A biological miracle with disastrous consequences in The Substance Chris Forrester connects Coralie Fargeat’s award-winning body-horror sensation The Substance to its B-movie roots. As is now something of a tradition with buzzy festival hits, The Substance (Fargeat, 2024) almost immediately became the subject of a discourse whose least productive concerns have more or less eclipsed… Read more »
The Female Monster of Flesh for Frankenstein Underground Film Series curator Justin Bonthuys contextualizes Paul Morrissey’s cult classic. In his book on comedy-horror films, screenwriter and actor Bruce Hallenbeck describes the irony in the script of Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) as “[giving] the film a winking detachment, so that you find yourself convulsed with laughter… Read more »
The Double Deuce is the meanest, loudest, and rowdiest bar south of the Mason-Dixon Line, and Dalton (Patrick Swayze) has been hired to clean it up. He might not look like much, but the Ph.D.-educated bouncer proves he’s more than capable, busting the heads of troublemakers and turning the roadhouse into a jumping hot-spot. But… Read more »
Poster for The Holy Mountain (1973) Recalling his first experience with Jodorowsky’s The Holy Mountain, Jesse Pasternack explains why he recommends going into a film blind. One of my favorite moviegoing experiences at the IU Cinema was a midnight showing of The Holy Mountain (1973). I saw my friend and fellow blogger Aja Essex there,… Read more »
Guest post by Chris Forrester. “It doesn’t suck,” offers a character at one point in Paul Verhoeven’s Showgirls — a tease, or understatement in one way or another, from a film not uncommonly heralded as the worst of all time. In context, it’s a throwaway line of dialogue from the film’s doe-eyed, sharp-witted protagonist; outside… Read more »
Channeling political dissent and creative daring into a revolutionary blend of history, fantasy, cinematic experimentation, satire, anger, fashion, and philosophy, legendary filmmaker Derek Jarman’s Jubilee follows Queen Elizabeth I as she travels 400 years into the future to witness a dystopian London overrun by a vicious gang of punk guerrilla girls led by the new… Read more »