks us to be afraid of … Read More “The Wind (1986): Blowing Hot Air in Greece” »