*contains spoilers Phantoms (1998) is based on the Dean Koontz (1945-) novel which he also adapted to the screen. It remains his only true cinematic screenplay which is a shame because it’s a very good one. It begins with Dr Jennifer Pailey (Joanna Going 1963-) taking her sister Lisa (Rose McGowan 1973-) to her small-town…
*contains spoilers Director and screenwriter Larry Cohen (1941-2019) died on March 23 of undisclosed causes. He left a small trove of low-budget B-grade material. Notable are the It’s Alive trilogy (1074, 1978 and 1987) about mutant babies. Those movies play on any expecting parent’s fears as, in the original movie It’s Alive (1974), a mother…
Christopher Doyle (1952-) is an Australian born cinematographer who left Australia as a teenager and after working odd jobs throughout the world became a student of Chinese culture and a photographer. Cinematography followed and he made his first movie in Taiwan in the early 80s. Since then he has worked on over 50 movies in…
Read more Cinematographer Christopher Doyle on Chinese Cinema and the Psycho remake
*contains spoilers As many will already know, Orson Welles’ movie The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) was taken out of his hands by RKO studios and over an hour was hacked from it. What remains is still regarded a masterpiece. The same type of thing happened with Jean Renoir’s (1894-1979 heart attack) last American movie The Woman…
The written word comes in many forms and this short story has been hand-written by Jason Quirk and published straight from his notebook.
The written word comes in many forms and this short story has been hand-written by Jason Quirk and published straight from his notebook.
Remote viewing which is a specified type of telepathy or clairvoyance is when a person can see through the eyes of someone else, and in the John Carpenter (1948-) penned thriller The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978), this gift or curse is given a savage twist. The movie opens with the negative side of the…
Read more The Cult of Remote Viewing in The Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)
The 1970s Richard Burton (1925-1984 brain haemorrhage) movie The Medusa Touch (1978) is about telekinesis among other psychic abilities and it reminded me of an item on the news about a house fire somewhere in the suburbs which ended with the reporter saying: “and it is reported by police that the fire wasn’t started by…
Read more The Cult of Clairvoyance in The Medusa Touch (1978)
There is some sort of parasite or invading insect which will enter a hive of bees for example and will infiltrate and will eventually destroy that hive. It isn’t necessarily anarchy at work since it is nature but the effect is just as devastating especially when it happens en masse. Nature is thrown out of…
Read more The Cult of the Sexual Anarchist in Theorem (1967)
“You learn how to use the equipment and you learn how to tell a story” from a David Schmoeller interview Director David Schmoeller (1947-) is a Kentucky born writer who grew up in Texas and went to film school and undergraduate school. He made seven short films and his thesis movie was nominated for the…
Read more The Cult of Director David Schmoeller’s Tourist Trap (1979)
