Creepshow (1982)
To this day I remember one of the most insightful observations ever made by one of my tutors at college, namely, that there was no rational link between eating and going to the cinema to watch a film. Why was it, he continued, that the two had become so intertwined in the collective conscience that eating popcorn was now seen as an indispensable element of the cinema-going experience? Over the years I have come to agree with him more and more, especially as cinema menus have expanded to encompass a wider range of annoyingly noisy foods. Read more
Godzilla (aka Gojira) (1954)
It’s a testament to how much of a bad rap the film Godzilla has received over the years that any discussion of the movie always has to start with a clarification of which film you’re talking about. No, it’s not the 1998 abomination with Matthew Broderick; no, it’s not the re-edit with Raymond Burr and a bunch of dubbed Japanese actors; and it’s not even any of the sequels you maybe dimly remember being showed on TV during the holidays. It’s the very first Godzilla film, made in 1954, released in Japan under the title of Gojira, and it’s a masterpiece. Read more
Cloverfield (2008)
The theme of the ‘common man’ is a recurrent one in poetry, the idea being that an untrained mind (as opposed to, oh, the massive genius of the poet let’s say) has a purer, more honest, richer and therefore more interesting experience than a mind bogged down by intellectual matters. Unhappily, that patronising assertion is alive and well in the entertainment industry, as manifested in the current obsession with “user generated content”. Read more
Contamination (1980)
Considering how closely intertwined science fiction and horror are, it’s surprising how few films successfully keep one foot in each genre. Most people would agree that Ridley Scott got the hybrid formula down to a tee with Alien; at the very least, director Luigi Cozzi thought so, which goes some way towards explaining why Contamination turned out the way it did. Read more
Freaks (1932)
In the decades since its initial release, Freaks has lost none of its power to shock. Regardless of whether or not the film is any good it is a unique experience to behold. Tod Browning spared no effort in tracking down real circus and carnival performers to appear in his movie, with predictably genuine results. The problem is that he seems to have spent rather less time in deciding what he would do when he actually found his misfits. Read more