"A REALLY INTELLIGENT INTERVIEWER." -- Lance Henriksen "QUITE SIMPLY, THE BEST HORROR-THEMED BLOG ON THE NET." -- Joe Maddrey,Nightmares in Red White & Blue
If there's one thing I've tried to do around here, it's champion the cause of foreign language horror flicks that I think deserve a look-see from English-speaking moviegoers. And one that I've mentioned before is the Swedish vampire film Låt den Rätte Komma In, or Let the Right One In. You can check out the impressive trailer and my previous comments here.
Earlier today, Robert DeNiro's Tribeca Film Festival announced its complete "Midnight" (read: genre) movie lineup, and I was very pleased to see Let the Right One In listed. As I did recently for Diary of the Dead, I just might make the journey down to NYC to check that one out--and if I do, you can naturally expect a full write-up.
Famed British occultist/pornographer/drug addict/megalomaniac Aleister Crowley has long been a folk hero of sorts within the heavy metal community. And now, Iron Maiden lead singer Bruce Dickinson--another idol of dragon T-shirt wearing basement dwellers everywhere--is bringing Crowley to the screen for the very first time.
Dickinson co-wrote the film Chemical Wedding with Julian Doyle, the director. In the already completed movie, acclaimed English actor Simon Callow plays Haddo, a college professor who brings Crowley back from the dead. Interestingly, Haddo was the name of a character inspired by Crowley in W. Somerset Maugham's 1908 novel The Magician.
Chemical Wedding is set to be unveiled at the Cannes Film Festival in May. According to Yahoo! Music News, Dickinson plans to fly a bunch of guests out to France in his own Boeing 757 for the premiere. Expect a full theatrical release for Chemical Wedding this summer.
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The legend of the Vault continues to grow. Earlier today, I was invited by Zombo's Closet of Horror to join the newly inaugurated League of Tanna Tea-Drinkers, a not-so-secret society of horror bloggers. I'm pleased by the honor, and especially love the Kharis-themed insignia! Other invited bloggers include Frankensteinia's Pierre Fournier and Kim Paffenroth, author of Gospel of the Living Dead, which sits proudly displayed on the Vault of Horror bookshelf.
There aren't many true horror fiction classics that are begging for a new film adaptation, but Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray is one of them. And now it will be happening, according to Digital Spy, which reported earlier today that a British movie is in the works.
Despite the fact that the novel (Wilde's only one) has been adapted for the small and large screen on 13 different occasions over the past century, there's really only one that's considered to be worthy of mention. That's the 1945 production starring Hurd Hatfield in the title role, along with Peter Lawford, Donna Reed and a young Angela Lansbury, back when was hot (if such a thing is imaginable). And it's not even available on DVD, believe it or not.
This new adaptation will be directed by Oliver Parker, who previously adapted Wilde's stage plays An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest for the screen. The story of a vain and corrupt man who puts off his own aging process by transferring his age into a painting of himself, Dorian Gray is decidedly darker material than Wilde's stage work, and Parker acknowledges that, saying he is "going for the horror-thriller angle of the story. It's different [from] adapting one of Wilde's plays."
Parker is no stranger to horror, having played roles in the first two Hellraiser films, as well as Nightbreed, another Clive Barker project. This one could be very interesting.
Hello, all. You can call me RayRay, the name so nice you say it twice.
I would like to say that I am honored to have been invited to contribute to this page. I was pretty much offered an outlet for my opinions, on subjects which I love, which are monsters and horror movies. I assumed books and stories were also part of the fare. For that I have to say: thank you.
I have to confess that horror is not my favorite genre. I would have to say that I am a bit more of a science-fiction/fantasy fan more than anything, but from there you get some of the best monsters. And honestly, I love monsters. And that is the one thing movies have over books - you get to see the monsters. And science-fiction horror is a big sub-genre, and has some of the best monsters, so I guess I am in the right ballpark. And I love me a good space monster, be it intelligent or just plain mean. And there are soooo many good monsters from outer space.
Let's see, there are the hunters from the "Predator" franchise. They were a pretty good concept, and the first movie, with Arnold, had some very serious horror elements, especially when the small commando unit finally figures out that they are actually being hunted. The scene occurs during broad daylight (albeit in the jungle) which really adds to the tension. You have Schwarzenegger looking around, bug-eyed, at this unseen force which had just (if memory serves) picked off one of his own men. The horror implications of the movie wear off, though, once it is Arnold alone, and the creature's camouflage stops working, and you can see it is a man in a suit. At this point it more or less devolves back into a pure action flick, though it is still a good movie.
The monster in Predator is scary when you can't see him, and don't what he's about, except he really likes spinal columns. The ability to move about the trees is also disconcerting, as is the speed and obvious toughness. But when you get your first good look at him, when he emerges from the river and his camo-unit goes haywire, he is somewhat strange, but aside from his mask and his huge size, it's just a really big man, and all tension is dissipated.
But one of the great monsters from outer space, and of all time, are the bio-mechanical, H.R. Geiger-created "Aliens." Sure, I know, this is nothing new. Everyone has seen the movies of this franchise. Everyone knows that this is a very scary set of monsters. But I want to put my own 2 cents in. The original, Ridley Scott's Alien, is a pure classic, and the follow up, James Cameron's aptly titled Aliens, is one of the few sequels which actually stands up to the original [See: The Godfather]. (I will not comment at this time about the following movies of this franchise, or the AVP series.) The monster is the secret of these two movies. Simply, it is one of the most terrifying monsters ever thought up. To quote: "Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility." It is tough enough to withstand hard vacuum, and even a good blast by a spaceship's engines. It is essentially a black insectizoidal armored shell over what otherwise appears to be a humanoidal skeleton, but with a barbed tail, and a haunting eyeless face over a double mouth with teeth that appear to be metallic in nature. It is the very visage of soullessness - it is malevolent beyond a vicious animal; perhaps manufactured, but to what end? Even without eyes you can feel an inhuman consciousness burning into you, like when it is contemplating the cat, Jones, towards the end of Alien. And I haven't even mentioned its blood type or its less than charming form of procreation. It is almost industrialized horror made animal - manufactured in an assembly line, one of a series, in identical rows, oozing the slime from within the machine, precise in its actions, measured in its movements, hidden in the nooks of its nest. What isn't human is insect; what isn't flesh is chitin or metal. It is almost a realization of Kafka's bad dream, but we don't get to be the bug - the bug comes from us. All in all, I have long thought of this creature as the #2 scariest monster in horror, all time.
Now, that last sentence is begging a question: well, RayRay, what's the scariest monster of all time? I can tell you, and it is, in my humblest of opinions, also one of the best movies ever made: John Carpenter's The Thing. The Thing, you say? That bomb from 1981? The remake that was missing a cameo from James Arness? Yeah, that one. If you never saw it, then do so, and make sure the lights are out. If you don't want it spoiled for you, read no further.
There is nothing about this movie that is lacking. It is cast wonderfully. It's got a great script. It's screen shots and angles are great. The effects are top notch, and have held up for a quarter of a century, well into the CGI years (Rob Bottin did it right, and did it old school). And it has the single most terrifying monster of all time. The film combines the alienation from civilization with the alienation between the characters, where trust becomes the most valuable and vanishing commodity, in the midst of an Antarctic winter storm. And all with the lurking, oppressive horror of a monster that could be......is........one or more of the fellow men you are trapped with. Even after the monster is revealed for the first time - when it attacks the dogs in the kennel - it is immediately hidden again. This is the type of movie you watch over and over again, looking in the background to see if there was a raised eyebrow or a glance that you missed.
The Thing is such an effective monster as it can infiltrate at will; it can change shape at will; the forms it can take on are essentially unlimited; it possesses the souls of its victims (rare for a sci-fi monster from space); and when it attacks it...........well, what it does is not exactly explicable but it comes with generous helpings of slime and tentacles and wholly inhuman shapes, a horror of Lovecraftian proportions (more on the great HPL another time). As a victim you become just part of the creatures' coterie or its repertoire, depending on how you think of it. Also, once you begin to give it thought, the ramifications of this creature that absorbs its victims are troubling. Clearly, early in the movie at least one member of Outpost 31 is infected by the alien creature via the dog from the Norwegian base. Yet that person is not revealed until much, much later (it is either Norris, Palmer, or Blair, you never find out; and that person infects at least one or more of the others). At what point does that person cease to be that person? During the scene when MacReady, the putative hero, is performing the "blood and hot needle" tests, just before he tests Palmer's blood, you see resignation flash across Palmer's face. Is that Palmer, or the Thing, who is so resigned, sighing to himself? If it creates a perfect imitation, does the underlying person EVER stop being?
It is often forgotten (at least by me until it was pointed out) that MacReady, the pilot and aforementioned hero, takes a long helicopter ride to the site of the actual spaceship with the two characters that must have already been at least infected, if not full blown 'things' at the time - Palmer and Norris. Does anything happen off camera we don't find out about? Probably not, but that gnawing doubt is part of the essence of this monster.
Continuing, the "Thing" is no dumb animal. Whatever it is, it knows what it wants, and it wants to get the hell off Antarctica. And in furtherance of this it is building itself a SPACESHIP (!!) from the parts of terrestrial vehicles (while distracting the humans from discovering this activity). This is an extrememly intelligent creature (even if it is acquired intellect), with a lot of technical know-how (same caveat). Couple the toughness to lie dormant and frozen for a thousand centuries with all of the above, and the result is the most capable and frightening movie monster I can think of. Ever. All time. Period. At least to this casual observer.
Have you ever spent years away from a film, then returned to it, having forgotten how much you loved it? It's a pretty common experience, and it's exactly the feeling I got after picking up the excellent special edition DVD release of Dan O'Bannon's The Return of the Living Dead a few weeks ago at my favorite video store, Kim's Underground in the heart of New York's East Village.
The Return of the Living Dead was not my first experience with horror. Those who have read my intro to the right know how I got my first truly visceral shock watching The Exorcist as a little tyke. There were also all those classic Universal and Hammer flicks that syndicated TV piped my way on lazy weekend afternoons. But the one that grabbed my attention and didn't let go, the film that truly sparked my lifelong fascination with the horror genre, was ROTLD (as its fans so succinctly call it.)
Much as with my very life, it all started thanks to my parents. You see, they were horror freaks from back in the days when I had to stay holed up in my room just listening to the screams from downstairs, too young to sit in on the "grown-up" horror movies. I remembered them being particularly giddy over a picture that had zombies running around yelling "BRAINS!!" Needless to say, my interest was piqued.
By the time I hit the seventh grade, I felt old enough to confidently walk into a video store and rent whatever I wanted (except those secret flicks they kept hidden behind that beaded curtain...) Months before my 12th birthday, I boldly stepped into Video Reflections on Brooklyn's 18th Avenue and rented it. It would be the first of many times.
You have to remember that this was the first modern horror film I had ever watched from beginning to end. As I watched it unfold, I was filled with a combination of revulsion and fascination--a mix that has been repeated countless times since. It's funny that my introduction to post-Hays Code horror would be a flick that takes such an unflinching look at death in all its morbid detail. That's part of what sold it for me--despite being a movie about supernatural living corpses, it also dealt quite realistically with the subject of mortality.
Like most pre-teen boys, I suffered from an acute lack of irony, which naturally led me to take the film quite seriously as pure horror. Almost all the comedy was totally lost on me, which made it all the more fun to watch it now and be able to laugh instead of shiver. It's amazing how much I didn't appreciate back then. I'm not ashamed to say that the Tarman still freaks me out completely. In fact, I've never admitted it before, but to this day I can't walk up a darkened, partially exposed stairway without irrationally worrying that he might reach up and grab my leg. Don't tell anyone.
I had never seen anything like ROTLD before, and grew fixated on it, watching it a bunch of times over late 1986 and early 1987. I even felt the need to share it with friends at school who were also interested in genre stuff, rehashing the plot to them over lunch in the cafeteria. For me, it was a gateway movie, opening the door to so much more. My next stop was the Evil Dead flicks; then came George Romero; and the rest, as they say, is history.
Funny how I saw ROTLD before even having seen the Romero movies they were partially spoofing. It's also pretty amazing to think that a movie that easily could've been a throw-away '80s shlockfest merely aping great horror films has come to be considered a great horror film in its own right, even worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as Romero's series. And with Shaun of the Dead now being the hip zom-com du jour, it's clear that Dan O'Bannon was a man way ahead of his time, and his film really is a well-crafted gem that gets better with age.
So thank you, Mr. O'Bannon, for making me the horror fanatic I am today. And yes, Linnea Quigley did have a little bit to do with it as well. I was after all, an 11-year-old boy.
Today I wanted to share some of the artwork of my former colleague, long-time friend and fellow Tex Avery admirer Keith Ciaramello. Keith is the proprietor of Kustom Kulture Gallery & Tattoo in scenic Baldwin, Long Island, and it was while perusing his fine website that I came across his latest creation, which I think you folks will appreciate:
Imagine being the lucky guy/gal walking around sporting that little number. If you want to see more of Keith's work, check out the galleries on the webpage. In the meantime, here's a few more of his horror-themed pieces:
I'm sensing a Frankenstein fetish here, Keith.
Mr. Ciaramello and I originally crossed paths back when we were both immersed in the wild and wacky world of WWE. In fact, for any wrestling fans out there, Keith has inked several grapplers, including Tazz and Perry Saturn (pictured here). He's also the guy who designed WWE's Undisputed Championship belt from a few years back.
If you happen to be in the New York area and want to get yourself a tat, or just check out some kooky pop art, drop in. And tell him B-Sol sent you.
I have to preface this by saying that I still haven't seen the newest remake of I Am Legend (hoping to catch it on IMAX in the next couple weeks). So I'm not entirely sure how it ends, although I have seen the Vincent Price adaptation. But for those who have seen Will Smith's version, this is the original ending of the film that got the Warner Bros. suits in an uproar and led to all those reshoots, courtesy of FirstShowing.Net:
Despite not having seen the movie, I found this to be powerful, gritty stuff, and I'm kind of sad it wasn't used. Even though Neville fails to save the vampires in the end, the ending still gives us a glimmer of hope. But alas, not the Hollywood ending they were looking for. I always find it funny how sci-fi/fantasy/horror often gets a bad rap as being unrealistic and escapist, yet whenever it deals with something seriously and realistically it gets the studios all nervous. There's a terrific book called J.R.R. Tolkien: Author of the Century which makes the argument that in spite of its metaphoric trappings, speculative fiction often deals with harsh realities even more head-on than mainstream fiction, and this would be a perfect example of just that.
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Some quicks things I wanted to touch on today:
First off, kudos to Karl Hungus on a terrific post yesterday. This is a rather spacious Vault, with more than enough room for fine guest writers.
Secondly, I wanted to announce that The Vault of Horror was honored with its very first blog award earlier this week:
Thanks to the one and only Horror Guy for bestowing this accolade upon me. Now, according to the rules of this particular award, I must now pass it along to ten blogs I consider worthy of it. Therefore, I will be handing these out to the following excellent sites:
Greetings readers, this is Karl Hungus (of karlhungus.com fame) contributing an article for The Vault of Horror, so I'd like to pay my respects to B-Sol for running an excellent blog, and I hope everyone finds this a worth addition to the Vault. The subject for this is of course Asian Horror, so without further delay, I'll begin.
Tetsuo: The Iron Man from director Shinya Tsukamoto was my first introduction to Japanese horror, and I think it was pivotal in bringing the darker side of Japanese cinema to western audiences. It was a terrifying black & white nightmare, an extremely twisted evolution of David Cronenberg's "Body Horror" where a man is slowly being transformed into living metal. That film absolutely chilled me one night when I was a teenager, and I'd say it started a love affair with horror from the east.
It was one of a few films that came out of Japan in the late 80's that widely set the bar for part of what we know as J-Horror today; the more visceral films that take their inspiration from the likes of Cannibal Holocaust. 1988's Evil Dead Trap (An unfortunate title, as the original Japanese name translates as "Prudent Trap") gave us a fairly thrashy, yet competent gore movie, where a female news reporter receives what appears to be a snuff video, and sets off to investigate whether or not it's real, leading her crew into a literally deadly trap, where they are tortured and killed in grotesque fashion.
Japan became rather infamous for extreme torture films, and in essence, fake snuff videos. Guinea Pig: Flowers of Flesh and Blood was quite an ordeal to watch, and while I can appreciate the surreal display of poetry interjected with dismemberment, as a man dressed as a samurai warrior recites haiku in between butchering a young girl, it's not something I'd be too thrilled to see again. The only other film in the notorious Guinea Pig series I've seen is the 4th one Mermaid in a Manhole, which serves not so much as a fake snuff film, but offers up a genuinely disturbing and unique experience.
It's without a doubt that filmmakers in Japan had reached the pinnacle of extreme gore movies, but rather than continue into farce, a more mature kind of film emerged. In 1999, director Takashi Miike brought us Audition, which not only became one of my favourites, it was one of the first wave of films that put J-Horror on the map big time. It's a dark, slow burning affair that builds it's characters first, playing out like a drama, before taking a shift in tone towards more of a mystery, building the suspense, and finally grabbing the audience by the throat in the shocking finale. It's the kind of film Alfred Hitchcock would make if he had ever directed a gore movie, sombre and reserved, like a Psycho for modern times, an introspective into themes of recurring violence and it's consequences.
Miike didn't stop there, and while Audition was quietly tempered, Ichi The Killer was excess itself. A powerfully over the top Yakuza slasher, steeped in sadism, and moments of David Lynch like ambiguity. Further down the Lynchian ladder, we have Gozu which is much more surreal than anything that has come before it, but none the less an extremely good film, that is both disturbing and quite comical at times.
2000's Battle Royale was another of that first wave, along with Audition and Ring, a combination of B-movie sensibilities and ultra-slick direction. Plot wise, it's a half way between Lord Of The Flies and an 80's low budget sci-fi action movie. However, under Kinji Fukasaku's direction, it becomes one of the slickest pieces of action and brutality there is, so while not strictly a horror, it's definitely an important film.
This brings us to the film that needs no introduction, easily the most influential of all J-horrors, Ring. Director Hideo Nakata created one of the most perfect horror films ever, and cemented the image of pale women with long, black hair into popular culture. To say this had a knock-on effect would be to sell it's influence short, as the film paved the way for numerous others like The Grudge, from director Takashi Shimizu who also went on to work with Shinya Tsukamoto in the excellent Marebito. Before long, we had a vast amount of Japanese horrors that took their queue from Ring, Dark Water and Pulse being just a few in many. Sadly, the film had also sparked a revolution in remakes, when The Ring came out, nobody could stop Hollywood from cannibalising all Asian horrors they could get their hands on.
This brings us neatly to K-Horror, as South Korea were the first to remake Ring back in 1999 as The Ring Virus. I felt that for the most part, Korean ghost stories had been inferior to their Japanese counterparts. They weren't bad films by any stretch, but by the time 2003's Acacia came along, it felt like I've seen it all before. A Tale Of Two Sisters however, absolutely blew me away, it was a breath of fresh air that was greatly needed, and director Ji-woon Kim was certainly a talented individual. If you were to ask me what scared me the most, I would say it's probably this one, I hadn't be frightened by a film so deeply since I first watched Ring. Kim also directed the darkly comic The Quiet Family in 1998, which in turn was remade by Takashi Miike as The Happiness of the Katakuris, both versions I would seriously recommend.
Another Korean title that came out in 2003 is the absolutely bonkers Save The Green Planet, which is part black comedy, part sci-fi, and part torture film, with liberal sprinklings of drama. Others such as Into The Mirror and military ghost story R-Point are also extremely well done, and worth a look, even if they are quite unoriginal. Taking us on a completely different path in 2006 was the excellent monster movie The Host, throwing up some comic laughs with an extremely compelling rampage.
Other Asian countries also had their go at the horror genre, with Hong-Kong/Singapore co-production The Eye being one film that really scared me witless at the time, and Abnormal Beauty is another psycho-sexual horror, which takes it's queue from the more gore orientated films of the 80's I've mentioned above. Thailand has also tried it's hand with the excellent Shutter, which isn't particularly original, but it's just so well made and scary that you can forgive the formulaic effort.
Overall, Asia has a lot to offer the horror fan, and while a lot of the ghost stories can be very by the numbers story wise, they can still be worthwhile and very scary experiences. In fact, I've seen a hell of a lot of Asain horrors, and there's really only been one that I thought was a complete waste of my time, and that's Thai film Bangkok Haunted.
So, I hope this has been an enjoyable read, and that you've gleaned something from it.
It seemed like the horror genre had nowhere else to go after the blood-drenched, boundary-pushing 1970s and '80s. And in a way, that was true.The 1990s is remembered by many as a lowpoint in the history of scary movies. And while that's a slightly inaccurate generalization, the decade did suffer in some respects as a result of the excesses of the years that preceded it.
On the one hand, you had many of the deathless franchises of the 1980s lurching forward, series like Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween churning out sequel after sequel, burning out the moviegoing public in the process. New slasher series like Child's Play, Leprechaun and Candyman, while offering some new ideas, also added more fuel to the fire.
In addition to that, a backlash occured. Beyond the genre, American moviemaking in general became more conservative, reacting to the unbridled violence and sex of the previous generation with more restraint and less gratuitousness. Criticisms of the business had begun to have an effect, and filmmakers had finally gotten over the fact they could do certain things they couldn't before. Now they were being more prudent about when and how often to do them.
Within horror, the gore factor was greatly reduced. Of course there were some exceptions--the most notable of which was a certain 1992 horror comedy by New Zealand director Peter Jackson called Brain Dead (or Dead Alive in America). That offbeat zombie flick ratcheted up the onscreen violence to ridiculously unheard of levels, but played it for laughs all the way. Perhaps that was the only way Jackson got away with it.
Ironically, once the splatter scene became old hat, Hollywood made something of a return to the grand guignol of a bygone era. Gothic horror made a brief comeback, and even the old monsters got taken out of mothballs for movies like Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Wolf (1994) and The Mummy (1999) (though the latter was reimagined as more of an action film.) Vampires in particular benefited from a "goth" movement that buoyed Anne Rice's series of novels to worlwide acclaim and led to a motion picture version of Interview with the Vampire starring mega-stars Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.
The genre was lost in a way, heading in several different directions at once, unable to find its bearings. It was playing, after all, to an audience that felt as if it had seen it all. In hindsight, it seems only natural that the only thing to do under the circumstances was to deconstruct. For the first time, horror films became self-aware and self-reflective.
Just as he had been among the pioneers of the previous era, director Wes Craven led the pack again. Toying with the concept with 1994's New Nightmare, something of a coda to his Elm Street saga in which dream killer Freddy Krueger crosses over into the real world, Craven committed fully to self-aware horror with Scream (1996). A slasher flick in which all the characters seem to know about slasher flicks and all their cliches, the movie plays upon our expectations, injecting new life into a tired subject with a healthy dose of postmodern irony. Scream and its sequels, along with pics like I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997), led to an unlikely rebirth of the hack-and-slash subgenre.
After years of searching for a new identity, the horror genre benefited from the shot in the arm, and by the end of the decade seemed to be on the road to recovery. Yet it also seemed as if horror filmmakers everywhere had learned over the course of the 1990s that they didn't necessarily need buckets of guts to effectively generate terror.
Witness the types of films that led the renaissance in the late 1990s. In America, it was newcomer M. Night Shyamalan and his atmospheric, Oscar-nominated ghost story The Sixth Sense (1999). There was also the ground-breaking Blair Witch Project of the same year. Although the overdose of internet hype that accompanied the film may have sabotaged it to a certain degree, it was the ingenious decision to inspire fear through the hyper-realism of a so-called "mock-umentary" approach that makes the movie a landmark--and one of the biggest influences on the genre to this day.
Meanwhile, from overseas in Japan, a movement was spreading abroad that would have an even greater impact in America in the years to come. With Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998) being the most well-known, Japanese horror would further reinvigorate the genre and open up new avenues to explore.
Horror had proven that it had a lot more life left in it. In fact, with the dawn of a new decade, it would soon become unimaginable that it had ever been in trouble in the first place. If the 1990s saw horror go into hiding, then the start of the 21st century saw it make up for lost time, exploding into the mainstream consciousness like never before.
When it comes to supernatural swamp creatures in comics, I've always been more of a fan of the sorely under-used Man-Thing, as opposed to his much more well-known counterpart over at DC. Created during the horror-comic renaissance of the 1970s along with other Marvel characters like Blade, Ghost Rider and Morbius, Man-Thing was a creepy, enigmatic figure that haunted the outer boundaries of my comic-collecting childhood. I never knew much about him because he never made many appearances, yet his image and nature were so striking that I snatched up whatever I could find (and yes, the title "Giant-Size Man-Thing" was just about the funniest thing my 11-year-old brain could imagine.)
Unfortunately, like many of the post-1960s Marvel characters, Man-Thing was just never quite popular enough to sustain his own series for any great length of time. Most recently, I recall a short-lived run a few years back that was quite good, written by J.M. DeMatteis, best known for the famous 1987 "Kraven's Last Hunt" Spider-Man storyline.
But now, Marvel has introduced a new take on the Man-Thing in a special four-part miniseries for it's mature-readers "MAX" line. It's called Dead of Night, taken from the title of a 1970s Marvel horror comic. Written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, the series retells the character's origin, with each of the four issues told in a different style of horror storytelling. The first one, which I picked up a few days ago, is a tip of the hat to the classic EC Comics in every way, even including its own Crypt Keeper-style "host" Digger--a character lifted from obscure 1969-1970 Marvel horror book Tower of Shadows.
According to an interview Aguirre-Sacasa gave to CBR News, the second issue will be told in the style of the 1960s-70s Warren magazines Eerie and Creepy; issue #3 will be in 1970s exploitation horror flick style; and the finale will unfold like James Cameron-esque '80s action-horror. The art is done by a different artist in each issue--the one I'm familiar with is issue #3's illustrator Javier Saltares, who did excellent work on the early 1990s Ghost Rider.
After reading issue #1, I highly recommend Dead of Night for anyone who loves horror comics. Marvel is doing a great job with a character that deserves more attention--or who at least deserves to be redeemed after that god-awful direct-to-SciFi-Channel movie adaptation of a couple years back. Just try not to be too afraid, because in case you forgot, "All who know fear burn at the Man-Thing's touch!"
If there's one thing I've tried to do around here, it's champion the cause of foreign language horror flicks that I think deserve a look-see from English-speaking moviegoers. And one that I've mentioned before is the Swedish vampire film Låt den Rätte Komma In, or Let the Right One In. You can check out the impressive trailer and my previous comments here.
Famed British occultist/pornographer/drug addict/megalomaniac Aleister Crowley has long been a folk hero of sorts within the heavy metal community. And now, 
lead singer Bruce Dickinson--another idol of dragon T-shirt wearing basement dwellers everywhere--is bringing Crowley to the screen for the very first time.
starring Hurd Hatfield in the title role, along with Peter Lawford, Donna Reed and a young Angela Lansbury, back when was hot (if such a thing is imaginable). And it's not even available on DVD, believe it or not.
a few weeks ago at my favorite video store, Kim's Underground in the heart of New York's East Village.
which makes the argument that in spite of its metaphoric trappings, speculative fiction often deals with harsh realities even more head-on than mainstream fiction, and this would be a perfect example of just that.
from director 
