******BLOODY GOOD SPOILERS!****** As a little kid, my favorite magazine (made of paper, for younger readers) was editor-publisher Forry Ackerman’s legendary “Famous Monsters of Filmland,” the behind-the-scenes horror magazine that launched more than a few careers, and inspired many of its young readers (my then eight-year old self among them). One image from that magazine…
Tag: vampires
Retro-Musings for Halloween: “Nosferatu” (1922) rises at the historic Mission Inn hotel with a live music score…
******103-YEAR OLD BLOODSUCKING SPOILERS!****** I’m hoping readers aren’t too tired of my Halloween content (my favorite holiday), because this one should be the last one for this season…I think (?). This past weekend, I went to see my first-ever public screening of a silent movie with a live organist supplying the soundtrack! I own a…
Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” (2025) gives much more than is borrowed…
******BLOODSUCKING SPOILERS!****** Written and directed by Ryan Coogler (“Fruitvale Station,” “Black Panther,” “Creed”), “Sinners” is a mashup of wildly different genres; Depression-era gangster flicks, Jim Crow-era dramas, and vampires. That’s a challenging mix, and “Sinners” admittedly borrows many beats of its story from 1996’s crime-drama/vampire mashup “From Dusk Till Dawn.” “Sinners” even owes a nod…
Retro-Musings: Mario Bava’s “Planet of the Vampires” (1965) is a clunky yet stylish precursor to “ALIEN”…
******SPACESHIP-SIZED SPOILERS!****** In 1965, famed gothic horror filmmaker Mario Bava (1914-1980)—director of movies such as “Black Sunday,” “Blood and Black Lace,” and “Black Sabbath”—made a rare foray into science fiction. While “Planet of the Vampires” (original Italian title, “Terrore nello Spazio”) isn’t representative of Bava’s best work, it’s among his most visually creative, influencing generations…
Biting the bullets: “From Dusk Till Dawn,” 25 years later…
*****BLOOD-SUCKING SPOILERS!***** Dawn of “From Dusk…” I still vividly remember trying to get my friends to come with me to see the new vampire/crime-drama flick from director Robert Rodriguez (“Desperado” “Spy Kids”) and writer/actor Quentin Tarantino (“Pulp Fiction,” “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” ) back in February of 1996. I was a bachelor in…
Retro-Musings: Is the Spanish-language version of 1931’s “Dracula” the better bloodsucker?
Monster Mash. As a kid I loved the Universal Studios monster movies. I was about born about 30-40 years too late to have caught them in original theatrical release, so I used my parent’s old 25” Zenith to get my monster movie fixes. I used to collect the Aurora model kits of the monsters as…
2009’s “Daybreakers” is a sci-fi take on vampirism with new relevance today…
Exposure. Just over ten years ago, I went to see an intriguing, low-budget ($20 million) horror/sci-fi flick from two guys I’d never heard of… brothers Michael & Peter Spierig; two young filmmakers who’d crafted an intriguing story of humans being an endangered species in a very near-future (only ten years away) where a plague from…