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Kittens, Forry and More!
Don’t worry. We haven’t gone all cute on you. We’re still the same horror movie magazine we’ve always been. The kitten which graces our navigation isn’t any ordinary kitten. That’s Cc:, otherwise known as Copycat, the first successfully cloned pet in the world. Click here for the rest of the story.
Cloning Cats, Dogs, and Plots: Cc: and The Sixth Day
You probably blinked and missed the Columbia Pictures fall 2000 release of The Sixth Day, which bombed at the box office. This sci-fi thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger focused explicitly on the dangers of cloning humans, but early on suggests that the legalized cloning of pet animals will convince the public to allow human cloning in the future. Click here for the rest of the story.
Eight Legged Freaks: A Love Letter to Giant Bug Movies
Somewhere between Earth vs. the Spider and Tremors lies Eight Legged Freaks, the latest from producer Dean Devlin, whose blockbuster films include Godzilla and Independence Day. Devlin calls Eight Legged Freaks (or ELF, as it’s been nicknamed on the Web) a “love letter to movies like Them and Tarantula, a love letter to the big bug movies of the 1950s.” Click here for the rest of the story.
They Only Wanted to Rule the World: A Celebration of Cinematic Villainy, Part VII
While the straw man may be fashioned in an interesting or even stylish way, there remains an emptiness to the character. Except in some rare instances, we don’t know why they act the way they do, their motivations, the way they came to be the way they are. They have nothing to tie them to our sympathies or understanding—only our fear. These characters are not formed as an avenue to examine their lives and choices—or for that matter allow the audience to do the same—but to provide the protagonists with something to react to, a focal point for fulfilling their heroic destinies. Click here for the rest of the story.
Mummy Fearest: A Horror Story
The Hammer Studios film The Mummy, directed by Terence Fisher and starring Peter Cushing as John Banning and Christopher Lee as Kharis, the living Mummy, was released in the U.K. in 1959, so it probably came to Houghton-Hancock Michigan in 1960, when I was seven. Back in ’60 I went to see some other film, but it was a preview of The Mummy that I remember. Click here for the rest of the story.
Lamberto Bava’s Macabre: Just Another One of Those Days
While an adulterous couple dallies in a blind man’s spare bedroom, the woman’s daughter is drowning her little brother in the bathtub...speeding to the scene of the murder, the couple’s car crashes, and the man is decapitated...just another one of those days in the world of Italian horror flicks. Click here for the rest of the story.
The Hound Delivers in MGM’s The Hound of the Baskervilles
I would most definitely recommend The Hound of the Baskervilles to horror film fans, particularly those who like the Hammer-era “historical” movies like The Mummy, Horror of Dracula, etc. You can’t go too wrong, of course, anytime you get to see two masters of their craft—Lee and Cushing—perform together. Click here for the rest of the story.
Schlock: John Landis and Rick Baker Reminisce
They say that Schlock was “inspired” by Joan Crawford’s unfortunate swan song, Trog (1970). Trog is so bad that a parody is redundant, but Landis is really just using the plot framework of a missing link on a rampage to display a number of sight gags and movie buffs’ in-jokes. Click here for the rest of the story.
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