http://www.blacklagoon.info In-depth discussion of cult horror movies and the people who make them, brought to you by Matt Nida and Carl Swift of blacklagoon.info. Each show features a round-table dissection of three linked horror films - expect zombies, cannibals and buckets of gore! Wed, 11 Feb 2009 16:14:09 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en [podcast]http://www.blacklagoon.info/mp3/blacklagoon-show4.mp3[/podcast] In the much-delayed fourth installment of the Black Lagoon podcast, we're looking at three generations of horror films that have helped define Japanese cinema's reputation for the unusual, the avant-garde and the downright bizarre, as represented by Nobuo Nakagawa's Jigoku (aka Hell, 1960), Nobuhiko Obayashi's Hausu (aka House, 1977), and ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2009/02/black-lagoon-show-4-hell-the-house-and-the-spiral/ On one level it feels quite patronising and imprecise to refer to "Asian horror" as a genre, at least from a critical perspective; one would hesitate to bracket "European horror" and expect to find useful common ground between, say, Terence Fisher and Lucio Fulci. But on another such a generalisation ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2008/12/the-eye-2002/ South Korean director Bong Joon-Ho might be best known internationally for his third feature, 2006's superb monster epic The Host, but his reputation as one his country's most interesting film-makers was sealed with his preceding movie, 2003's crime drama Memories of Murder. Based around a string of unsolved real life ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2008/09/memories-of-murder-2003/ 20th Century Fox were vexed by how to market The Innocents even before it was released. After the recent successes of Hammer Horror, it was recognised that there was a lot to be gained from promoting it as a good, old-fashioned spook-fest. However, even the densest of studio executives were ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2008/08/the-innocents-1961/ Have you ever wondered what a Dario Argento opera might look like? Of course you have. Violence, anarchy, tragedy and death are shared leitmotifs, and given that the merit of Argento’s early work lays as much in his artistic vision and delivery as it does in the nuts and bolts ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2008/08/opera-1987/ [podcast]http://www.blacklagoon.info/mp3/blacklagoon-show3.mp3[/podcast] In our third podcast, we take a look at three Italian films that were "inspired" by hugely successful Hollywood horror movies - Contamination (Luigi Cozzi's fun take on Alien), The Last Shark (Enzo G Castellari's Jaws clone) and Beyond The Door (Ovidio G Assonitis's response to The Exorcist). All three ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2008/07/black-lagoon-show-3-re-made-in-italy/ In all probability this will be the first and last musical that I will review on the Black Lagoon. At the very least, I don't expect to write about another one in such glowing terms, given that I can't think of another film that so completely fulfills its duties as ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2008/06/sweeney-todd-2007/ The Ghost Galleon is the third installment of Spanish director Amando de Ossorio's series of Blind Dead films, and has all the hallmarks of a franchise rapidly running out of steam. Ludicrously over the top premise? Check. Painful cost-cutting measures? Check. Even the people who made the trailer seem like ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2008/06/the-ghost-galleon-1974/ It recently struck me that one of the more clever devices used by the sitcom Friends was the naming of its episodes. Prefixing each title with the words "The One Where..." is quite a sly but telling reference to how the mass audience receives film and television fiction: no matter ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2008/06/scanners-1981/ 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 ... http://www.blacklagoon.info/2008/06/creepshow-1982/