In The Dark Side #196 - THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME

In The Dark Side #196 I take a look at THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME (1932), a fascinating example of how studios in the pre-Code era were able to sneak graphic screen content into their movies...

Why not treat yourself to a copy for Halloween?

SCREAM #51 - out now!

How cool is this cover???

In SCREAM #51 I write about DAWN OF THE DEAD and THE REDEEMER: SON OF SATAN!

Pick up your copy for Halloween - while stocks last!!!

My love letter to Night of The Living Dead for the BFI.

'Premiering 50 years ago, on 1 October 1968, George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead is often spoken of as a manifesto for the modern horror film. 

Taking its inspiration from the racial and political strife of late-60s America, it created, as a BFI programme booklet put it in 2004, "a verite nightmare which overturned the conventions of fantastical horror".

Romero took the genre out of its gothic castles and swept away the cobwebs. Night of the Living Dead marked a transition in horror cinema: from the classic to the modern. Less remarked upon, though, is how Romero effects this transition within the film itself, it its opening scenes.'

To read the rest of my BFI article on Night of the Living Dead, go here

HALLOWEEN - Wednesday 10th October at City Screen, York!

I'm introducing HALLOWEEN at City Screen, York!

In 10th October, I'm introducing a fortieth anniversary screening of the digitally restored and remastered HALLOWEEN at City Screen Picturehouse, York. There's also a pre-recorded introduction by John Carpenter!

For tickets and information visit the City Screen Picturehouse website

SCREAM 50! Out Now!

Inside the latest SCREAM I take a close look at Polanski's ROSEMARY'S BABY...

Peter Bogdanovich's TARGETS is fifty years old this week.

Fifty years ago this week Peter Bogdanovich released his outstanding debut feature, TARGETS. In The Quietus I take a look back at TARGETS and its commentary on U.S. firearms culture.

Follow the link here.

Folk Horror in The Basement!

SCREAM is 50!

This month the marvelous SCREAM magazine celebrates its 50th issue! I take a close look at Polanski's adaptation of ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968).

Out August 29th!

THE DARK SIDE #194 - IN SHOPS AUGUST 2ND!

In January 1934 screenwriter John L. Balderston adapted Bram Stoker’s 1914 short story ‘Dracula’s Guest’ into an outline for producer David O. Selznick as an intended sequel to Universal’s DRACULA (1931). Balderston’s original storyline was designed, as he himself said, to capitalise on the ‘great box office value of torture and cruelty’: Dracula's Daughter was written by Balderston as a S/M dominatrix(complete with whips and chains)who draws the blood of virile young men.

Balderston’s vision of the female vampire was not to be realised in the film that eventually emerged two and a half years later. In its development from script to screen, DRACULA’S DAUGHTER would fall to tighter restrictions placed on screen content by the industry’s regulating body, the Production Code Administration (the ‘Hays Code’) under Joseph Breen, and to increasing opposition to the horror film by state and overseas censors. Although the version of DRACULA’S DAUGHTER that Universal produced in 1936 is now often praised by keen-eyed critics for its risqué undercurrent of lesbianism, its graphic content in terms of sex and violence is very much tamer than Universal had originally planned. 

My article in the latest THE DARK SIDE (out August 2nd)reveals the extent to which the PCA and BBFC managed to defang DRACULA’S DAUGHTER!