Armageddon (Michael Bay, 1998) immediately announces what kind of film it is. Beginning 65 million years ago with the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs, we watch the blast ripple across the planet and into the opening titles. “Armageddon” bursts into flames and explodes in pieces outward toward the audience. From the vantage point of 2023,… Read more »
Why do some films seem to get endlessly parodied, referenced, and remade decades after their release? Like the sequence of the baby carriage rolling down the steps in 1925’s Battleship Potemkin (Sergei Eisenstein) or the eponymous “red balloon” of The Red Balloon (Albert Lamorisse, 1956), we see iconography from certain films repeatedly ported into others…. Read more »
Vampires are a B-movie staple. Whether produced by Hammer Films or Roger Corman, off-Hollywood audiences never seem to tire of them. They’re a monster that’s just human enough to be alluring but still dangerous and thrilling. While the film vampire has had strong erotic undertones since at least Bela Lugosi’s 1931 portrayal of Count Dracula,… Read more »
A heart beats on the soundtrack. We see a head covered in a stocking, but the face is not visible. The stocking tears, revealing layers upon layers of tearing material, newspaper, collaged mouths cut from magazines ripping away to reveal only more mouths. After the credits, we return to a shot of a woman with… Read more »
“Strange things happening, mother,” writes Lillian Gish in Night Hunter (2011). She has found a giant egg in her bassinet, an egg that will multiply and lead to her own transformation (into a bird? a snake?). Perhaps her transformation process has already begun and she gave birth to the egg without knowing it. Strange things… Read more »
It’s hard to over-emphasize how solidly Paul Reubens’ star persona is fused with his famous character, Pee-wee Herman. Reubens created Pee-wee in the late ’70s during his tenure with the famous L.A. improv group The Groundlings. Initially, Pee-wee was childlike but not created for specifically for children. As a stage show in the early ’80s,… Read more »