I’m just finishing up this series. So far its been pretty good. I love Hiroyuki Sanada and I get to watch lots of him in this show. I had my doubts about the lead character whose god given name is apparently Cosmo. I wasnt sure I could trust an actor named Cosmo, but he turned out to be great. No, he’s not as memorable as Richard Chamberlain. Its hard to top perfection, but he is very good. This version of Shogun has done some very differetn things than the original series and most of it holds up well.
For one thing we spend a lot more time on Japanese politics, which turns out to actually be fascinating in a Game of Thrones kind of way. I don’t normally pay a whole lot of attention to political intrigue, but I like this. It turns out that all these characters and political machinations are “based on” real-life people, like Tokugawa. The settings and costumes are gorgeous and as authentic looking as they could make them considering that this series is made mostly by Americans.
This has been worth the watch, but I still waffle over whether I should wait until a series is done before watching it, or try to catch it weekly. Now that I no longer have cable TV, its been kind of hard to remember that I’m supposed to be watching something every week.
So that is why I’m going to increase the amount of trouble I’m about to get into by adding yet more shows that I now need to remember what days they air.
What I Watched
Marcel the Shell with Shoes On – I thought I would be put off by the cutsiness of this movie but it turned out to be very good. It was also calming with very sweet and likable characters. No wonder everyone was so ga-ga over this movie a couple years ago. Marcel is such a precious character.
Poor Things – Again! I saw this at the theater and rented it after the Oscars aired. I still think its better than Barbie, which I really did love, but still…this movie went hard in the paint on the whole feminism thing. I will not be allowing my niece to see this movie. It is not for kids.
The Holdovers – I was surprised that I enjoyed this so much. Of course, I was expecting it to be good, but I wasn’t expecting it to be so moving. Expect e to write an essay in the future on how this movie defies stereotypes of Black women.
Once Upon A Time In China Trilogy – Here’s some vintage Kung Fu I’d been looking for everywhere, and no one was streaming it. Finally, it landed on HBO Max, and I’ve already watched the first one in the trilogy (although there are about five or six of these, not all of them star Jet Li, just the first four, I think.) There are some other Kung Fu and Martial Arts movies I’m looking forward to watching like: Eye for an Eye: The Blind Swordsman, The Flying Swordsman, The One Percent Warrior, and Night of the Assassin.
I have yet to get around to watching The Swan, Spaceman, and Shirley, all of which are streaming on Netflix. I will get around to watching the new Roadhouse movie this weekend, since its gonna be a long one because I don’t have to work Monday.
I just put the animated Samurai Champloo and The Deer King in my TBW list on Hulu, and hope to get around to actually looking at either of these this weekend.
And further more…
Star Trek Discovery – April 4th (Paramount+)
It is now time for the annual viewing of the Star Trek Discovery! Apparently, this is the last season. I’m okay with that. I’m grateful we got five seasons of some of my favorite characters (even though, and don’t tell anyone I said this, last season wasn’t especially good. Shhh!) I’m looking forward to this final season and hope they go out on a great note, not necessarily with a Bang, but I hope all the characters end in a good place, because I really like all of them!
Parasyte: The Gray – April 5th (Netflix)
Coming this Friday is the live action version of the anime series Parasyte. I did watch the original anime, which was funny and gory. This appears to take place in the same universe, with different characters, and looks like a straight-up Horror series with a lot less humor. I’m ready for it. The past year I have not been much in the mood for heavy shows like Shogun and this one, preferring much lighter, happier, stuff, but I think I’m ready to get back into the groove, and actually start thinking and feeling things again. That is probably a sign that my mourning period is over. I still miss my Mom, and always will, but I guess my brain has gotten used to the idea that she’s gone, (even if my heart hasn’t), and has decided that it’s ready to get back to work.
Fallout – April 11th (Amazon Prime)
This is the show I’m most excited about. I’ve never played the game this show is based on, but it looks like a lot of fun, with lots of lore, monsters, and machinery. Hopefully, Amazon will release all the episodes at once so I won’t have to try to remember the days it’s airing!
What?! I still got plenty of time for silliness.
Strange Way of Life – April 12th (Netflix)
I mentioned this in my Gayest Shows/Best of 2023 List. It stars Pedro Pascal, and Ethan Hawke. I saw this “elsewhere”, but its now coming to Netflix, so I’m looking forward to watching it, again.
Conan Must Go – April 18th (Hbo/Max)
I watched the last season of this series and I had a great ol’ time. Conan O’Brien is a lot funnier when you take him out from behind a desk, put him in situations, and just let his hosts do their thing. This should satisfy my sillier side for a while, and I can watch the episodes at my leisure, rather than trying to remember when they’re streaming. You should really watch the first season just to see Conan visit one of my favorite locations: Japan.
The Sympathizer – April 14th (Hbo/Max)
This looks very interesting. Like I said, I don’t normally watch political intrigue shows, but I have been known to watch these types of shows when they have Asian characters in them. We don’t know why! *shrug*
Rebel Moon – April 19th (Netflix)
Will have my butt in the seat to watch some shit blow up on this date! I was a little disappointed in the first part of this movie, but not disappointed enough to completely disavow it. I’ll let y’all know what I thought about this.
And finally there are a couple of nature shows on Disney that I’m looking forward to. One of them is about Tigers, and the other about the Octopus. I forget the dates on these, but I’m certain Disney+ will not be shy about letting me know when these documentaries will be streaming.
Alright guys, I’m about to kick off my favorite month of the year – Spookytober – with a scary little list of the monsters that scared the bejeebus out of me. I’ve listed favorite monsters a couple of times on this blog, but this is really the first time I’ve listed monsters And as a consequence the movies) I don’t watch very often because they are genuinely terrifying to me. Your mileage may vary, of course, because Horror is subjective and depends almost entirely on the mindset of the individual involved.
Now there are a helluva lot of scary movies out there and there’s a few that didn’t make this list but are terrifying just because they’re terrifying. What you will notice that’s absent from this list are the more traditional monsters like vampires and werewolves, and it’s not that I don’t find some of them scary, but there really aren’t enough vampires that are scare me, for example, to make a ten item list. This list focuses on Creature Features, but there’s whole other list to be made for Supernatural and Slasher films, and I might list those later, but here goes: The Most Terrifying Monsters in Horror.
He Who Kills From Trilogy of Terror
Now the other monsters are not in any particular order but I had to bring this guy in at number one because this was truly the very first monster that actually scared the bricks out of me (and quite frankly he works pretty good at it today). There’s a reason I’ve only watched this movie about three or four times in the last thirty years. I read the short story its based on Prey by Richard Matheson about the same number of times because the movies is extremely faithful to the story. One of the more interesting aspects of this monster is that looked at under the correct light it is deeply funny. I mean, it is just a puppet and you might laugh at it for about five minutes, but by the end of the movie he is a lot less funny, because the movie is filled with some genuinely suspenseful moments.
I first saw this movie late at night when I was supposed to be asleep, and waaay too young to be looking at it, which may be the reason I now have “doll fear”. Now, I didn’t fear my own “plastic” dolls. I got along fine with them, so this wasn’t a hard and fast rule, but this movie definitely contributed to my general fear of wooden puppets, ventriloquist dummies, mannequins, and other humanoid shaped wooden objects that are not supposed to be moving, but are kinda doing that anyway. So yeah, Chucky, Pinocchio, a few of those Japanese puppets, the creature from the 2016 movie, The Boy, and that puppet from the 1978 Anthony Hopkins movie, Magic, they can all catch some of this smoke.
The Xenomorph from Alien
I remember seeing the first trailer for this movie when I was about nine or ten years old and being very excited about it. The trailer was immediately intriguing to me because it was dark and ominous and told you absolutely nothing at all about the movie. I loved it! And then, when that Summer passed, I kinda forgot about it, until I watched the movie for the first time on late night TV when I was about fourteen, and y’all, I was not ready! Since the trailer didn’t really tell you anything, I had no idea what to expect. Talk about sitting on the edge of your seat!
I was following along with this movie just fine and it was alright, until the last fifteen minutes. I will not spoil it for those of you too young to have watched it yet, but that last scene contains what is possibly one of the greatest jump scares in film history and cemented the Xenomorph as one of the most terrifying monsters in Horror for me.
The H-Man 1958
I won’t list the original Blob because while that movie was definitely disgusting, it was also kind of funny. The H-Man makes this list because I’ve been terrified of watching this movie ever since I first saw it. I’ve told you about my issues watching acidic, sentient snot devouring people alive and this movie is probably the reason why. I’m serious. Like quicksand, this is an actual problem! In japan this movie is called Beauty and the Liquid People, a very poetic name for what is probably one of the ickiest movies I’ve ever watched. The only other movie about acidic slime that maybe tops this one is the remake of The Blob made in 1987, and while that movie is certainly disgusting, its also kind of fun. This movie wasn’t fun. There’s nothing in this movie that’s played for laughs.
I think I’ve watched this movie about two and a half times over forty years. The last time I tried watching this was about three years ago, and I had to stop, because it was the middle of the night when it aired, and it totally creeped me the hell out so badly, I had to stop! I mean this movie literally makes my skin feel crawly! Yes, I had a hard time falling asleep with the lights on.
The Thing of The Thing
It’s not that the monster isn’t scary, but more the idea of the monster is what’s so terrifying. It’s this idea that the monster can look, act, and sound exactly like someone close to you, that you’ve been living in close quarters with, and that its mimicry is so good, that you literally cannot tell the difference between it and someone you think you’ve known for months, is what contributes so well to the movie’s feelings of dread and paranoia. For the first thirty minutes of the movie the monster is only ever referenced, and not shown, but once it does show up, its worth the wait, because Carpenter does a righteous job of its depiction.
The mood of this movie is incredible. In fact, the 1982 remake of The Thing is sometimes referred to as a perfect Horror movie, which despite its age, has not done badly. The monster, the practical effects, the environment, the cinematography, and characters, all still hold up very well over thirty years later.
The Medusa from Clash of the Titans
So, for comparison I watched the Clash of the Titans remake and let’s just say I was less than whelmed by the remake’s depiction of the Medusa. I mean she was alright, and she definitely had them bow and arrow skills but there’s just something about the original Harryhausen version that is both terrifying and wonderful. There’s something about the stop motion that lends itself well to her character that didn’t work well with the computer generated version in the remake. Also the remake decided to make the Medusa conventionally attractive, which is faithful to the original story, but is not scary.
Part of the reason this Medusa is frightening is the general mood and environment, and we can’t forget the novelty of having seen her for the first time. The low lighting and frozen bodies with their terrified expressions, and her disregard as she knocks them over during her pursuit, is simply disturbing. There’s also her facial expressions. She doesn’t just look angry or mean but a little melancholy. She is one of my favorite monsters and I keep imagining what it would be like to encounter such a being. Let’s face it, it would be terrifying!
Jean Jacket from Nope
One of the most terrifying things about the monster from Nope is that it appears more or less harmless ,and turns out to be anything but that. Part of the reason Jean Jacket so terrifying is its general demeanor. It’s really fast moving, and stealthy, and there are things about it that are just a complete mystery. We think its an alien because it resembles stories we’ve been telling ourselves about aliens, (and that attitude is what gets most of the people in the movie killed) but we don’t actually know what it is, where it came from, what its going to do next, how smart it is, or even its purpose.
There are somethings Jean Jacket does in the movie that are just puzzling and we can’t make any sense out of, like the rain of blood, or the final threat display that shows what it actually looks like. There’s a lot of conjecture among fans about this. So a large part of the terror of this monster is all the things we simply don’t know about it and I’m glad Peele didn’t bother to try to explain.
The Grey Widowers from The Mist
I think I mentioned before that along with “Doll Fear” I also have “Spider Fear”, its not as bad as when I was younger. I can at least look at them in movies, but these guys are simply horrifying because of their size, acidic webbing, and near human faces. These guys are inhabitants of one of the greatest monster movies ever made (simply because of the sheer number of horrors in it), Frank Darabont’s 2007 Stephen King adaptation of The Mist. I mean, I don’t like spiders because they’re bad enough at the size they are in the Amazon, but these guys spit acidic webbing! WHY?!!! Why would anyone think of that?!
If you are a fan of Creature Features than this is definitely the movie for you because it has all kinds of great, barely glimpsed, monsters strutting around in the Mist, devouring and chopping up various people who insist on running out into it. There’s the Giant Lobster creature that haunts a parking lot, and the giant mosquito creatures with poisonous venom, and the extra giant sized Kaiju… okay, lets face it, most of the monsters are of enormous size, but still I very much suspect that the Grey Widowers, as they are called by the film’s creators, are the top dogs in this monster ecosystem. I think one of the saddest scenes in the movie is when the lead characters drive past an overturned bus containing the desiccated bodies of school children. Darabont has no problem killing children in this movie, and this also makes The Mist one of the saddest and most shocking Horror movies of the 21st century.
The Entity from It Follows
I wrote two whole essays about the meaning of the invisible entity that stalks the lead character in this movie becasue there is a lot deeper stuff going on here than the surface plot of an STD monster that stalks and kills people. There are some very concrete reasons why the monster does what it does, and appears the way it appears in the movie. The entity here has some of the same issues that came up for The Thing. It can look like anyone, including people you know, and the victims wouldn’t know that it was dangerous to them unless they’d either been forewarned, or the person it was imitating was standing right next to them. In one instance in the film, a victim was warned, and still wasn’t ready when it attacked him.
My theory was that the monster shows up as personifications of the things its victims either fear the most (like rape, or growing old), or have the most anxiety about (their relationships with friends and family), and that the longer it tracks its victims it starts to attune itself to their very specific fears, which is why it will show up looking like their mother or their best friend, especially if they have any lowkey anxieties about them. What forms the monster takes can tell us a lot about the victim, and I thought that was kinda terrifying in an existential type of way.
Pennywise (from the It remake)
Okay, this entire movie (both parts) was simply deliciously terrifying and kind of awesome. I liked this movie far more than I enjoyed the original movie, which for me was simply meh! I am usually not impressed with remakes, and I was prepared not to like this, but after some thought and a couple of re-watches, I have to admit, this movie was very good, and part of the reason for that is the attention to detail of the monster and our care for the characters. Pennywise is actually very well done and very scary, and I like that his presence is often preceded by the appearance of a red balloon. I distinctly remember reading the original story by Stephen King, and being captivated by the opening scene of the clown in the sewer, and this terrifying scene was wonderfully depicted in this film, almost exactly the way I imagined it.
The monster is genuinely scary in all of its incarnations, but most especially in the second half of of the movie when it keeps showing up in various spider forms. It also doesn’t hurt that I actually cared about the characters and either rooted for them or condemned them based on their actions.
Normally, I would add a bonus round right here, but I think I’m going to start a new post. Next time my focus will be on the Scariest Traditional Monster films like werewolves and vampires and stuff. I think that’s with a look and allow me to expand this list of most terrifying monsters in Horror Cinema.
When you use an object in your home, do you put it back where you found it?
Yeah, actually I do. It’s pretty much just me in hte house but I’ve always known that if I don’t put something back in the place I’ve chosen for it, I will never be able to find it again, and I hate looking for stuff. Basically, that item will be lost forever. I will buy a whole new thing rather than keep looking for something I lost in my house.
I recently lost (of all things) my laundry bag, and rather than continuing to look for something I know damn well is still in my house, and can only be in one of two rooms, I chose to just get a new laundry bag. I still cannot imagine where I might have placed the old one. I suppose I could try searching harder for it…but I don’t feel like it.
Do you squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle or the bottom?
I’ve heard that this is barbaric, but I squeeze the tube from the middle, until I get down to the last of it, and then I squeeze from the end. I’ve never thought this through or anything. I’m just lazy when it comes to tubes of stuff.
Do you peel a banana from the handle or the bottom?
I used to peel bananas from the handle, but I have since learned that not only are you supposed to peel it from the bottom, but it’s just easier to open up the banana. So now I peel them from the bottom.
This sort of goes along with the toilet roll paper unrolling from the top or the bottom. I’m a roll out from the top toilet paper roll person because that’s just scientifically correct.
Do you leave dishes in the sink overnight?
No. I’m one of those obnoxious people who washes the dishes as she cooks. It’s just me in the house dirtying up the dishes, so I’m pretty much the only one to do them, and I’ve learned that if I leave a single dish in the sink, my brother (who visits every day because he lives nearby) will come along and exasperatedly wash it while giving me the stinky eye and asking me pointed questions about why there are dishes in the sink. I do not enjoy being given the stinky eye so I keep the sink spotless.
What was your best school subject? What was your worst?
My best subject in school was of course, English, because it involved a lot of reading and thinking and I can do that. My worst subject (the worst subject I’ve ever taken) was Statistics. I chose that because I had a choice between that and Calculus and thought Statistics would be easier. It was not! It is the only class I’ve ever needed to be tutored in to pass it.
Funny story, but the teacher for my Statistics class also tutored my brother at his school. Its funny because my brother and I went to separate schools, and he tutored my brother in Algebra a couple of years before he taught math at my school. About halfway through the semester he asked me if I knew his name, and I had to explain that yes, that was indeed my brother, which tickled my teacher no end!
How many instruments can you play?
I can expertly play two instruments: The triangle, and the tambourine!
I can read music, (I can even inexpertly write music), which allows me to slowly and incompetently tinkle the ivories. I would not call it playing.
I also know how to look as if I know what I’m doing while strumming a guitar. Hint: I have no idea what I’m doing on the guitar.
Yes or no to music?
What kind of person says no to music? I am inherently suspicious of any human being that doesn’t enjoy at least some form of music. That person is getting a very long side-eye from me because they cannot be trusted.
Do you prefer salty or sweet foods?
I love sweet foods, especially ice cream. I will eat sweet foods all day if given the option. Fortunately, my body decided a long time ago that it’s not going to allow me to just eat whatever I want, whenever I feel like it, and will punish me for giving it food it doesn’t need. (Also, the medication I’m taking severely limits how much food I can eat, so I end up prioritizing actual home-cooked foods, rather than processed junk food.)
I still want the sweets though.
Are you an introvert or an extrovert?
I am most definitely an introvert.
To give you some idea of how much of an introvert I am: The Pandemic shutdowns had absolutely no effect on my lifestyle whatsoever. My life was not significantly upheaved in the slightest.
What is your favorite fruit?
Apples. I will eat just about any fruit, but I eat apples at least 3 to 5 times a week, usually for lunch. My current favorite is the Ambrosia variety but I will eat any other kind of apple in a pinch except for the McIntosh and Gala. The rest of the time it’s seedless grapes, navel oranges, and different types of berries. But I prefer peeled, unaccompanied, apples. (I peel them because I hate it when the skin gets caught in my teeth.)
Here’s my Fall movie list. Now, this doesn’t mean that I’ll actually see these movies. That depends if I have the money to see them. I’m not a person who wants to see everything nor can I afford to. I work full time but I don’t have the kind of disposable income that will let me see everything whenever I feel like it, and I try to pick movies I know for an absolute certainty I’m going to like, which means movies I had a high anticipation for based on the trailer (or if my niece or nephew ask to see it). So, a couple of these they asked me to take them to see, a couple of them are streaming movies I’ll watch at home, and a couple of them (usually the more serious or dramatic ones) I’ll see alone.
Anyway, I may have talked about a few of these movies here before, but here are the full trailers for them rather than just the teasers.
One Piece
I talked about this movie here before. As I said last time, I don’t actually know anything about the Manga from which this movie comes, but the full trailer looks like a lot of fun, and more importantly, I can stay home and watch it, since its airing on Netflix. I’m not normally into pirates, although I do like films set at sea. This looks like a combination of superheroes and found family, which I’m always a sucker for.
Release Date: August 31
The Marvels
Here’s the full length trailer for this movie. I had every intention of going to see this with my niece and nephew. We made a vow to see every MCU film that gets released this year, but we failed for reasons beyond our control. We didn’t get to see Guardians of the Galaxy 3, but we have seen the other movies. My kiddos like this because they’ve become big Marvel fans, and I just want to see Kamala Khan. I’m a huge fan, I loved her series, and the plot seems like a fun use of the character’s superpowers.
Release Date: November 10
The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon
Of all the characters I knew would never be killed off this series Daryl was definitely it. I’ve long abandoned the series itself but I want to see this because I genuinely like the character, it’s got those Last of Us/Found Family vibes, I love so much, and zombies.
Lately, I’ve been reluctant to invest in serious shows, sticking to more lightweight, comedic series and movies, since that’s all I’m capable of emotionally handling right now, but on occasion I do want to watch something with slightly more depth, but not too deep, and this kinda fits.
Release Date: September 10
The Creator
I’m starting to enjoy robot films again (not that I ever really stopped). I really like John David Washington and I’m a sucker for “the big gruff man who adopts a vulnerable child” plot, which this seems to resemble.
This movie, Dune, and Killers of the Flower Moon are the three deepest movies I’ll watch this Fall. There are a couple more that are mildly serious, like The Equalizer sequel and The Last Voyage of the Demeter, and a couple of fluffy/comedy movies, like Blue Beetle and The Marvels. I think that’s a good combination of films to spend my money on. And of course, the more serious movies I’ll be going to see on my own, sans niece and nephew.
Release Date: September 29
Killers of the Flower Moon
I’m really looking forward to this one and not just because its Scorcese’s latest. I read the book eons ago it seems and I don’t remember much of it beyond feeling outraged, but I like Scorcese, and hope he does Justice to the topic. This is one of the films I’ll be watching alone.
Release Date: October 20
Last Voyage of the Demeter
I talked about my enthusiasm for this movie which comes right at the start of what Halloween enthusiasts like me refer to as Spooky Season (the time period between September and October 31st) although frankly its Halloweenland all year long for me, and its also the first really good looking monster movie of the year! Unless they specifically ask, I won’t be taking the kiddos to see this one. My niece loves Horror movies, so she might ask to see it. We’ll see what her Mom says about that.
Release Date: August 11
Blue Beetle
This is one of the last couple of superhero movies we’ll be seeing in the coming weeks. I read the comic books this character is based on and there’s a few things I really like about this, and a few eye rolling things, but it otherwise looks like a fun time.
Release Date: August 18
Dune (Part 2)
We already know how I feel about the first part of the Dune trilogy. Here’s the full trailer for the second part, and it looks awesome! I hope it’s a good as the first part, since sometimes the middle section of trilogies can fall flat. As usual, I’m gonna have things to say about this, and how it relates to the first movie, so stay tuned. I do not expect the kids to express an interest in seeing this movie, so I’ll be watching this alone, just like I did the first.
Release Date: November 3
In December:
The Color Purple
I’m not sure I’m going to see this, but I look forward to its reception. I’ll see it if my niece asks me to take her. It’s a musical, and a re-imagining, but it’s possible it might be too mature for an 11 year old, and I also know its gonna make me cry, and I like to try to look like I’m holding my shit together in public. (I’m a pronounced failure at that. I will cry at anything! I cried during The Flash!)
Let’s be clear, just because these movies are forgotten, doesn’t mean you need to immediately go out and watch them. You also don’t need to go watch them just because I liked them, (although there are a couple of movies on this list I don’t actually like, but was just recently reminded I hadn’t seen since they last aired on TV). For some of these, there’s a clear reason why no one has spoken about them, or sometimes not been mentioned by the people who starred in them. On the other hand, at least a couple of these are real gems worth looking for, and relatively easy to find, that simply don’t get enough love.
The Possession of Joel Delaney(1972)
I don’t know what possessed the makers of this movie to make this movie. It’s racist as all hell, full of old 1970s Latino stereotypes, although I get that the writer of this film probably thought they were making something informative and helpful for the time period, when really they were just making a movie about those scary Spanish speaking people who lived in the city. This movie has aged like milk, which is the reason that Shirley MacLaine has never mentioned this as part of her film repertoire. This could have remained one of those movies that would have been lost to my own memories had I not been forcefully reminded of its existence in a recent news article.
MacLaine plays a Manhattan woman of means who starts to believe that her brother is possessed by the spirit of a serial killer from Spanish Harlem. I think this movie is supposed to be a cash-in on the exploits of the serial killer du jour at that time, Richard Ramirez, who was also known as The Valley Intruder, who was a rapist, serial killer, child molester, burglar…he specialized in everything really. Shockingly, it was released before The Exorcist, so it did kinda help kick off the spate of exorcism films following in that more famous film’s wake.
I remember watching this movie when I was a teenager, thinking that it would be an interesting movie like The Exorcist, and it was, up to a point, but I was still distinctly and uncomfortably aware of the film’s racism. You can watch this as an artifact of its time, but it’s not a great film, or at times, even a good one. I remember it being wildly over the top and the lead character was hysterically overdone which now that I consider it, is entirely in keeping with the 70’s Horror aesthetic.
This movie is available for free on Youtube.
The Gate (1987)
This is one of those movies that was actually pretty good, contained some genuinely scary moments, and yet still managed to be mostly forgotten, thanks to time, and movies that were simply louder, and had slightly better special effects, like Poltergeist, and Gremlins, both of which this film seems to reference.
A little boy, his best friend, sister, and her friends discover a strange hole in their backyard. They decide to read a book of incantations over the whole in an attempt to close it (because it’s the 80s and that was simply what one did back then), but instead end up releasing a horde of tiny demons that wreak havoc through their house for the rest of the night, which culminates in the release of a Boss demon (and some possible demon possession) by the end of the film.
I rather liked this film. I saw it on video a couple of years after its release, but I distinctly remember watching the trailer at my aunt’s house and feeling intrigued and a little scared. For some reason, those little white-skinned demons really bothered me, and the giant demon that shows up at the end is crude but effective. It’s not a bad film, but it is a very 80s film, with all the wardrobe, dialogue, and special effects of that time period. This is another movie that you don’t have to watch, but if you do, keep in mind that it’s simply an artifact representative of an era.
The Gate is available on Freevee via Amazon Prime, and Tubi.
Scanners (1981)
I kind of know why this movie was forgotten, but at the time it was released it was one of the hottest topics in America, mostly because of the very graphic special effects of people’s heads exploding. Outside of the general plot and special effects though the movie is sort of a bust. The one major drawback is the acting of the lead character. I have the distinct memory of grimacing every time he appeared on screen, and I definitely remember asking myself who cast this man in this role. He had all of the acting skills of a wooden plank. No, really!
Now, this is a David Cronenberg film, so I am a little bit more forgiving of him because he did eventually learn how to hire actual actors for his lead roles by the time he made The Fly five years later, but this movie contains all of the body horror subject matter that made a name for him in the industry. (If you want to know who I’m talking about David Cronenberg is now starring in the fourth season of Star Trek Discovery.)
The plot is a rather convoluted thing about different groups of telekinetics and mind readers at war with each other for control of humanity. This also involves some drugs given to certain mothers, which caused their babies to be psychic while in the womb. The plot isn’t really important because you won’t remember it. What you will remember are the exploding heads, popping veins, arterial spray, and exploding eyeballs. This movie was disgusting. I saw it when I was maybe 14, and I always wished I’d waited until I was a little bit older before I watched it, like maybe sixteen.
Scanners is available to watch on the Max app, and free on Amazon Prime.
The Fury (1978)
Okay, I watched this movie as a teenager, not because of the supernatural teen superpowers plot, but because it starred one of my favorite actors at the time, Andrew Stevens, who had a luxurious head of wavy brown hair. I mentioned before that men with luxurious bouffants were my teenage weakness and Andrew was a perfect example of a teen girl’s tastes going horribly wrong because while he was great to look at, he was not a great actor. On the other hand, Amy Irving was great and got to star in yet another Brian DePalma film about a girl with out-of-control psychic powers. I was not a fan of Kirk Douglas. He was just some old guy I saw in other older movies at the time (the 80s), but now that I’m an adult I can much better appreciate his role in this film.
The plot is loosely based on the novel by John Farris about a couple of twin psychics, one of whom is captured by the government, sexually groomed and experimented on in order to turn him into a more tractable Dr. Manhattan (his name is Robin), and the other, a young lady named Gillian, is captured by the government, manages to escape, and wreaks havoc before government agents try to use the first psychic to re-capture her.
The story has everything: father-son relationships, kidnapping, government assassins, psychic killings, evil conspirators, betrayals, psychic bonds between strangers, and whatnot. But what the movie is most famous for is Brian DePalma’s use of spectacle to end the story by having the bad guy get blown up like a firecracker. I remember the media paid a lot of attention to this particular special effect, which is how I learned about this movie’s existence because, before all that noise, I wasn’t paying any attention.
The movie isn’t bad, but it does have several ridiculous moments like when Robin racistly attacks a bunch of Middle Eastern tourists at a mall because he was told that people who look like them killed his father, and including a deeply icky one where the bad guy tries the same sexual grooming tactics on Gillian at the end of the film which, as I said, results in explosive retaliation. I haven’t seen this movie in at least a couple of decades and had largely forgotten about Andrew and his luxurious hair, until I stumbled across a book recommendation for people who like Stephen King.
The Fury is available on Hulu.
Nightbreed (1990)
By the time of this movie’s release, I had moved out of my “luxurious hair” phase and into my “I love monsters” phase. Not only that, but I had found my people, because I had a group of girlfriends who felt the same way about sexy monsters, and we went to all the latest movies that featured them and squeed about how handsome they were. Anyway, we were behaving embarrassingly young and I don’t regret a single moment of it.
I feel like people don’t give this movie enough love or credit, especially considering the story was from Clive Barker. Clive Barker is now famous for writing sympathetic monsters and the monsters featured in this film were some of his best, although the movie is largely senseless. The monster that I and one of my friends acted a fool over was named Peloquin, while my other friend was going gaga over a character named Narcisse because that was her type. I mostly remember this movie with great fondness because of the goofiness of me and my friends, and this was one of the few times that I saw a movie where the monsters were actually the persecuted good guys.
As you know, or should, Horror movies have always had a problem with using “ugliness” (or simply unconventional looks) as a shorthand for evil, something I briefly mentioned in my post about Horror movies set in the country where the rural poor are often cast as cannibals and serial killers. In this story, the monsters are set upon by townsfolk after being blamed for a series of murders committed by a creepy psychologist played by David Cronenberg. Boone, the protagonist of the film was framed for the murders by the creepy psychologist, which caused Boone to flee to a place of safety called Midian, “where the monsters live”.
Ive been just a little bit obsessed with the idea of Midian ever since. Apparently, I’m not alone in this, because there have been a series of graphic novels and an anthology based on the characters in the film, but this partial-franchise still manages to remain mostly below the radar.
Nightbreed is available on most of the free movie streaming apps, like Tubi, Plex, Amazon, and Roku.
Gargoyles (1972)
I have fond memories of watching this movie very late one night, and that’s because the movie was just too awful to air in Primetime. This was the type of film you were either going to see at noon, or 2AM. It’s been a very very long time since I saw this, so I hadn’t even remembered that Scott Glenn, one of my favorite actors, was even in this movie.
This was one of the earliest movies I’d ever seen (and remembered) where the monsters are actually sympathetic. I remember liking the lead gargoyle when he finally showed up and spoke in a cultured English accent. Or at least thats how I remember it.
An archeologist and his daughter come across some artifacts or something that leads the father to believe in the existence of gargoyles. Anyway, some misunderstandings ensue and a war breaks out between the gargoyles and the humans, which I guess the humans, more or less win, but the gargoyles are still alive at the end, so I’m not sure.
I was ten, so I was fascinated by the special effects involved in the gargoyle’s lizard skin tufted suits, and wings that were apparently made out of chickenwire or something. This was 1972, y’all! I think I maybe saw this movie a couple more times as a kid and then never again after that. It exists in my brain as a curiosity that was only brought back to mind because I stumbled across it on YouTube.
I am, and probably always will be, haunted by its ending, where the leader of the gargoyles picks up its injured mate and flies off into the night sky. For some reason it is one of thousands of movie images stuck in my brain, long after the movie itself was forgotten.
Gargoyles is available for free on Amazon Prime, Tubi, and Crackle.
The Car (1977)
Even though I was only two years older than my youngest sibling, we all had separate bedtimes. I got to stay up the latest, once my mom figured out I could handle it. So when this aired in Primetime a few times, I asked her if I could stay up to watch it with her (she’d already seen it and it was one of her favorites) she indulged me. I think she allowed it because she knew it wasn’t particularly graphic and she simply wanted to share the experience.
Now, I didn’t ask out of the blue. I had heard her raving to one of her girlfriends about it, and I was curious. To my ten year old mind though, she was right! There are at least a couple of unexpectedly badass moments in this movie that I retained the memory of for decades.
It’s basically about a small town and it’s surrounding roads being menaced by a large black car, and if you can get past the 70s wardrobe and the occasional odd plot point, the moments of terror are pretty effective, including one spectacular moment when the vehicle pursues someone right into their house! After a while you just accept the car as a creature of intent.
I cannot say this is a good film because there are a lot of movies I like for the nostalgia factor, and because as a child I lacked discernment, so I watched anything, and just about all movies were equal. I’m not a person who hates remakes, because I do think there are some movies that need to be remade in order to be updated, and the closest parallel to this is Christine, which came some ten years later. The Car is available for rent on Vudu, and Amazon Prime, although, even though it’s not a terrible film, I don’t know why anyone would pay to watch it.
Bugsey Malone (1976)
This movie is one of the primary reasons why I consider the 70s to be the Wild Wild West of filmmaking, because there was some human being in a position of authority in Britain (actually several people signed off on this) had the bright concept of making this movie about famous 1930s gangsters using a cast of children, I shit you NOT!!! This movie was also a MUSICAL! And for whatever reason, this film has been COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY FORGOTTEN!!
This film starred a who’s who of British child actors of the 70s, and also included Jodi Foster as Tallulah, a gun moll, and Scott Baio as Bugsey Malone. Don’t worry, the movie was a parody of the gangster film, where the guns used whipped cream instead of bullets. I saw this movie exactly one damn time when I was a kid (I don’t know how or where) and it completely escaped my memory until I stumbled across it while researching 1970s musicals on YouTube.
Anyway, this movie is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. I watched the trailer and the production values are absolutely gorgeous for a children’s film. I’m looking forward to revisiting it after which I’ll get back to you.
Yes. I realize that this is the only movie on this list that’s not a Horror movie but I had nowhere else to put this because it truly is a forgotten film.
Wes Craven’s Chiller (1985)
This happens to be one of Wes Craven’s least remembered films, a made for television movie that aired on the CBS network in 1985. I remember being interested in this because I’d become a big fan of Michael Beck, after seeing him as Swan in The Warriors. I will unashamedly admit that once again my attraction to luxurious windblown hair played a role in my infatuation. In my little teenaged brain Swan was one of the most Epic characters ever (until he was replaced by the lead vampire, David, from The Lost Boys!) The movie also happens to star Paul Sorvino as a Priest. Sorvino made this movie just before he became famous in Goodfellas, so I’m glad that this film didn’t hold back his career.
The movie I have to admit is merely so-so. Its not awful. I mean, I did watch it all the way to the end and it does have its moments, but it didn’t age very well, and some of the dialogue and acting needs help. Basically, the movie could best be served by a remake, but that is not likely to ever happen since this film has been largely forgotten. Michael Beck stars as the titular Chiller, I guess, named Miles. His mother had him flash frozen when he died (from I don’t remember what), but when his cryogenic tube malfunctions, the doctors at the facility in which he was kept try a new technique to revive him, that didn’t exist at the time of his death.
Now Miles doesn’t immediately go on a killing spree. Since this is television the writers have to be a bit more subtle, so its not entirely clear at first that Miles was simply revived without a soul, which is an idea that genuinely scared me when I was 15. He pretty much just acts like your typically soul-less business man, which doesn’t help matters, because how do you tell the difference between that and a supernatural form of psychopathy? There’s also some added “girl in danger” plot with the teenage step-daughter of his mother (who refuses to believe that her son is a killer no matter how many clues drop in her lap) and Miles behaving in a sexually menacing manner. It’s not explicit but you definitely know what’s going on.
Anyway, there’s a reason why this movie was forgotten even though its not strictly speaking a “bad” film. Like I said, it would work if it were updated with a better budget. This movie is available for free on Youtube.
I’ve loved monster movies ever since I was a kid and even today, Creature Features are always my favorite type of Horror. I used to watch monster movies every Saturday afternoon on a TV show called Super Host, a daytime movie show with a host who had a superhero gimmick, who would talk about or mock the movie being presented, kinda like Elvira. The very first monsters I was introduced to though were Ray Harryhausen’s stop motion creatures.
For a lot of people my age, their first stop motion film was the 1933 King Kong, but I was disinterested in watching that and I wasn’t allowed to watch the 70s version of King Kong, since my mother objected to it for some reason. Consequently, I didn’t see either movie until I was almost an adult, and I preferred the 1933 version. My first monster movies were Harryhausen films though.
Ray Harryhausen was a British American special effects animator during the 50s and 60s. His first movie was Mighty Joe Young in 1949, and he retired after making Clash of the Titans in the 80s. He has had a profound affect on the use of stop motion in film. I would in fact call him the father of the technique. If you’ve ever watched any kind of stop motion animation, in children’s films like The Nightmare Before Xmas, Action movies like The Terminator, and Horror movies like The Thing, then chances are he had some influence on the creator. He is also probably the reason so much stop motion involves monsters and horror.
Now, not all of these were Horror movies. Some of them were Fantasy and Adventure films, but Harryhausen still managed to create some outstandingly terrifying (at least to a little ten year old girl) monsters. Here in exact order this time (rather than just throwing them up randomly as I usually do) are the ten creatures that most delighted and terrified me as a child.
10. Rhedosaurus – The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms
This was maybe the very first Harryhausen monster I ever watched. I was reminded of having seen this movie while watching Jurassic Park The Lost World. This movie, Godzilla, and other kaiju films set up my lifelong fascination with movies about giant (sometimes previously extinct) creatures visiting the modern world and tearing up cities. When I was a kid I used to imagine how incredible and horrible that would be, and this was one of the first movies I ever saw that seemed to capture that feeling of awe and terror.
9. Gwanji – The Valley of the Gwanji
This was the second movie to create that same feeling of awe and dread. I remember the first time I sat down to watch this movie as a child. I’d seen the trailer for it on that same afternoon movie show and I remember talking to my Mom about it, and I remember her saying I would enjoy it because cowboys and dinosaurs was a pretty novel concept. This movie was a lot more fun than frightening though.
I think you’re beginning to notice a bit more of a pattern in the types of creatures (and plots) that I found enjoyable, yes?
8. The Kraken – Clash of the Titans
I remember when this aired on TV for the first time because it was a really big deal. I kept seeing trailers for it for weeks and I remember being really excited to watch it because I was huge fan of Greek mythology (What? 👀What teen does not read Greek mythology?)
Anyway, I loved the movie, but the Kraken wasn’t the most frightening thing in it. I think by the time this monster showed up I was too exhausted to be scared and was just glad the hero accomplished his goal because I remember cheering at that moment.
7. The Cyclops – The 7th Voyage of Sinbad
I was inspired to write this post because for reasons known only to god, the devil, and Bob, YouTube recommended this particular movie to me. Of all the creatures featured in this movie, I think the Cyclops was the least frightening, nevertheless, he made quite an impression on me. He had feelings, and he reacted to things, and there was a lot of attitude.
I loved all of the various Sinbad movies and would watch any of them whenever they aired.
6. Ymir – 20 Million Miles to Earth
When I was really little I thought this monster was as scary as it was gonna get, and Ymir was pretty frightening. One of the reasons it works as scary is you’re following the monster from its birth, when it’s really tiny, until it grows too big for humans to manage, and it’s beating up other monsters in the town square. Again, Harryhausen managed to animate a lot of personality into this creature, which makes it fun to watch its little gestures and movements.
Okay, all these other monsters (6 -10) are all pretty scary, but these next top five are my absolute favorites, that still today, give me a delicious chill. I will watch these old movies just to revisit these delightfully terrifying fiends, and then go to bed with my lights on!
5. Talos – Jason and the Argonauts
These first five movie might have something to do with my long fascination and terror of inanimate objects that have a life of their own, and for reasons, don’t like people. For that reason, I’ve never liked (but have loved) a lot of killer doll films. I blame movies and monsters like this one.
I remember the first time I watched this movie too, and although I was expecting it, I still wasn’t expecting it, if you know what I mean. Talos turning his head that first time, scared the living bejeebus out of me!
4. Ship Figurehead – The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1973)
Okay, this one was a monster that genuinely scared me spitless , and I think it was because the set up was so well done. Up to this point, we (and the crew) had been seeing this masthead of and on since the beginning of the film, so when it finally comes to life, it’s completely unexpected and utterly terrifying.
I also wondered what it would be like to have something you thought was familiar, and had pretty much disregarded as not being that important, turn out to be not just something different than you first thought, but actively malevolent.
3. Skeletons – Jason and the Argonauts
These guys are hands down some the scariest but most fun monstrosities that Harryhausen ever made. I used to imagine myself in this situation as a kid. I think I’d probably just run away, because really, how do you fight just bones?
The scary part is yeah, they’re just dead bodies, but the fun part is watching them act so human. They still manage to look mean spirited even though they don’t have facial expressions. Their body language is superbly animated because the way they react during the fight is deeply funny to me and it’s just a fun fight to watch!
2. Kali Statue – 7th Voyage of Sinbad
The Kali is one of my all-time favorite Harryhausen creatures and has been since I first saw her as a child some idle Saturday afternoon. I’d been reading about Indian gods and goddesses off and on for several years before I saw this movie (I was in my World mythology phase), so even though I didn’t care for the green worshippers (wtf?!!) when she started to dance! Wow! Once again this was both expected to happen but unexpected in its execution and I absolutely loved it!
One of the most frightening things about Harryhausen’s creatures is the lack of facial expressions. The attitude of most of them is very Terminator-like, implacable and relentless. I know most of them are activated by magic but that feeling of hostility in the body language is still overwhelming. These creatures do not care about what they’re doing. They are there to do one thing, and one thing only. Kill people!
1. Medusa – Clash of the Titans
There is absolutely no one who could’ve come in at number one on this list other than my girl The Medusa. Harryhausen had a knack for animating female monsters. They were monsters but he never forgot some essential femininity about them that came through in the animating style. There was a kind of grace and poise that his male characters lacked.
And it’s not just the monster that fills you with that overwhelming feeling of dread it’s the lighting, camerawork, and the background. You can see all the bodies of the men she’s frozen, all the ones who came before Perseus to try to defeat her and failed littering her home, all of displaying various states of terror. There’s the firelight, her expressive eyes, the way she turns her head as she hunts her prey. It’s impossible not to look at her even though you know it will kill you.
One of the primary reasons Medusa is number one on this list is she is one of the few monsters that has facial expressions. You can see everything she is thinking and feeling on her face. She is hate filled, determined, and relentless, but you still feel something for her when she dies.
Other Favorite Monsters:
These three didn’t end up on the top ten list but are still favorites of mine.
I know the title says greatest but this is once again, this isn’t actually a “best of” list, but a list of the greatest vampire books I loved and which inspired me…to read more vampire novels! Now once again these are not in order of importance because my brain just doesn’t rank things according to best or worst. There’s just stuff I like and stuff I don’t like. These are straight Horror novels. There are no Paranormal Romance books on this list. Not that I don’t like any of those. I just prefer the monstrous vampires, and there’s more diversity of vampire in those.
As a general rule, I do not read Paranormal Romance because they’re simply not to my tastes, which run pretty dark, and gritty, although that doesn’t mean that at least one or two didn’t make the cut. With any list, there’s always someone who shows up to ask “What about…”, and all I can tell you is if it’s not on my list then I either didn’t read it, or it simply didn’t move me as much as it seemed to move you. I encourage you to make your own list and put it in the comments, but I’m letting you know, if it ain’t dark and ugly I’m probably not gonna read it! Also, as a general rule, I DO NOT accept recommendations from people. I already got more than enough books I’m currently not reading. Do not give me homework! Imma give y’all some instead.
What vampire books would you swap out on this list and have you read any of these? Did you like them or hate them?
Sound off in the comments like you got a pair…of fangs!
Draculaby Bram Stoker
Well, we have to start with the OG, the book that began this entire industry. There were books about vampires that came out before or around the same era as Dracula, like Carmilla (in 1872), and Varney the Vampire (around 1847), but it was Dracula (1897) that created the template we’ve all more or less been following to this day.
Although this isn’t the first vampire novel I read, I have to give props to it because without it I wouldn’t have had so many deliciously terrifying reading experiences throughout my life, and yeah, I definitely prefer the monster vampires to the more romantic ones, (but I’m not gonna completely leave them out).
By combining an actual Eastern European historical figure named Vlad the Impaler (Vlad Tsepesh) to some random vampire mythology (some of which he pulled out of his butt) Stoker set the stage for innumerable tellings and retellings of Dracula and all his derivatives. Movies and series like True Blood, What We Do in the Shadows, that new Renfield movie, Van Helsing, Blade, and Blacula were all directly or indirectly inspired by the existence of the original story, even if only the mythology. For example, it was Stoker who created the idea of the bug-eating day-servant who was promised an eternal life he will never get, a trope that has an entire story industry surrounding it!
The ideas that vampires were animal shapeshifters, controlled certain animals and humans with mental powers, being destroyed by sunlight, or repelled by garlic, crosses, and silver, or the rule that vampires cannot enter a place unless they’ve been specifically invited in, or as in Dracula’s case, you put yourself in danger by accepting an invitation, (a trope that was hilariously spoofed in the movie What We Do In the Shadows), all came out of Bram Stoker’s book. Thanks to this 1897 novel we’ve gotten over 120 years of great vampire content.
Salem’s Lotby Stephen King
Despite my respect for Dracula, that was not the first vampire novel I ever read. Salem’s Lot holds that honor. My Mom was an avid reader, and had a small library of paperbacks in a large cardboard box in her bedroom, which I started riffling through somewhere around the age of nine. In her collection, I discovered 3 Stephen King books, Carrie, The Shining, and Salem’s Lot. The cover for Salem’s Lot was especially mysterious and enticing so that was the one I chose to read. And here it is:
Up to this point, I’d only ever watched old-school movies about Dracula. I’d seen the original 1933 version and watched all the Christopher Lee/Hammer films. I’d even seen Blacula, although I didn’t pay much attention to it because I was very young. I was totally geeking out about this book though, because it was the first time I’d read about vampires and what would happen if they moved into the modern age and it was the one book to which I compared every other vampire novel I’ve read since.
Instead of foggy moors, creepy castles, howling wolves, wild carriage rides, and heaving bosoms in low-cut peasant dresses, in environments where everyone knew of and/or believed in vampires and knew how to fight them, this story took place in the modern era. The victims were modern people, who drove cars, used telephones, and called the police when their neighbors went missing. It still took place in a white, middle-class, small town but the real horror of the story is that the victims were children, grandmothers, and doctors and that these unsuspecting people were being hunted by a creature they not only didn’t know about, but in which they didn’t even believe.
A lot of the first half of the book is set up for the second half and is a bit slow with characters you genuinely start to care about ruminating on the nature of evil. The real horror and tragedy of the novel isn’t really reached until its end, when you realize that an entire town full of people has gone missing and most of the rest of the country, though puzzled, doesn’t bat an eye and that for the foreseeable future, in that particular universe, vampires seem to have a foothold on American soil.
There’s still plenty of atmosphere and most of the gore happens offscreen. In 1979 there was a four-hour made-for-television movie version that my Mom allowed me to stay up late to watch, since it aired past my bedtime, on a school night. There was one other version released in 2004 and starring Rob Lowe, and although it was a satisfactory attempt, it’s just not as good or well remembered as the original. A new 2023 version has been promised from Warner Bros. for the past three years and I don’t know if we will ever get to see it.
The Light at the Endby John Skipp and Craig Spector
This is another book I had to take some time to recover from after I read it. Not because the characters were especially likable (actually, none of the formative vampire books I read as a child were big on characters I really liked or cared about), but the horror of the situation really worked for me and the opening scene of this book definitely caught me up. In it, an Old World vampire (not Dracula but possibly one of his contemporaries) decides to visit the new world, takes a ride on the New York subway, and destroys quite a number of lives just for fun, but marking one life in particular, that of Rudy Pasko.
Rudy is an unemployed, rudderless, disaffected would-be punk, who just broke up with his girlfriend, and who I kept envisioning as Billy Idol. Rudy wreaks havoc throughout the city in occasionally bumbling attempts to figure out what the rules are of his existence and eventually a group of fed-up do-gooders, one of them a disaffected Messenger employee, and another a Van Helsing-type older man who survived the Jewish death camps, team up to bring him to an end. I too imagine that this is much like what would happen if just one inexperienced vampire got set loose in any major American city.
This book isn’t like the Stephen King version where the focus was on mood and was more philosophical, and somewhat melancholy. This isn’t a straight Horror novel but a subtype of horror called Splatterpunk, where the focus is on body horror rather than atmosphere. It was the first such book I’d ever read and I’ve been a huge fan of Jon Skipp and Splatterpunk ever since. This novel is a lot more of an edgy, in-your-face, thrill ride which may not be to everyone’s taste, as it is also a very late 80s/early 90s style of storytelling. Most of the characters have relatively deep thoughts, although everyone in the book speaks in a fast patter of jokes and one-liners that I didn’t find particularly funny.
The difference between this book and Salem’s Lot is like the difference between Salem’s Lot and the Hammer films.
13 Bulletsby David Wellington
13 Bullets is the first in a series of five other books titled, in order: 99 Coffins, Vampire Zero, 23 Coffins, and 32 Fangs. David Wellington, a writer I was already familiar with because he’d tackled zombies before writing this series wrote the initial story and offered it for free at his website which is where I first found it.
This book is a little hard to describe without spoilers because these vampires are different from most of the other books on this list. In this world, everyone is aware that vampires exist and that most of them have been wiped out, except for a single female vampire, Malva, that the government has kept on ice because she is so incredibly hard to kill. She is forever scheming to create lesser versions of herself (these vampires can be killed more easily), so must be kept under constant surveillance, which is where our two cops come in. Laura Caxton must go toe to toe with this vampire if she expects to survive, but her partner, Arkeley, the man who helped destroy most of the vampires, withholds information from her so he can’t be trusted.
Once again, the focus is more on atmosphere rather than thrills, (although there is plenty of that by the end) with a little bit of body horror thrown in just to keep the audience’s attention. This one contains elements of Salem’s Lot and Light at the End in that there is definitely an air of melancholy, but it’s also incredibly dark and gritty, with a little bit of police procedural added. Some of the events are hard to understand because the vampires in this book are a little different than the ones from the previous books, which are more traditionally styled vampires. These are not your grandpa’s vamps, although they can stil lbe killed in the traditional manner.
David Wellington has created a terrifying series for each of the classic monsters of yore, vampires, werewolves, and his first series, zombies.
Already Deadby Charlie Huston
This is part of the Joe Pitt Casebooks series, which makes it sound like its more of a detective novel than it is, and yeah, there is definitely some detecting happening in the book, but for me, the focus was more on environment and character, rather than the mystery being presented. It’s a fascinating world where vampirism is like a regulated disease, and the vampires are fully in power, although still largely hidden from the mainstream public. The lead character, Joe Pitt, is a vampire who is poor and always wondering how to get his next meal, so he works as a kind of cop/enforcer for other vampires. The vampires are set up like gangs or the mafia, with factions that control different territories in New York City. The most interesting faction for me was a religious cult of vampires who have superpowers by living an ascetic lifestyle that requires them to starve themselves. They’re a very tiny group but hold on to their territory bercause they’re so powerful that absolutely nobody fucks with them.
Already Dead was one of the first Private Eye-type vampire novels I ever read, (along with PN Elrod’s series) and the first time I discovered the work of Charlie Huston, who is known for writing gritty, noir mysteries with gangs of competing criminals, with a splash of Maltese Falcon/Dashiell Hammet thrown in. Now take all that and make all the characters modern world vampires who live in an alternate version of New York City, (and no, the writer does not ignore New York’s diversity) and you have the basic structure of the Already Dead series, and I have to admit, this was all kinds of fun, while still being very dark and melancholy.
The Sonja Blue Series– Sunglasses After Dark by Nancy A. Collins
Sonja blue is famously known as the original Punk vampire. Now, to show you how much love I have for this series, and character, I originally listed The Vampire Lestat in this spot. I moved that book to the Honorable Mention category because I had to talk about Sonja, who is the most bad ass vampire slayer to ever slay. She was there before Buffy, is badder than Van helsing, and established her modern street cred long before Blade (although Blade is older than her. )
Sonja Blue was a lot like Blade, in that she was a kind of half vampire, only her status was born out of extreme trauma rahter than birth. She was sexually assaulted and turned (but not killed) by a powerful vampire that she then spends the rest of her life hunting. This trauma also caused a mental break where one of her personalities was more or less human (since she never died), but the vampire side of her nature (which she called The Other) was everything negative in her personality, being greedy, power hungry, ruthless, manipulative, and horrifically violent. Because she was a living vampire, Sonja was also a Day Walker who used her silver switchblade to do a helluva lot of killing of any other vampires she encountered. Not only was her vampire half more violent but had the ability to affect the emotions of any human beings in her radius, overwhelming them with feeligns of dread, terror, and fawning weakness. Humans who had been subjected to too much of that became addicted to the effect and became what Sonja referred to as Renfields, humans who were compelled to serve whatever vampire they had the addiction to.
The first three books are available in an omnibus edition of Sunglasses After Dark, In the Blood, and Paint It Black, and chronicles her hunt for the vampire that turned her, while she having several global adventures involving Old World cults, Evangelical Christians, and a ghost trap house. She saves a human man from a deadly cult, falls in love with him, and they adopt a child. The fourth book, A Dozen Black Roses, is one of my personal favorites, and is a mashup of the Sonja Blue universe with the RPG Vampire the Masquerade Universe, where Sonja stars as The Vampire With No Name who interrupts a war between two factions of vampires in a small town. The fifth book, The Darkest Heart, are about Sonja’s fights with demons, and another vampire hunter, and the last A Dozen Roses for a Blue Lady is a collection of short stories of Sonja’s encounters with other types of monsters, including a run-in with The Crow!
Although the original books are over thirty years old they still manage to stand up well in the horror department and I think its probably time for me to do a re-read!
30 Days of Nightby Steve Niles
Thirty Days of Night is one of those books that every vampire fan wishes they had written. It is the ultimate modern monster vamp book that began an entire franchise of graphic novels, prose novels, and a couple of films because the idea behind it is so much fun. A group of vampires decide to go hunting during the thirty day endless night in Alaska. Their massacre is thwarted by a small-town sheriff named Eben, his wife Stella, and the handful of survivors who have no choice but to fight back. In this particular universe no one knows vampires exist and while there have been disappearances of whole towns before, no one has ever put these two things together, so one of the side-plots is the survivor’s attempts to get the word out to the media what’s happening, and make the existence of vampires public knowledge. (This side plot was eliminated from the film where the focus is on survival horror.)
Thirty Days of Night is such a novel concept that no one has topped it yet, and the most common refrain from other Horror authors is “I wish I’d thought of that because it makes perfect sense!” I have to admit, its a great idea and why no one had come up with the idea of vampires living their best life in geographical areas where the sun never rises. It’s not like they’re gonna get cold or be complaining about their arthritis (although I’d watch a comedy about that.)
Anno Draculaby Kim Newman
I absolutely love this series, which moves through all the events of history to the present day, but is a veritable whose who of vampire lore and personalities across all of literary fiction, and is a near perfect blend of the two. If you are a history buff, and you love vampires than you need to start with the first book, Anno Dracula where every vampire that would have been alive during the Victorian era gets a shout out, including Lestat, Varney, and Carmilla. And Newman, to his credit, doesn’t discount the existence of vampires of color by including a Chinese Jiang-shi, and yeah, Jack the Ripper (or rather Silver Knife) gets a shout out too. Later in the series that same knife gets transferred into the custody of one Sonja Blue!
Kim Newman series asks the question of what would happen, not just if vampires existed in the modern age, but what would’ve happened if Van Helsing had failed and Dracula managed to become the King of England, and how that would affect entire cultures and historical events. In the first book, its up to a disaffected Elder vampire named Genevieve and a Victorian version of James Bond to destroy Dracula and save England before it descends into complete anarchy.
Despite the shout outs and cameos of famous people and vampires, the story does have a plot, and there is a great deal of excellent worldbuilding, with Victorian/Dickensian England over-run with starving vampires as the wealthy all seek to curry favor with the Monarchy by becoming undead, the poor are preyed upon and turned by the unscrupulous, war with the rest of Europe is imminent, and a serial killer is knifing vampires in the East End. All of the cameos are made possible by explaining vampirism through the use of bloodlines. All the vampires have different powers and abilities based on their country of origin, and what vampire made them. For example, Dracula’s bloodline is known for its shapeshifting abilities, while Genevieve, who is from another bloodline, not only doesn’t have such abilities but isnt affected by crucifixes or garlic because she simply doesn’t believe the lore, and ones like the Chinese hopping vampire and Prince Mamuwalde (Blacula) are from entirely different bloodlines that are not even connected to the European ones, so none of those rules apply to them.
This first novel, and most of the subsequent books, are basically Kim Newman’s love letter to vampire literature, and showcases the depth and breadth of his knowledge of folk and film lore. All of the books in the series are Hella fun and full of great little Easter eggs for anyone who loves reading history books, but would also like to know how history would’ve actually been affected if everyone knew about the existence of vampires, and yeah, I need for this to be a movie, or better yet, a TV series, and I really wonder why that hasn’t happened yet.
The Necroscope Series by Brian Lumley
If you like extreme body horror than you cannot get a better example than the Necroscope series, which consists of some 18 inter-related novels and short stories. The writing style took a bit of getting used to because I’m not used to authors who write in such a flowery but somewhat stilted style, so your mileage may vary. The author isnt real great with characters either, most of them are bland, somewhat boilerplate Englishmen. Lumley is very much a product of the 80s, and it would probably be best to stop at the 8th book in the series Blood Wars, since that is the end of the Harry Keogh cycle. You can try the rest and see if you like them, but I didn’t care too much for the books after that.
None of this series is tongue in cheek or jokey. Make no mistake, the vampires in these books are voracious, manipulative, horrifying, highly intelligent, and tenacious monsters, that will take any and every opportunity to survive or infect a human being.
Most of the tropes of the vampire are present in this series. The vampires can be destroyed by sunlight, or staked with silver but their origins are unique. They come from an alternate world that was knocked askew through some ancient event that created small wormholes. That world was heavily infected by vampirism after it stopped revolving properly around its sun, creating a permanent night on one side and permanent day on the other called, rather unoriginally called, Sunside/Starside. Vampires from that world were thrown into the open wormholes, as a form of execution, and some of them made their way into this one. The wormholes are mostly closed but what vampires survived were tenacious enough to establish a foothold on this world. The vampires of that world are infected by spores that grow in the swamps on the Starside part of the planet. Any living creature can be infected by the spores which grow into wormlike creatures, which are somewhat telepathic, will adopt the intelligence level of its Host, and eventually take full control. The ability to infect any living thing also gave rise to other monsters of folklore like werewolves (basically wolves infected with vampirism.)
The Necroscope is a man capable of Deadspeak, talking to the dead. In this universe, there doesn’t seem to exist a Heaven or Hell. The dead lie in the Earth and talk to each other, and are capable of that because the Necroscope, Harry Keogh, befriends them and inspires them to do so. Here, the dead mostly treat Harry as if they were loving aunts and uncles, which is kinda wholesome but still creepy. Later, his ability to speak to the dead imbues him with the ability to teleport to anywhere on Earth, and eventually walk between worlds. He uses his powers on behalf of the British government, to try to destroy the vampire contagion on Earth, and eventually takes the fight back to their homeworld , and you haven’t truly read monster fiction until you’ve visited Sunside/Starside. The sheer level of body horror inventiveness of the author reaches its pinnacle in the third book in the series titled The Source. It’s not easy to both scare the absolute shit out of me and gross me out at the same time, but Lumley manages it.
I read these books nearly two decades ago and I’m still geeking out about them. If you like the body horror of movies like The Thing, Resident Evil, and The Fly, combined with vampirism then you need to check out this series.
Vampires by John Steakley
I had to give a shout out to this novel since it is one of my all-time favorite vampire books. No, I didn’t like the James Carpenter movie which is based on this book because I hate James Woods and that sniveling human sneer was not who I pictured as the lead character from this book. Actually, its better if you simply watch the movie first because the book is better written and a little bit deeper. Or, better yet, skip the movie altogether.
It’s still the same basic plot where a team of vampire hunters work for the Catholic Church but that’s where the resemblance sort of ends. The lead characters, Crowe, Cherry Cat, (and several others not seen in the movie) are so much more than what was depicted in the film. The vampires are mysterious and terrifying (although still traditional), and the book is occasionally funny with some knife-sharp moments of melancholy. I’d really never read anything like it up to or since, and I was not ready. It’s the only book on this list that utterly thrilled me, horrified me, and still made me cry. The movie did none of that, with its bland characters and macho one-liners ,it is a very much a movie made by someone who thought it should be an 80s action flick, and the book is not that thing.
Much of the book is taken up with backstories of the characters, Felix the Gunman, (who I loved and hated equally), who is a highly gifted but reluctant warrior, and his love interest, whose name entirely escapes me since I haven’t re-read this book in a very long time. I would also have to search for the physical copy since this story is only available in Audiobook form! The other characters, Crow, Cherry Cat, Father Adam, Carl and Annabelle are all great, understandable, and sympathetic characters who genuinely care about each other.
There’s not a lot of vampire lore in the book, and humans, although peripherally aware of the existence of vampires, don’t know much about them. A lot of the team’s efforts and weaponry are smart and novel since the vampires are so strong and fast it’s impossible for a human to go toe-to-toe with them, but sometimes it’s trial and error, resulting in a lot of people getting killed, but then so do a lot of vampires, and an air of melancholy hangs over the book from the first chapter onward.
I love this book and not just because of the gore. I liked the writing style, which reads like you’re having a conversation with the author, but I really enjoyed the characters most of all. I generally like James Carpenter, but I hated the movie based on this book and I wish, I hope, there is a remake someday, especially considering the relative success of 30 Days of Night.
Honorable Mentions:
I had to throw these books on this list because I had a lot of fun when I first read them. They didn’t make the cut for the top ten because they’re already too much like the Charlie Huston series involving modern-day vampires and detectives and competing factions of supernatural creatures. Also, as much as I enjoyed these, the Huston books stood out as being better written and a little deeper. These are more fluffy and a bit more on the fun side.
They Thirst by Robert R McCammon – a worthy successor to Salem’s Lot, in which vampires take over the city of LA.
The Vampire Lestatby Anne Rice – the book which laid the template for hundreds of thousands of paranormal romance novels, and still (as far as I’m concerned) has never been bettered by a single one of them.
The Vampire Tapestry by Suzy McKee Charnas – the first time I’ve ever read about a scientific type of vampire. The mood is chilly and sad.
The St. Germain Chroniclesby Chelsea Quinn Yarbro – if you like history novels and Dracula than this is a worthy (and less gory) predecessor to Anno Dracula. This is an entire series of some 20 or 30 quiet but emotionally affecting books spanning most of European history since the Egyptians. This is the gentlest and most romantic series on this list.
I grew up watching a lot of SciFi on TV and I don’t think I’ve ever talked about my top favorite series cuz I got favorites y’all , and this time I’m actually going to rank them fromleast to most in the order I’m supposed to instead of just tossing them up in any kind of order like I normally do.
This isn’t a list of best and worst SciFi because I don’t normally think of the media I consume in terms of best and worst. What most matters to me is how I felt when I watched it, how long it sticks in my memory, and if the show had any personal relevance for me, not whether or not other people (who I decided are not me) liked it. Don’t get me wrong, I love it when people like the things I like, but that doesn’t often factor into whether or not I like it.
10. The Bionic Woman (1976)/Wonder Woman(1975)
And right off the bat, you can see where some of my little baby feminism is leading. I had to do a twofer on this one because I watched both of these shows around the same time. Like a lot of little girls I’ve known I wanted to see women and girls onscreen, having adventures, kicking booty, etc., and in the 70s and 80s, this is what I got! I count these two shows because I had the TV all to myself at the time of day these shows aired. I don’t know where my brothers were, but they never bothered me during these shows. I remember they used to air on Saturdays, usually around 11AM or Noon.
The Bionic Woman was a spinoff series from The Six Million Dollar Man and I thought of both them as superhero shows. I didn’t learn about The Bionic Woman until some time after The Six Million Dollar Man left the air in 1978. My brothers had Steve Austin (which I also watched) but I had Jamie Somers, and I have a very distinct memory of all of us doing that slow-motion running thing that the main characters did in the series. Yes, it was silly, but this was the 70s and we were like 7, 8 and 9 years old. The series was about a woman who had had various body parts, like her legs and arms replaced by machinery which gave her the ability to run really fast and super strength. Needless to say, this was not depicted very well on network TV, but it was good for what it was. There was a one-season remix of the idea in 2007, which had an engaging lead character and better special effects but couldn’t overcome the nostalgia factor of the original I guess, because It didn’t last long.
The Bionic Woman first aired in 1976, and Wonder Woman aired in 1975. I was five and six years old and I watched them in syndication around nine or ten. The lead character in WW was Lynda Carter who has had a bit of a resurgence in her popularity since the release of the WW movies. I’m sorry guys but Gal Godot is pretty and all but she is, at best, a whispy presence next to the truly Amazonian frame of Lynda Carter, who will always be my favorite Wonder Woman, with her sunny smile, twinkling eyes, and truly impressive bosoms. I also remember the themes songs from both series and yeah, and I and every other girl my age definitely did that twirling around shit that turned Lynda into Wonder Woman.
9. The Incredible Hulk(1977)
This was one of my favorite shows and I have the memory of watching it with my Mom. I’m often surprised by how laid back and relaxed a lot of the shows we watched were from that time period. I watched a retrospective of this series a few years back and I was struck by its wholesomeness, Bill Bixby’s gentleness, and intelligence, and the series’s complete lack of urgency, something of which was captured in Mark Ruffalo’s version in The Avengers, which is probably why I like him so much.
Another reason these shows are favorites is because of the theme songs. The song for The Incredible Hulk was a treacly piano number titled The Lonely Man and it just perfectly captured the tragic vibe of the series, where Bixby’s Banner had to keep moving on from place to place, getting involved in various adventures while dodging the authorities and a nosy news reporter who was determined to out him to the rest of the world.
The Incredible Hulk was one of the few SciFi shows introduced to me by my mom, even though she wasn’t into superheroes and didn’t watch many SciFi shows. I know she approved of Bill Bixby and knew that I liked him from shows like My Favorite Martian (which she did watch), and The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. When The Avengers came out The Hulk was one of the few characters we could talk about, and I think it was because of her grounding in this series that she was able to smoothly glide into a discussion of superhero movies.
8. Space 1999(1975)
This is one of my favorite shows right now. I remember that a lot of my relatives thought the show was pretty boring because they didn’t think much happened on it, but I also have the distinct memory of watching this show in my grandmother’s living room, and my other relatives indulging my love of this show because it aired around the same time as Star Trek and Lost in Space. I think the reason they indulged me most of the time is because the theme song for the show just slapped, but there were times we would groove to the title song, and then turn the channel.
I was only a kid but I remember Martin Landau from other shows I watched, and I grew to like Barbara Bain, but my favorite character was the shapeshifting Maya, played by Catherine Schell, but she didn’t show up until about season two or three. I thought she was beautiful and exotic at the time but I saw this series before I watched Star Trek so I didn’t know she was a kind of Spock ripoff. Admittedly the show and the characters were slow-moving and very non-dramatic in their behavior, which prompted quite a few people to say the show was boring. It’s true that it was not an especially dynamic cast and the show was a lot more cerebral than most of my family was willing to sit through, but part of the reason I liked it was for its Horror elements. The show was genuinely scary in its first season.
The show was ind of built on a Horror premise about a group of scientists on Moonbase Alpha who get lost in space when the moon gets knocked out of Earth orbit. Yeah, the basic premise is silly, but I watched a retrospective of the show on Youtube a few months ago and the episodes not only still hold up, but fit right in today’s shows from a plot point of view, and involved things like portal aliens that swallowed people alive, a man who was turned into a vampire like creature and had to be stopped, and creatures that were like ghosts. Every episode had a mystery that needed to be solved, the outcome wasn’t always predictable, and people died in some fairly gruesome ways.
There were also a number of toys associated with this show and I remember I had a large replica of the spaceship from this show. I don’t remember if my Mom bought it or I stole it from one of my brothers but I cherished this toy and played with it with my Legos! I was not a Star Wars fan. I was a Space 1999 fan.
7. Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone(1959)
Watching this first iteration of the Twilight Zone is one of my earliest memories of watching TV shows with my Mom. She was a huge fan of Rod Serling, probably because of the social messages in his work. I remember having discussions with her about the meanings of some of the episodes we watched or just hearing her talk about some of her favorites.
One of our top favorite episodes was It’s a Good Life, with Billy Mumy from Lost in Space as a kid with reality-bending superpowers, which was genuinely terrifying to me at that age, and one of my Mom’s favorites was Nightmare at 20,000 Feet which starred William Shatner before I knew him as Captain Kirk. I thought that episode was a bit overdone but some of the scarier episodes for me were Time Enough At Last, about a man who manages to get time to read all he wants except for one little hiccup, the Living Doll episode which might have something to do with why I find inanimate objects that move so terrifying, and The Monsters are Due on Maple Street spoke to both of us. I think the saddest episode was Five Characters in Search of an Exit, about five characters trying to escape some kind of prison, but with a horrible twist.
The Twilight Zone aired after Primetime and was one of the few shows she would let me stay up late on a weeknight to watch, which was a big deal when I was ten, sitting in my Mom’s bed while I drank milk and she had soda, and my brothers were already asleep. She and I didn’t have a lot of favorite shows that we watched together (although she carefully monitored what I watched sometimes) but whenever the original series aired we’d be right there for it, so you can imagine there is a huge nostalgia factor for me here. I was very young and until my own tastes started to diverge I simply watched whatever she watched and she had some fairly wide-ranging tastes. I did however draw the line at soap operas. She absolutely loved her “Stories” while I found them uninteresting.
6. Aeon Flux(1991)
When I was in college MTV and the Syfy networks used to air a program called Liquid Television very late in the evening, and this was where I first saw Aeon Flux. I loved the animation style but otherwise was kind of puzzled. I didn’t know what to make of the plots or stories and I wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be funny or not. Later, I decided that only some of the episodes were meant to be funny. Aeon herself was something of a sad sack. She never accomplished her goals and almost always died either because she was simply unlucky, or just through her own clumsiness.
When the series began the episodes were just one-offs that were not entirely connected to one another, although some had recurring characters, like her arch-nemesis Trevor Goodchild, who was the leader of some kind of authoritarian state that Aeon was in opposition to. Later, the single shorts became an entire series which was every bit as bizarre and puzzling but at least Aeon lived to the end of the episodes, sometimes.
The very first episode I saw, I thought was pretty groundbreaking. In it, Aeon is fighting a running battle between two different hordes of soldiers, and all of the viewer’s focus is on her until she gets taken out about halfway through it. I wasn’t expecting that! There’s another one where she’s doing some spy stuff on a train with Goodchild and she accomplishes her goal but is unlucky enough to get strangled by her own rope as she escapes. In another episode she just gets shot in the head by her enemy before she can finish the job. As an artist (who studied animation in school), the animation style was very exciting to me and unlike any other style I’d seen on TV, although it looks kind of jerky today, and I still don’t get why everyone was wearing BDSM gear, which I thought was pretty funny.
5. Star Trek Discovery(2017)
Before the show aired, I’d been watching Sonequa Martin Green’s character on The Walking Dead. I was pretty upset that she was killed off that series but later found out that she asked to be written out of the show because of her newest project. And then I heard about this show, and I was very excited since I really liked her. When I heard that she was starring in the series as an Ensign I was a little put out by that because I was led to believe the entire series would be based around her and it couldn’t be that way if she wasn’t a Captain. See, up to this point, all the Star Trek shows revolved around Captains and their crews.
But the show had something a little more subtle in mind because it turned out to be a psychological study of the effects of trauma, and a chronicle of Michael Burnham’s fall, redemption, healing, and eventual rise to Captaincy. I saw this pattern by the second season, but I don’t think a lot of people understood what the show was trying to do. I also had to explain to several people that weren’t used to seeing this kind of thing that this Black woman was basically getting the Full Hero Treatment that is usually given to straight white dudes in these types of stories, and that in itself was groundbreaking for Star Trek!
I have to admit, I couldn’t contain my excitement for this angle of the series, and I had (and still today) no patience for other people’s criticism of this show. To Hell with all of them! This was what I wanted to see and I don’t give a damn if people call it pandering because I want to be pandered to as much as every other demographic! This was what I’d been asking for for years. This was the representation I always wanted to see of women who looked like me. I waited forty years of my life for this, and to have Star Trek do the thing was enormous to me, and celebrating this kind of story was the reason I started this blog. The top four genres of film and TV (Action, SciFi, Horror, and the Western) had almost entirely erased the existence of Black women. We showed up from time to time and said a few lines, or supported some other character’s journey, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that, but when that is the only type of character you infrequently get…
Michael wasn’t just a sidekick or a token. She is the hero. She is the star around which all the other characters and the plot orbited, just like what happened on shows with white lead characters. She is passionate, smart, brave, reckless, and foolish, and I watched this character grow and learn and become everything she is to today and I am here for it. And she wasn’t the only great character on this show. I grew to like all of the top characters, (Tilly, Saru, Stametz), the tech was unique, and there were also all my old friends, the Klingons, the Romulans, and the Terran Empire. And I am fortunate to have gotten four whole seasons of this series.
Don’t get me wrong. I liked the other Star Treks well enough (at least the ones I watched), and consider at least one of the spinoffs some of the finest hours of television ever made, but you can’t tell me nothing about Discovery. Straight white guys have had umpteen bajillion SciFi series where characters who look like them were the center of attention, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that but…
This one is mine!
4. The X Files(1993)
I’m not sure what I can say about this series. it was my first introduction to conspiracy TV via Chris Carter. I was initially attracted to the show because when it first began it used a monster of the week model, and it was the monsters that kept me addicted to it. Along the way, I got a heaping helping of alien conspiracy theories, and a will they/won’t they love affair between the two lead characters, Mulder and Scully, which I only halfheartedly rooted for. I have never cared too deeply for romance in the shows I liked.
I remember when the show first aired I kind of hated Mulder who I thought was like every mansplaining, arrogant, know-it-all nerdy white guy I’d met in college, but over the years I grew to like him and his better qualities (one of which is that he turned out to be more or less right in his theories.) I liked Scully right away, although later in the series watching her get damseled always irritated me, and eventually, her skepticism became rather annoying, but I never stopped liking the show, not even after both lead actors left, and I continued to watch it even when it was briefly rebooted a few years ago.
I don’t always know why I like certain shows and The X-Files falls into that category. I can’t exactly pinpoint why I loved it so much, which is something I can do for other shows like Buffy and Supernatural. The X-Files just happened to show up at the right time for me to like it, I guess.
3. Farscape(1999)
This is another show I don’t have a whole lot to say about other than it was one of my all-time favorite SCIFI series, back when the SYFY network was firing on all thrusters. I loved it purely for the aesthetics, and there has really never been anything like it since. I watched all five seasons multiple times. I just liked spending time with these characters, and it had puppets, and it was funny, and actually, it was a very sexy show without being too upfront about it, with lots of black leather and high heels.
Not pictured above is the actress Virginia Hey who played the elegant, blue-skinned, Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan. This was an actress I remember from The Road Warrior. My favorite character wasn’t Crichton though, it was Gigi Edgly’s Chiana, who was just weird, and I really liked the weird. The aesthetics for this show were just crazy. I can say it was one of the prettiest and most imaginative SciFi shows on TV. The fashion, the colors, the special effects, and no bumpy-headed humans. Since the show was created by the same company that created The Muppets, they had the ability to make aliens that really looked (and in many cases acted) truly alien.
Storywise, the show wasn’t a rival for Star Trek but it made up for that by being hella sexy, about an American astronaut who flies through a wormhole, ends up on a living ship with a bunch of galactic prisoners, and gets chased around this new universe by various baddies while trying to find his way back home. I’ve never seen that much black leather in another SciFi series. Yes, I had favorites, but all the characters were engaging, which made the stories terrifying, funny, or sad just because you cared about what happened to them. Speaking of which, I kinda miss these guys. It’s probably time for a re-watch.
2. Mork and Mindy (1978)
I don’t think there are enough words to express how much of an effect this show had on me in my formative years and just how much I miss Robin Williams. He was a strange guy and Mork was a weirdo and this series taught me that it was okay to be like that, no matter what anyone said. This show taught me to love and accept myself, and through that love, accept the eccentricities of others. I was a strange little girl. I didn’t get picked on too much or teased a lot when I was little but I did get raised eyebrows from a lot of my teachers and my family, and most kids my age were disinterested in me or just generally avoided me. My mother however never batted a single eyelash at her strange daughter, who dressed funny, had odd but very focused interests, read everything that wasn’t nailed down, was a picky eater, watched entirely too much TV and liked the weird shows, and talked like the books she read. My Mom just rolled with all of it, loving me no matter how weird I was, never asking why, and indulging every one of my odd artistic interests, like weaving!
I remember watching this show when it first aired because I was in the fourth grade. I remember this because I went to a school in my neighborhood and I remember wearing those exact suspenders to school every day. No one and I mean absolutely no one, recognized those suspenders, but I loved them and wore them with everything. I guess that was my eight-year-old version of cosplaying. Other little girls had tutus. I had Mork Suspenders. I memorized Mork’s catchphrases and hand gestures (the sideways split hand greeting) that I later recognized from Spock, sitting in chairs on his face, how each and every episode was Mork discovering some new thing to report back to his people. This show went a long way towards explaining other human beings to me and as Mork discovered these things, so did I.
I loved this show so much, and if that’s how I felt about Mork and Mindy, then you can imagine how I must have felt about Star Trek!
1. Star Trek: The Original Series(1963)
What can I say about how great this series is that hasn’t already been said:
From Forbes Magazine:
Star Trek stories are humanistic; they are founded in Gene Roddenberry’s belief in the perfectible human. They provide an optimistic vision of our future. Star Trek tells us that no matter how crazy the world may look today, it will get better. We will get better. There will be a time in which doing great things will be the norm.
Star Trek depicts a meritocracy. The characters were cool not because of looks, wealth, or social position, but because they were very good at their jobs. It is a rare television show that sends the message that it is cool to be smart.
Star Trek’s optimistic view of the future stands as a contrast to the bulk of science fiction. Most television and cinematic science fiction depicts varying dystopian futures. Dystopia provides writers with shortcuts to conflict; it’s easier. When just making it through the day provides conflict, writers don’t have to generate as many new ideas. Star Trek thrives on those new ideas.
Star Trek showed blacks, Asians, and women in roles of respect in a time when that was not the norm. Whoopi Goldberg has talked about freaking out when, as a child, she tuned into Star Trek and saw that black women were part of the future. Nichelle Nichols has told the story of how when she was contemplating leaving the show, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. told her not to, because her character was a symbol of hope for equality.
Oh, and we not gonna talk about how I wanted to grow up to be Spock when I was a kid, or how I used to pretend I was visiting a new planet whenever we moved into a new house, or how eventually my goal in life became being as elegant and beautiful as Lt. Uhura. The ideology of the series became something to aspire to. It was okay to be smart in this universe. The focus was on solving problems, not infighting, or shooting things (although there was some of that too). The show was pretty imaginative for the sixties, and I liked the aesthetics, the uniforms, the bright colors, and the fashions.
Star Trek was the show to which I compared all the other shows, tbh.
These are not smart films. I actually made a small list of those films a couple of years ago and I’m reasonably certain none of these movies were on there. What constitutes a “dumb” movie could be lots of things, but mostly it’s the plot and characters. I really hate dumb characters and by that, I mean characters that do very obviously stupid things, that no one in their right mind would do, but this character has to do it to move the plot forward. Sometimes it’s a plot that is entirely hinged on how stupid the characters are.
Sometimes it’s not the entire movie that’s dumb but one major plot point that takes me entirely out of the movie and makes me yell at my screen. Normally, I hate dumb movies, but sometimes a movie has at least one redeeming quality that allows me to sit through it with a minimum of fuss, while I just laugh at the dumb sections. And yeah, there’s a reason why all of these are action movies. It’s easy to compile a list of dumb action films, but harder to make a list of dumb action movies I will watch multiple times because I like the actors, or the action is really good, or just because of the lead-up to that one scene.
Sometimes the movies are stupid, but a great deal of fun, usually due to the strength of the personalities involved. The Rock and Nicholas Cage, for example, could star in just about anything, and I’ll watch it. It’s always great fun spending time with either of them, just don’t always expect an intelligent plot. In some cases, like Scorpion King, don’t even expect a coherent plot. Some movies are very well-made but are corny and/or silly, like Independence Day, although Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum manage to save it.
Cobra (1986)
Cobra is a Sylvester Stallone joint from 1986. Now, Stallone is no stranger to making dumb films and the 80s are pretty much famous for dumb Action movies so this was bound to happen. I remember watching this movie late one night when I was probably supposed to be asleep and thinking, “This movie is deeply stupid.” Which was true but it was also deeply funny with lots of happy and mindless ultraviolent fun. It’s one of those dumb movies that gets repeated viewings on the strength of Stallone’s performance and the cinematography. The movie just looks cool.
The 80s was known as the golden age of what we now call Copaganda. Movies about cops and other law enforcement officers being rebels, breaking all the law enforcement rules, and pretty much acting like America was still in the Wild West stage of history, were all the rage back then. Just about every other Action movie starred a rebel cop or an FBI agent blowing stuff up, and frankly, I’m glad we’ve moved on from that to having other types of professionals blowing things up, like assassins, car valets, and insurance agents.
This movie has all the usual tropes. There’s the rebel cop with the cool name, Marion Cobretti, Cobra for short, a hot blonde played by Brigette Neilsen, who I kinda liked back in the day (I don’t know why). Brigette plays a business/model named Ingrid because what else are you going to name a six-foot-tall blonde white lady. Brian Thompson was your typical bad guy with a dubious philosophy and even more dubious plan for taking over the world by killing disabled people, I guess, because it was all very radically Dawrwinist, and he has a gang of followers and nameless henchmen.
When Neilsen’s character witnesses some malfeasance by the gang they need to hunt her down and kill her and she comes under the protection of Cobra who naturally falls in love with her. But that’s really not what makes the movie fun. What makes the movie fun is the action and the dialogue. Yes, the dialogue is stupid but it was really fun to watch these characters trying to emote while being too tough to show their emotions, and I actually liked Stallone’s character. Neither he nor the villain will be winning any Mensa awards so they’re about evenly matched. He and Cobretti get into a knockdown, drag-out fight at the end of the movie, which I enjoyed watching (I don’t know why.)
10/10 will most likely watch this again on some idle Saturday afternoon.
Nemesis(1992)
Nemesis is a cyberpunk action thriller from 1992 that contains all the well-worn tropes of a Copaganda/Robocop Ripoff. There is a burnt-out cyborg cop, a wayward former partner, a manhunt, a missing computer McGuffin, or bomb, or something, and several beautiful but deceitful cyborg/AI women. It also stars three of my favorite actors, Olivier Gruner, Tim Thomerson, and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa ( I don’t know why.) And I don’t think it was a coincidence that Brion James was involved in this movie. I was not a fan of Brion James, but I guess I am now, because he was everywhere after his stint as a robot in Bladerunner, so I built up a tolerance. This movie is bad in all areas of badness. The acting is atrocious, the action scenes are well done but make no sense, and quite frankly I didn’t care enough about any of the characters to root for or against anyone, but I remember watching this blatant Robocop rip-off multiple times, and will probably do it again at some point in the future since it’s free on Youtube.
For some reason, I was really crushing on Olivier Gruner at the time and remember watching several movies just because he was the star. He could be described as a low-rent version of Jean-Claude Van Damme, and he does have actual martial skills. Here, he plays an ex-cop, who is also a cyborg, named Alex. He gets recruited by an old boss or something to hunt down his former partner who runs some kind of underground rebel group. The plot involves a lot of shooting and blowing up of things. Do not even try to make any sense of the plot because you’ll only hurt yourself. I, on the other hand, am a professional bad movie watcher. This is what I do and I couldn’t even make sense of it.
I think I just liked the idea that half the characters in this movie were cyborgs, and the dialogue was pretty funny, even if the delivery was horrible. Nowadays, I’d watch it because there is a considerable nostalgia factor involved. But I don’t think you should watch this movie just because I have no shame.
The Rock(1996)
I wanna start off by saying that okay, Michael Bay is a horrible director, but I had to watch most of his 90s movies to figure that out, apparently. I did eventually learn my lesson and stop looking at them but not soon enough to miss seeing this. It also has the added benefit of starring both Nicholas Cage and James Bon- uh, I mean Sean Connery. Ed Harris is in this too and he’s worth about two and a half Connerys. Both William Forsythe and Michael Biehn (from The Terminator) also star in this movie, so Bay somehow managed to gather some of the hottest action stars of the 90s to take part in this novel, but still somehow mediocre plot.
This movie has everything. SEALS, the SAS, the Pentagon, ex-government prisoners, a rogue general, some rogue Marines, Alcatraz island, nerve gas, rockets, hostages, threatening an American city for ransom, and did I already say it? Nicholas Cage and Sean Connery hating to work together to accomplish their goals.
This is a movie where the plot actually makes sense in that it’s relatively easy to follow and keep track of people’s motivations, more or less. It did pretty well at the box office, a lot of people seemed to really like it, and it even won an Academy Award for Best Sound! But I’m going to argue that it’s the earnest and occasionally charming performances of the actors that make it so watchable.
The Rundown(2003)
Have no doubt, this is a dumb movie, that makes no pretense of trying to seem like it’s smart, but I love the hell out of this deeply stupid film. The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) stars in this movie and while he is not known for making smart films, he is such a fun and charming character in all of his movies (even though he pretty much just plays different versions of himself) that I always enjoy watching anything in which he shows up.
The movie also stars two more of my favorite actors, Christopher Walken and Rosario Dawson (and Stifler from American Pie, but I am not a fan of him though). The Rock plays a bounty hunter who gets sent to Brazil to hunt down his employer’s son, who is in Brazil hunting an object called The Gato (a gold-plated cat. Why? Who cares!), which is also an object of seeming importance to both Rosario and Walken. The three of them juggle this McGuffin between them for most of the film while Dwyane tries to keep Stifler alive to get him back home.
There are jungle scenes, a political resistance camp of some kind, angry monkeys, toxic fruit, explosions galore, a herd of stampeding cattle, and a batty Scotsman who spouts biblical scripture, and is also a helicopter pilot! Frankly, this guy is my favorite character in the entire movie. You have to watch it just to see the last thirty minutes, which is how I stumbled across it on cable, one idle weekend.
Universal Soldier(1992)
This was my and my Mom’s favorite Jean Claude Van Damme movie. She was a huge fan of his (so was I) and she really loved this deeply goofy film which we watched and laughed through multiple times. Now the movie isn’t exactly dumb but it is a bit cheeky. It takes itself just seriously enough that the introduction of those cheeky little moments of humor don’t feel out of place. The plot is non-sensical (in the sense that the science behind it goes completely unexplained), but also surprisingly easy to follow. Oh, did I mention that Dolph Lundgren is in this movie? No. Well, I should have, because that man can chew scenery like nobody’s business, even though he’s only playing a low-rent Arnold Schwarzenneger.
Jean Claude and Dolph play a couple of soldiers who died during some kind of personal skirmish in Vietnam, but through the magic of science fiction movies, they get resurrected as Special Operations soldiers who decide to pick up where they left off. But the best character is Veronica, played by Ally Walker, as a television journalist trying to get the latest scoop about some dead soldiers, who is also a great audience stand-in, as she speaks our minds most of the time. She spends most of the movie not believing what’s happening to her, but never comes across as stupid, which was very refreshing. She also gets all the best lines and I love her!
Why this particular military team is committing war crimes in Vietnam, long after the war is over, is never explained. Why do these two US soldiers have clearly non-US accents is never explained (although the writers do try to sell us the idea that Van Damme’s character was from Louisiana, so there’s that)? Why these two characters have beef is also not explained (outside of one of them being crazy). They just do. But the writers do make sure to explain why Jean Claude needs to take his clothes off in one key scene, though. There’s a little bit of Robocop, a little bit of Apocalypse Now, and the action scenes are, of course, EXTRA. With butt cheeks!
My mom and I used to crack the hell up so hard at this movie, which we watched every single time it aired on TV, no matter how late it was.
The Fifth Element
I just want to make it very clear that Milla Jovovich is a horrible actress, yet for some reason, she keeps getting cast in Action movies even though she has all of the fighting grace, and emoting talent of a 2 x 4, and I blame this movie for starting her Action movie career. I just wanna let it be known that while I don’t like her very much I am willing to tolerate her when she’s surrounded by better actors like Bruce Willis, Gary Oldman, and of all people, Ian Holm!. Hell, even Chris Tucker, as an androgynous television presenter named Ruby Rod, while deeply annoying, is at least trying to be funny, and more or less succeeding.
But the standout character and the one which most moviegoers remember is Diva Plavalaguna, a blue-skinned, tentacle-headed, 7 ft. tall opera singer, who gets about five minutes of screen time, but still manages somehow to steal the whole damn movie (by twerking), despite the distracting hairstyles, fashion sensibilities, and atrocious accents of all the other characters. Ian Holm plays a space priest, and I don’t know what Bruce Willis is doing in this movie, other than being himself, but they are the two most normal characters in the entire movie, which is kinda saying something, but I’m not sure what.
Bruce Willis’ character has to escort Milla’s genetically perfect mutation to a special location so she can save the universe from the Darkness or some such nonsense. This involves lots of aliens, elemental stones, kung fu, Gary Oldman choking on a cherry pit, and shootouts with said aliens. Don’t bother to follow the plot. It’s essentially meaningless. On the other hand, the director somehow managed to get the French fashion designer, Gautier, to do the costumes, hair, and makeup for the film, so pay attention to that.
The movie is a visual treat and occasionally funny, with acceptable action scenes, but do not mistake any of that for greatness. This is very much a niche movie for Sci-Fi Action fans only.
Venom
I resisted putting this movie here but finally relented because although I enjoyed it immensely, it’s not a smart film. I liked the characters, but they are not especially bright and there are a number of things that remain unexplained. The pacing is off, the plot is easily followed but makes little sense, and the dialogue needs some serious help. That said, the movie just leans into its inherent goofiness, with no shame, and I kinda liked that. It’s a lot of fun, mostly funny, and bears almost no relation to the things going on in the comic books, outside of the characters’ names.
This film was popular mostly on the strength of Tom Hardy’s performance as a journalist that’s kinda like himself, and the alien symbiote who falls in love with him, named, of course, Venom. Michelle Williams and Riz Ahmed are also starring in this but no one remembers that. This is strictly a Tom Hardy joint, where he plays a man possessed by an alien that takes over his body, falls in love with him, and decides it doesn’t want to join its murderous brethren in taking over the world and eating humanity, although it still wants to eat people.
The movie’s got some problems, which is everything in the movie that’s not Tom Hardy. But I am a huge Tom Hardy fan so I was able to tolerate all the other problems in this movie like the dialogue, the plot, the villain, and the special effects. Still, I was able to pull a handful of things that I really enjoyed besides Tom, like the relationship between Venom and his character is funny, and the relationships between him and most of the other characters are quite wholesome. Even the villains are suitably despicable.
I think most of this movie’s fans would never argue that this is a good movie. However, if you are a fan of Tom Hardy…it’s a great movie!
Face/Off
I tried to add other movies to this list but I kept coming back to this movie, which I have watched multiple times. Like the above-named films, the science and plot are just sort of hand-waved away, which gives me the nagging sensation that the movie is unfinished, but doesn’t otherwise hinder my enjoyment of this spectacularly goofy film. I think you can guess that I’m a big John Woo fan. He has made a number of these types of movies with some silly plots, starting with the very first one I ever watched, Hard Boiled. That movie was so wild that I had to backtrack and catch some of his previous movies. I didn’t love them all. John Woo is the kind of director that can just make you watch a plot that, if proposed by any other director, would get them laughed out of the studio, and I am here for it. It is the existence of John Woo that makes the John Wick franchise possible since he is the one who pioneered what we now call Gun-Fu!
Get this. Nicholas Cage and John Travolta play a cop and a criminal (it doesn’t matter which is which) who get their faces surgically altered in Travolta’s face-swapping plot to, pick one: blow up some shit, get revenge, or steal something. How about all three? Good! There’s all kinds of battiness going on in this movie, multiple Mexican standoffs, little children oblivious to shootouts happening just out of their fields of vision, nuclear bombs, boat chases, husband swapping, endangered daughters and wives…you name it, it’s probably in here, and all done with a style and swag that makes John Woo the Godfather of modern action cinema. The only thing this movie is missing is Chow Yun Fat, the star of Woo’s previous Hong Kong films.
As you can imagine both Cage and Travolta are chewing the scenery like it’s a BLT, but there are, as in all of Woo’s films moments of startling beauty and pathos that make it worth taking a look at. But if you’re going to start watching John Woo’s films, don’t start with this one. It’s best to ease into it with something like Hard Target or Mission Impossible 2, to prepare yourself for all his slow-motion, Mexican standoff finery.
Double Impact
I know a lot of people would pick Hard Target, which is pretty dumb but this is quite frankly one of the dumbest Jean Claude Van Damme movies ever made, and that is saying something when you consider some of the other films he’s famous for. This movie, like Universal Soldier kind of knows how silly it is, and JC more or less plays these twin characters completely straight, except every now and then he does or says something with that little mischievous twinkle in his eye that lets you know he knows this movie is deeply silly, and he looks like he’s having the time of his life.
Jean Claude plays some kind of yoga instructor who likes to show off his leg flexibility to the ladies in his class (seemingly the only reason they are there is to look at JC’s butt in tights, and I’m not gonna lie, that’s why I would attend such a class). Of course, back in the day, JC would take every opportunity to show off his naked leg muscles at even the slightest provocation. He is separated from his twin brother when they’re children after their parents get killed by some Hong Kong Triad gangsters or something. Anyway, they meet again as adults and have to team up to take down the people who killed their parents even though the two of them intensely dislike each other, which makes for some brotherly shenanigans as they show their love by punching and kicking each other. Eventually, they do get along long enough to blow things up.
To give you some idea of how silly this movie is, there is a completely unnecessary dance scene, with JC working it out with a couple of beautiful women in what appears to be a shed, and I enjoyed this scene immensely. It never fails to crack me up, mostly because it matches absolutely nothing else in the entire film, and yet is entirely in keeping with his character’s character! The brother, also played by Jean Claude, does not dance, hates black silk underwear, and is a grumpy, unlikable, stick-in-the-mud, who still somehow manages to make that look cool, and yet also appears to be living his best life.
You have to watch this movie just for the dance scene, because JC, unlike a lot of white guys I know, can actually stay on beat and appears to really be enjoying himself, as he should.
Bonus Movie:
Prometheus
I don’t even know where to start with this movie. I have friends who like this film and I guess if you turn your brain off and only see this as a Horror/sci-fi/Action film, it’s okay, but my problem is I know far too much about how the scientific method works to ever enjoy this movie. I kept getting pulled out of the movie by the character’s actions.
These are quite possibly some of the stupidest scientists to ever grace a Science Fiction movie. And the non-scientists aren’t too bright either. These people are so stupid they had me screaming at my television screen and that’s not a good look for any movie.
There are a good half dozen dumb character moments in the movie, and if you’ve seen this movie, then you know which is the worst one, but if you haven’t let me illustrate this for you. Towards the end of the movie, two characters are running away from a massive rolling ship (do not ask why it is rolling, you will only hurt yourself). One of the characters manages to avoid being crushed by the ship by accident. She falls down (as is traditional in Horror movies even though she isn’t wearing heels), and the other woman (who is wearing heels) also manages to fall down but does not avoid being crushed. Both characters could have avoided the entire thing by just not being stupid, and running into the wide open spaces to either side of the rolling ship!
This is my whole feeling during the entire movie!
You have scientists getting lost who aren’t supposed to be getting lost, people afraid of things they’re not supposed to fear, and/or touching things they’re not supposed to touch.
Okay, I don’t know if any of yall forgot about these women but I didn’t even know some of these women were a thing until a few months ago and got mad at my Mom for never mentioning them to me, but I realize as much as she knew about music she didn’t know everything and she also might not have known about these women. Of these women, Betty Davis is the one I knew the least about and is my personal favorite.
Betty Davis
I just love this song so much. It says so much about my Mom’s life and how Black women are never expected to know or care about other forms of music outside of Pop and Spirituals. In the future, I’ll make a list of Black women in different genres of music that people rarely think about like Country and Punk. But I guess she was a part of the whole Afro-Futurist Funkadelic thing that happened in the 70s, which is kinda sad, because we only ever hear about the guys who performed that time of music!
Big Mama Thornton
I have mentioned Big Momma on this blog before. I stumbled across this version of Hound Dog in a Tom Cruise movie years ago and wondered how it was I’d never heard this particular version of the song before. It turns out that the Elvis Presley version is nothing more than a cover song, and although I like Elvis okay, I feel he made a very washed-out version of this funky little song and I prefer this version. She has an incredible voice and I wish more people knew about her which is why I’m putting her on this list.
Barbara Lynn
This is another song (and another performer) I’ve fallen in love with. Now I’ve actually heard this song before, I just didn’t know the woman who sang it. I only discovered the video for this song a few weeks ago, and I don’t remember how I stumbled across it. I tried to find women from different eras of music to show that this is an ongoing problem of forgetting the contributions of women (especially Black women) to American culture. I’m reasonably sure that most people don’t know about these women because I’m a person who makes a point of knowing things about things and I didn’t know about them!
Bernadette Cooper
Bernadette is the lead singer in one of my favorite girl groups from the 80s, Klymaxx. I was a huge fan of their music and didn’t know her name. It turns out that Bernadette not only wrote this song but produced and wrote a lot of songs from the 80s by some of our favorite performers like Teena Marie and madame X. I love this song and every time I hear it, it brings me to tears. Apparently, I’m not alone in that response as this song’s sentiments seem to resonate with a lot of people. It’s a romantic song but it speaks to anyone who misses anyone they love, I guess.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
This too is one of my favorite songs. My Mom definitely knew about this performer but for some reason never talked about her to me much. I stumbled across this video years ago and then promptly forgot that I did so! But I didn’t forget her name, just like I didn’t forget her voice.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1915 – 1973) is often referred to as the “original soul sister” and “the mother of rock and roll” for too many good reasons to display at once. Among others, Tharpe was among the very first recording guitarists to incorporate heavy distortion on her tracks.
For some reason, there is a long history of Black women guitar players that has been lost to time, and well, we know why. For the same reason that there’s a long list of white female painters whose names no one ever mentions. As in all things, women do extraordinary things, but it’s only men who get all the attention, and then only very specific ones. I hope I can do my part to fix this with one tiny list at a time. Some of these I’ve heard of and some I’ve only encountered for the first time very recently.
New trailers just dropped for movies being released next year. Later I’ll post a full list of my most hotly anticipated movies and series for next year.
Transformers: Rise of the Beasts
I found myself really excited by this video. I checked out of the Transformers franchise after the first two films because they just became increasingly awful to watch. Michael Bay was definitely getting on my nerves, but the franchise regained my attention with Bumblebee, consequently, that’s now my favorite character.
Admittedly, I was not there for the Beast Wars saga, so I don’t know much about it, because I was elsewhere doing other things. I heard about it, though. I know only a handful of characters in this movie (Mirage and Optimus Primal) but not who else. Still, the nostalgia factor is pretty big with this one and it was really nice to see so many grown-ass men being childishly excited about this movie on YouTube! The trailer looks really good. Hopefully, the creators can keep the momentum they began with Bumblebee. Will I go see it in the theater? Idk. It depends on what else is being released that month because June is a lot!
Yeah, Optimus Primal is being voiced by none other than Ron Perlman.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
This movie’s nostalgia factor hit me pretty hard. I probably will not go see this movie, not because I don’t love Indy but because there are three other movies coming out in June I want to see, and this one falls low on that list. I do not have limitless movie theater money, so Indie, I’m afraid, is going to lose. Sorry Indy, I will wait for it to reach streaming services.
This looks really exciting though and if you guys go see it, write something down, tell us all about it.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3
I’m really looking forward to this movie. I enjoyed the last move and the holiday special a lot, and I like spending time with this group of goofballs. There’s not really a nostalgia factor here but it will be interesting to get rocket’s backstory, and it’s nice to see Gamora (or at least an alternate-universe version of her) again. I’m still not a fan of Chris Pratt (he is after all the least likable Chris) but his acting isn’t bad, and he’s not so awful I cannot tolerate him in a film with a bunch of other great and funny characters.
Elemental
I really, really, liked this trailer which is a great introduction to this world and its rules. I’m not really into the forbidden romance angle of the story, but I do like the easy Jazz music of the teaser. Everyone who saw this trailer was quick to point out how she is the only Elemental on the train who is made of fire and noting the different interactions between the Elementals. So the creators have already set up how these characters interact, have both negative and positive effects on each other’s existences, and why the fire elementals might not be included. I’m probably not going to the theater to see this one though because…Summer.
Cocaine Bear
This is one of those ridiculous comedies that get released every few years. This one is about a bear that gets high on a stash of cocaine that some criminals lose in the woods, and I’m not going to see this but Hey, if this is your bag, go for it!
Here’s a slightly different list from the last one which mostly consisted of movies I didn’t like or didn’t finish, either because they were just bad films, or I had no patience for them. This is a list of movies I actually like. They’re perfectly acceptable and watchable movies where I liked the characters, the plot, and it looks good, but I feel no great urge to watch these again because they were emotionally exhausting, too disturbing, or genuinely too scary, at least they were for me!
Arachnophobia
Stick with me here because there’s a story that goes along with this movie. Yeah, I do have really bad arachnophobia and have had it since I was a little girl. I was the kind of person who used to look for signs of spiders in any new space I walked into. (I have since calmed down about this over the years, though.) The way my memory works I can actually recount the incident that gave me this issue ( but we not gonna talk about that). I can talk about the event that happened to me when I was in college and before this movie was released. I know it happened in that order because after I came home from college was when I saw the trailer, and my Mom would tease me about being scared to watch it. She seemed to enjoy the movie a lot, thought it was pretty funny, and wanted to share this scary movie with me, but I’m one of those (stubborn muth*fck*s is what a friend once called me) who, once she makes it up in her head to NOT do something, I don’t do it!
I was in living in a very nice house one Summer vacation. I was working at the time, but I was also in the house alone because my roommates had all gone home, and I was sitting in my room, lights and TV on, when I saw a tiny little speck near my lamp. It was not a little speck, it was a tiny spider. Yep, I had a spider egg hatch in my bedroom.
To say that I freaked the f*ck out would be an understatement! I was a hot emotional mess for a week! Luckily, I had some of the world’s greatest friends who, once they understood what the hell I was jibbering about, helped me smoke bomb my bedroom (twice) and cleaned and moved all my belongings to another part of the house. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but I was at least able to relax long enough to fall into an exhausted sleep in my own bed after two days of emotional hell. Well, my friends didn’t mock me, kept their smiling to a minimum, and seemed happy to help a damsel in distress.
Mom knew about the spider incident and understood my attitude, but she always encouraged me to move past my fears because if I didn’t at least try they would always control me. (This is from the woman who apparently had some kind of phobia about boats and New York City! What was all that about?!) Eventually, I did agree to sit down and watch it with her, with a bunch of caveats and addendums, like leaving the room if I got too scared, squealing as much as I liked, and covering my eyes if necessary. I got through the first half okay, but covered my eyes and squealed a lot for the last thirty minutes. I didn’t leave the room though, so technically speaking, I did sit through it.
And you know what? It turned out not to be a bad movie although I have not watched it again in the twenty-plus years since then, and I have no plans to watch it again in the future. Personally, I consider sitting through that movie to be one of the bravest moments in all of cinematic history!
The Void
I was not particularly weirded out by the title or the synopsis of this movie. The thumbnail of the movie on Google looked intriguing. So I sat down to watch this with the idea that it would be your typical Lovecraftian pastiche of images culled from his works and got something I wasn’t at all expecting. I more or less understood the film’s plot, and what it was trying to do, but I didn’t expect bizarre nameless cults (although I should have) body horror images (I should have expected that too), and a kind of monster siege, working the night shift sort of film, where everyone dies horribly, except when they don’t stay dead.
It’s easy enough to describe the movie, but any description you give it won’t actually resemble the movie you will be watching, but I’m gonna give it a try. There’s a bunch of people stuck in a hospital on the night shift, only a few of whom are actually medical personnel. The rest are random townsfolk who are trapped in the hospital because some oddly dressed cultists besieged the town and were killing people, so the rest ran to the hospital. There are some weird medical experiments going on in the basement that involve the birth of an infernal creature from a young girl, the opening of Hellish portals, and lots of goo, blood, guts, and some tentacles.
That was as much as I understood, but that doesn’t mean the movie is ineffective. I’ve no great urge to watch it again because it was a genuinely disturbing film whose effect lingers long after it’s over, and I don’t have to watch it again because I clearly remember how uncomfortable I felt while looking at it. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing because there are movies that do this that I have re-watched, and if that is the kind of mood you’re looking for, then by all means, go for it, and tell me how it worked out for you.
Imma wait over here!
Annihilation
I generally like the works of Alex Garland, someone I didn’t pay any special attention to when his career began with The Beach in 2000. I didn’t even watch The Beach. I dismissed it. But then he came out with 28 Days later and I perked up. There was a new cinematic voice in Horror, and I’ve been present for most of his movies since, like Sunshine, Dredd, and Ex Machina. I sat through most of those without issue, and they were all very good, but in 2018 Garland released Annihilation, based on the book by another of my favorite artists, Jeff Vendermeer. When I heard about the movie I decided to read the three-book series, and I enjoyed them, for the most part.
The movie combines all three books of the series into one long story with yet another Lovecraftian theme. A section of the US has been taken over by something called The Shimmer. Elena’s husband went into The Shimmer, which warps biology, and he disappeared. Except he also came back, alone. Intrigued, she and a team of 4 other women go into The Shimmer to explore its purpose, with each woman having her own agenda. Elena wants to find out what happened to her husband. Each of the women find some thing they weren’t expecting which has a profound effect on the rest of their lives.
There are some genuinely panstshittingly frightening moments in this film, like when Elena and her team are attacked by a mutated bear that screams with the voices of the people it’s killed, but beyond that the movie is just weird, and sad, and yeah, there’s that word again, disturbing. It’s not a bad film. I actually like the film. It’s also not particularly hard to watch because it contains some genuine moments of true beauty. But it is another movie where the mood and flavor of it linger long after it’s over, and I have not been in the headspace to be able to watch it.
I will likely watch this again at some point in the future, because it is an effective, thoughtful, and terrifying film, but not yet.
The Revenant
Honestly, this is a great survival horror film, and if you like those types of films you should by all means watch this, but be prepared to feel as if you’ve been emotionally defenestrated in the aftermath. This movie is exhausting on a physical level, too. I just felt wrung out after watching this.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hardy the movie is based on the true story of a man (DiCaprio) who was left for dead in the wilderness by his business partner, (Tom Hardy) who, after killing DiCaprio’s son, went back to the nearest town and made the claim on his half of their business dealings, only to have his partner stumble out of the wilderness several weeks later.
For some reason the most distressing movies for me seem to involve bear attacks, although I do not think I have any kind of bear phobia. DiCaprio’s character braves the worst excesses of trying to survive an environment that is inimical to human life, like snow, freezing water, wild animals, lack of food, and angry Indigenous people, just to enact vengeance on his partner.
This movie just slaps the shit out of you emotionally. Well, it did that for me, but your mileage may vary depending on how much energy reserves you possess. This is another excellent film with great acting, cinematography, and a very compelling story that I will probably never watch again. Or if I do, I’m going to need to rest up, eat my vitamins, and do my breathing first.
The Descent
Oh man was this movie hard to watch, and not because of the monsters. I don’t actually have claustrophobia but this movie might give it to you if you don’t. It’s a harrowing film. I was exhausted and saddened after watching it. The most devastating moment isn’t the deaths at the beginning of the film but something that happens midway through it that completely upends the relationships between the rest of the characters.
A team of women friends decide to go caving in a previously unexplored system after the death of the main character’s husband and child in a driving accident the previous year. The team are attacked by a race of terrifying cannibalistic mutants and taken out one by one until there’s only one of them left. There’s plenty of blood and gore, but that’s not what upset me the most, and no spoilers, but it’s about the characters, comes completely out of left field, changes everyone’s dynamic, and therefore their chances of survival.
It’s a very effective film. I don’t often mind when films do the unexpected or throw something at me out of the blue, especially when it’s as well done as it was here. I didn’t choose these movies because I disliked them. I chose them because I liked them. Some of them are great films, but were so emotionally draining I simply don’t have the emotional bandwidth to put myself through them again anytime soon.
One of the great things about October is listening to some of my favorite songs that come from Horror movies. So let’s catch some of these needle drops from Horror movies, which are perfectly okay for listening to all year long.
These first two songs I discovered on YouTube. They’re not from movies, but they are entirely appropriate for Halloween, so I thought I’d put these first. I don’t know what I was looking for at the time but I found these songs by The Merkins ridiculously funny. There’s an entire album’s worth of these, each one of the characters in the group also gets a solo song, and it just tickled me that all of them are sung completely straight like this. Incidentally, “to merc” is the new slang for murder so even the group name is a joke.
Dreamer’s Paradise – The Merkins
I’ll Kill You That Way– The Merkins
This one is one of my new favorites and it comes from one of the top Horror movies this year, Jordan Peele’s Nope – Exuma: The Obeah Man.
I am one of five people that probably even remember this song from the 2016 Ghostbusters: Ghostbusters (I’m Not Afraid) by Fall Out Boy/Missy Elliott.
No One Believes Me by Kid Cudi from the 2011 Fright Night. This is one of my favorite vampire songs. I absolutely love this video and how much I wish it were a movie.
Here is a song from another Jordan Peele joint (the man has impeccable taste in music), I Got Five On It, from the movie US. I’ve always thought this song was creepy but there were no Horror movies associated with it until Peel made it explicit.
Here is The Candyman from the 2021 version of Nia Dacosta’s Candyman.
From the 1990s version of Stephen King’s The Stand: Don’t Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult. This was also used in John Carpenter’s Halloween.
This is a very popular song for movies but it was very well used in Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake When the Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash.
Here, using The Munster’s theme song as the foundation is Missy Elliot’s Get Your Freak On.
In case you have not had enough Jordan Peele, here is Childish Gambino’s Redbone, from the movie Get Out!
This is from one of my all-time favorite vampire movies, Joel Schumaker’s 1987 The Lost Boys, the song Cry Little Sister.
The Addams Family movies had some good songs attached to them. Here is the theme song from the first movie performed by MC Hammer, Addams Family Groove.
And for those of you who haven’t seen it in a while, A Bonus Video:
Hey, we got a bunch of exciting new trailers that recently dropped so let’s check them out! Which ones are you looking forward to, and why. Let me know in the comments!
Jurassic World: Dominion
This is such a great trailer for the movie. I would watch an entire season of short snippets of people coping with dinosaurs, so I’m really excited to watch this. I hope it’s a really good movie because this was the kind of stuff I used to imagine when I was a kid and I don’t want to walk out of the theater disappointed.
Wow! I mean just think about it! What if dinosaurs existed at the same time as modern humans? We’d have to take the good (incredible images and photos) with the bad (possibly being eaten). What if you lived in a place with a dinosaur infestation? What would your insurance be like? How would you explain being late for work because there were some triceratopsians blocking the freeway? What if the local pack of herbivores showed up in your backyard and ate your flower garden? And let’s be honest here, there is a part of me that thinks watching human beings be menaced by giant predators is just deeply entertaining.
Incidentally, if you like this video there’s a trilogy of books by James David called Footprints of Thunder that has this same plot, with dinosaurs having made it into the modern world through a time rift! Not sure if it’s still in print but if you can find some copies, check them out.
As I mentioned before, my youngest niece and nephew have already decided we’re going to see this film, and I believe in shamelessly indulging their interests. My Millennial sister likes dinosaurs too, so I hope to turn this into a full family affair, (although my oldest niece may miss out because of work).
The Winchesters
Okay, I have no intention of watching this. I watched all 15 years of Supernatural and I have no more taste for their story. I stuck it out to the end, and have moved on. More than likely this is an appeal to a younger generation of supernatural fans who while they may have watched the old episodes, are probably more likely to watch this than those of us who sat through 15 seasons of the original series. The actors are all very pretty but I don’t know any of them and I don’t want to supplant any of my memories of the original with any images from this one, so I’m going to pass on it.
But I know there are some people who are greatly interested in this, so I’m giving y’all a heads up in case you hadn’t heard the news.
The Umbrella Academy
I am very excited about this series and I’m really looking forward to the season three premiere. If you haven’t seen the first two seasons, I implore you to check it out. There will be at least one character you will fall in love with. I thought the character I would love the most was Klaus, who acts like a free spirit but is mostly traumatized by his ability to speak to the dead, and so self medicates. To my surprise, my favorite character turned out to be Number Five, an old man in a child’s body (due to time mishap) and who is the smartest sibling along with being a complete badass.
But this series is notable for having Eliot Page. Eliot came out as non-binary transgender last year and everyone was wondering how the character he played on screen in seasons one and two would be treated in the story. It appears that the character has also come out as transgender since the writers changed the name of the character from Vanya to Victor. Hopefully, Victor won’t try to destroy the world again as they did in the first two seasons. See how new this is. This is something that so different from what we’re used to that I don’t even know how to talk about a fictional character. How do I talk about Vanya? Is it deadnaming to talk about her since the new character is named Victor? And is it okay because she’s fictional? Somebody help!
She Hulk
I was a huge fan of the Jim Byrne run of the She-Hulk comic series, and I love what they’re doing here with the character. They seem to have perfectly captured the sensibility and mood of the books and now I’m looking forward to this. It looks fun and funny. I love how they made her a sexual being with appetites who makes it clear that she wants what she wants. The comic book version was often sexy and sassy, with a lot of snark and attitude, and yeah, Bruce Banner is indeed her cousin.
All that aside, I do hate the CGI. It looks awful and cheap and simply not up to Disney standards. The face is just wrong, especially in her Hulked-out state, and her body looks too thin, and not very muscular, which is a real problem I have with female characters who are supposed to have super strength but whose arms look like twigs. I hope they correct all this by the time the series airs. (Note: Jane Thor and King Valkyrie have just the right amount of muscle for such characters).
Note: I read that the CGI has been upgraded to look a bit better, so I checked it out, and the trailer was improved a bit. She looks more muscular than before, but her face still looks a little bit off to me. It’s not as bad as in the original trailer though.
Sandman
I have not read the Neil Gaiman comic books on which this series is based, something I plan to correct before the series airs in August. Since I am only passingly familiar with The Endless, I don’t know enough to be really excited about this, but so far, I like what I see, and I’m looking forward to reading the books, and watching the show.
But, whether or not I watch this also depends greatly on what else will be out at the time. Sometimes I have every intention of watching some show or movie, and then I don’t, or only watch some of it, not because it’s bad or anything, not because I’m bored, but because it’s sometimes hard for me to keep up the momentum, which has been stolen by another series. But even if I don’t watch the series, I intend to refresh myself with the books, which I haven’t even glanced at since I was a young’un.
New Thor 2 Trailer
Well, I already had plans to see this. Yeah, I’m an MCU fan and no shame in that, because I go to the movies to have fun and adventures, and MCU films deliver every single time. If I’m gonna spend that much money to be entertained I want it to be worth it. (Yeah, I’m not going to pay the cost of birthing a child in the US to watch a movie about pain and tragedy, unless it’s by Martin Scorcese.)
One of the primary reasons I love Taika Waititi (the director) is his ability, almost his compulsion, to take famous characters, sometimes famously evil ones, and deconstruct them, making them human and relatable, while never denying they’re not actually good people. He did this with vampires, Hitler, pirates, and superheroes, and he’s done the same thing for Thor, and I find it a really interesting habit. I’m gonna have to talk about that some more in another post.
So, yeah I’m looking forward to his interpretation of Jane Thor, King Valkyrie, and this new villain, Ghorr the Godslayer, who is played by Christian Bale.
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning
Okay, these actors are starting to get up there in years, (except for Rebecca Ferguson, who I believe might be a vampire), but I don’t care. The Mission Impossible franchise consistently hits it out of the park in the Action genre, and you have the usual required scenes of Tom Cruise jumping onto something while clenching a woman, and running really fast somewhere. I’m probably not going to see this in the theater because it’s simply not on my list of movies to watch this Summer. My mom used to throw my whole watchlist into disarray every year, but fortunately, I can dictate to my sister’s kids, and they kinda have to go along with my tastes if they wanna eat free popcorn.
I don’t actually have much to say about this trailer except the Action doesn’t look as wild and crazy as it has in previous films, but maybe they’re just holding back on those images, and when you’re sitting in the theater you’ll get that familiar sensation of your stomach dropping down to your knees, and you’ll clench the arms of your seat in terror, and paying five thousand dollars to see it will have been worth it.
Willow
I don’t normally engage in a whole lot of nostalgia, but for this movie, I will make an exception! The original movie was released in the 80s, and when it was available for TV, I remember watching it multiple times. It’s been thirty+ years and we have a sequel television series. As soon as I heard there was a trailer for this, my mind started playing the John Williams theme from the original. Yep, I still fondly remember that.
The reason the movie was so special to me was because of Warwick Davis. He was my first exposure to a dwarf actor, and I thought he was very handsome and very charming. In the movie, he is tasked with the care of a tiny baby girl that is the “chosen one”, But the movie isn’t about her, because she’s, like, one year old and has no speaking parts, so much as the hero’s journey of Davis’ character, Willow. It’s a little bit of a remix of Snow White, and surprisingly progressive for its time, with a woman warrior character and an evil Queen.
This sequel happens many years later and the “baby” is an adult, and Willow and some companions have been called to save their world again. The original was also my first real exposure to High Fantasy that I actually liked, as I was mostly indifferent to these types of books and movies, and most of them made no impression on me. But Willow snuck in and got to me, and I’m obviously going to have to do a deep dive before this series release!
I’m looking forward to it because it looks like a lot of fun and the nostalgia factor really kicked my ass while watching this!
Resident Evil
Despite that I’ve watched almost none of the movies, I do love a good horror series with lots of monsters, so I’m looking forward to this series. I’m not enthusiastic exactly, but anytime I’m watching a trailer, and I am sitting on the edge of my seat or just nope the fuck out (the giant spider scene), it’s definitely worth checking it out. so zombies, spiders, chainsaws, Black women being included in the story? I’m in!
I am glad to see more Black girls and women being involved in fantasy and horror movies and series. For the longest time, at least since the seventies, the existence of Black women as an audience that could be pandered to was not a thing. There’s nothing wrong with being pandered to in a narrative, despite the fact that straight white male audiences want to turn it into a dirty word, which is really ironic since for the past seventy years they have been the ones being pandered to by every form of entertainment media that existed.
Creators, almost all of whom were white men, literally didn’t think about other groups of people, in fact making it expressly clear that white men, between the ages of 15 and 35, was the ideal audience they were chasing after, and there is a contingent of online assholery that actually wants to go back to a time when we were considered nothing but maids, slaves, and servants to be abused in whatever stories we were in (hence the current online trolling of Black actresses who happen to find work in these genres). I’m glad to see these creators and writers remembering that WoC watch shit too, recognize that we also have money and choices, are willing to chase after PoC for their money, and that we want to see ourselves in these narratives as heroes and villains. Putting that message out into the world is one of the primary reasons I started this blog.
So yeah, I’m excited to see a Black girl in this series who is apparently being a total bad ass.
Strange World
I am a really huge fan of Lost World type movies, and my personal favorite is Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2. I just love watching movies about goopy aliens, monsters, and weird environments and this looks like hella fun, plus it’s got this retro-vibe that I find aesthetically appealing. I don’t normally watch a lot of the kid’s stuff on Disney, and I don’t go to those type of movies anymore (cuz I don’t have that kind of money), but I would pay money to go see this. I think it’s just going to be on the Disney+ app though which has more than shown it’s worth in the series Wandavision, Hawkeye, Moon Knight, and a bunch of movies and documentaries.
I’m not sure how I feel about the characters, because as I said many times, it’s not just a plot or some imagery that pulls me into something. It’s got to have at least one or two characters I’m drawn to, although the characters do look really cute! I didn’t see much of their personalities in this trailer so I don’t know what to think of them yet, (and although the pilot looks appealing, it doesn’t mean I will like her) but the trailer looks like weird goopy fun, which is enough of an attraction for me, I guess. It’ll get a look-see.
The Menu
And finally there’s this gem, starring Ralph, Fiennes, and one of my favorite new actresses, who I hope will be around for a good long while, Anya Taylor-Joy! I have the feeling this movie is about one of my favorite topics, cannibalism, and I’m always up for a good humans eating humans movie, especially if it’s an “eat the rich” story. I only just heard of this movie, so I don’t have a lot of knowledge beyond the visuals, but I will probably watch this when it streams.
I’ve been watching horror movies since I was a little girl ,who was supposed to be asleep at 11 o’clock at night. I went through a period, with my mother, where I think we tried to watch every horror movie that got made between 1980 and 1988, before I went off to college, so I have seen a helluva lot of movies, many of which have been forgotten, unless your’e a serious horror movie fan. I admit, not everything I watched was any good, but I found something interesting in these five movies, which have stayed in my memory even though I haven’t watched some of them in decades.
Don’t Look in the Basement(1973)
This move was made back in 1973 so I wouldnt go in expecting it t be enlightened about mental illness. I saw this movie when I was a teenager, and there was just something about it that I found deeply disturbing. Yes, the characters are disturbed, certainly, becasue this is an asylum, but that’s not the reason why this movie has haunted me for years. I suspect its some quality of mood, or lighting, or acting that I found mesmerizing back then.
A young nurse gets a job in a remote asylum for the mentally ill, and has a great deal of difficulty doing her work, as the director of the facility seems as deeply disturbed as her patients. You can probably guess what the twist is long before the plot spirals down into a hot mess of murder and mutilation.
A troupe of method actors and their despotic director head out to Coconut Grove, Florida where, as a prank, they exhume a corpse called Orville and are subsequently horrified when his similarly deceased friends emerge from their graves to play some deadly games of their own. Filmed as America experienced its post-60s comedown, director Bob Clark’s first horror feature began a truly terrifying trilogy that continued with the powerful anti-Vietnam war statement Dead Of Night and climaxed with the classic seasonal (and subsequently re-made) scarefest Black Christmas.
You can definitely tell this movie was filmed on the cheap, but this is also one of the first zombie movies I ever saw, long before ever watched Night of the Living Dead, and of course this is nearly forgotten, except by zombie movie enthusiasts like me. The acting isn’t great, and the special effects aren’t either, but the movie has such a distinctive feel, that I’ve never forgotten it, despite having not watched it in decades.
I haven’t seen this movie in decades but for some reason I still remember the haunted feeling I had watching this. The plot is a little fuzzy, but I think its about a woman who moves out into the country, with her boyfriend, to recover from a nervous breakdown, and encounters strange events, and possibly ghosts and vampires.
The movie is surprisingly well acted for a horror movie from the 70’s, and the cinematography looks gorgeous. The only drawback seems to be that the plot is a bit murky, but I do remember enjoying watching this on late night TV.
This is another movie I remember watching as a kid, late one night, when I was supposed to be asleep. I haven’t seen it in decades, but I still remember it pretty well, although it took me some time to find the title. I remember that I started off excited about the movie because, Hey! Zombie Bikers!, but by the end I recall a distinct feeling of melancholy for the bikers, and their inability to die, and at least part of that was due to this song.
I remember thinking something along the lines of how all these characters eventually became pretty jaded by the1974 lifestyle they thought was a form of true freedom, only to be trapped in a kind of hellish living afterlife.
This is another movie I watched late one night, without my mother’s permission, even though she was the one who told me about it! Its more of a mystery than a horror movie, but I’m going to put this here because it does have some onscreen kills. It stars a very young Jodi Foster, who was still riding on her fame from Taxi Driver, I think, which came out the same year.
It’s been awhile since I’ve seen this, but I think one of my mother’s objections to this movie, is the character is a serial killer ,who genuinely regrets killing people. My guess is that my Mom was opposed to kids killing adults in movies, which is understandable, but it might also have been the pedophilia from one of the characters, which she thought I was too young to be watching.
I wanted to see it because I was under the impression, at about nine years old, that Jodi seemed to be about my age, when she was, in fact, thirteen, at the time. I have observed that little girls often gravitate to movies about other little girls, and I was no different, except I gravitated to horror movies that starred little girls.
I cannot recall if she was alone because she killed her parents, but I do remember her making up various stories for the adults who investigated her situation, as to why she was alone, and killing the ones who got too nosy, as well as a man who was trying to get too cozy with her, if y’all know what I mean.
Geeking Out about It 