Hallowe'en Machine!

Arbogast on Film: 31 Screams

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:55:00 -0400

Arbogast on Film: 31 Screams:

Enjoy the 2012 installment of this great blog’s “31 Screams” series!

Photo

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:52:23 -0400

billcorbett: 13 Ghosts, 1960 Questions: was it already a...

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 19:49:35 -0400

billcorbett:

13 Ghosts, 1960

Questions: was it already a ghost when it was hung? If so, was it hung by fellow ghosts?

Broader question, really: how does the whole “ghost” thing work?

Free Horror Movies on Hulu (Courtesy Criterion Collection)!

Wed, 31 Oct 2012 11:07:00 -0400

Free Horror Movies on Hulu (Courtesy Criterion Collection)! :

Happy Hallowe’en everyone! Enjoy these great picks on Hulu (for free) from the Criterion Collection.

Video

Sun, 28 Oct 2012 22:25:26 -0400

Polish horror posters

Sat, 27 Oct 2012 00:25:47 -0400

If you’ve never taken a look through some Polish movie posters, then get your Google Image Search going and type in that phrase. Wildly creative and often downright baffling, these are almost addictive to look at, especially being used to the bad-Photoshop, overused-template movie posters we get in this country.

Here are some great Polish posters for horror films:

Rosemary’s Baby

Young Frankenstein

Kwaidan

The Birds

Picnic at Hanging Rock

Nosferatu the Vampyre

The Legacy

The Fly

Alien

Video

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:54:14 -0400

Weird-O-Matic Wax Episode 5

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 11:56:39 -0400

Weird-O-Matic Wax Episode 5:

The season’s last podcast is up. Give it a listen.

Horror at the fair

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 00:10:18 -0400

For a while now, I’ve been collecting pictures of old “ghost shows” and horror-themed fair attractions. This particular spiritualism-inspired exhibit developed into things like spookshows and the usually-disappointing clattering old fair rides (which I always still loved), but seem to not be around so much these days.

Here are some of my favorites from the heyday:

Check out more great examples here:

The Ghost on the Fairground

Horror Show Gallery

The Strange History of the Frankenstein Carnival Sideshow

Horrorgami: Haunted Houses from a Single Sheet of Paper

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 11:37:54 -0400

Horrorgami: Haunted Houses from a Single Sheet of Paper:

Check out these incredible works of kirigami— in this case, recreations of famous haunted houses cut from a single sheet of paper.

Enjoy Carl Dreyer’s amazing amazing Vampyr (for free!),...

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 15:54:00 -0400

Enjoy Carl Dreyer’s amazing amazing Vampyr (for free!), which I posted about last year.

Supernatural (and Supercreepy) Spirit Photos of William Hope

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 18:20:00 -0400

Supernatural (and Supercreepy) Spirit Photos of William Hope:

NPR article on William Hope, a man who claimed he could photograph spirits.

Here’s the amazing-voiced Basil Rathbone reading...

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:48:00 -0400

Here’s the amazing-voiced Basil Rathbone reading Poe’s sardonic classic The Masque of the Red Death.

Photo

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:40:00 -0400

Sorry for the delay. Enjoy You Can’t Do That On...

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:07:54 -0400

Sorry for the delay.

Enjoy You Can’t Do That On Television’s 1984 Hallowe’en special!

January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 12:07:06 -0400

January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849

Paris, 1947 LIFE Magazine visits the Grand Guignol Theatre:

Mon, 08 Oct 2012 15:40:00 -0400

Paris, 1947

LIFE Magazine visits the Grand Guignol Theatre:

Images: Selections from Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, Phantom der nacht (1979) It should be no...

Sun, 07 Oct 2012 13:13:00 -0400

Images:

Selections from Werner Herzog’s Nosferatu, Phantom der nacht (1979)

It should be no surprise that kindly, loony Werner Herzog would decide to give remaking one of the landmark films of early cinema a whirl. It should also be no surprise that he nailed it, imbuing it with some dark (dark dark) humor and a Hoover-sucking sense of doom while maintaining the original’s style and theatricality. It is brooding, dense with ominous set-pieces:

Herzog also gives us a scope that feels greater than that of the original. Dracula (not Orlok in this version, since apparently there was no Stoker heir to upset anymore), exudes and embodies decay. His arrival into civilization precipitates destruction and death.

Kinski’s centuries-lonely Count.

Alone in a rotting castle.

Real estate.

Giggling Renfield; “Der meister ist hier!”

Plague spills into Wismar.

Lucy’s night-caller.

The townspeople celebrate, mourn life, welcome the end.

Lucy’s sacrifice.

Cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein’s brilliant chamber-drama compositions and lighting recall Murnau’s stylized sets; he punctuates, however, with occasional kinetic, handheld movements which are startling and exciting.

There’s a great cast, too: Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, among others.

This is also an ideal, moody, slow-burner that is perfect for October-watching. Once again, unfortunately this isn’t on Netflix Instant, but it really shouldn’t be hard to find at your local video rental store, if those still exist by the time you read this.

Enjoy!

Silly Symphonies Hell’s Bells (1922)

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 23:02:00 -0400

Silly Symphonies

Hell’s Bells (1922)

Amazing 1922 film animated to Saint-Saens’s Danse Macabre.

Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:12:43 -0400

Amazing 1922 film animated to Saint-Saens’s Danse Macabre.