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The Legend of Hell House (1973)

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So long as you're interested in the journey, no matter how unsatisfying the destination proves to be, the majority of The Legend of Hell House makes for an enjoyably quirky haunted house flick from a time when science (or at least semi-respectable pseudoscience) was considered compatible with the supernatural. To put that another way, this is the kind of thing Ghostbusters was parodying, a world where psychic phenomenon is considered commonplace and spiritual questions can be studied scientifically and associated problems potentially addressed with technology. That's one of several elements that make this entertaining, if not good. Likewise, the story (adapted by the legendary Richard Matheson from his own novel), populates the cast entirely with characters who are professionals in their field. This means the characters reacting (or through the first half of the movie mostly not reacting) to what's occurring around them have incentives to see this play out and unravel the m...
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Faust (1926)

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I'll grant it'd be a stretch to call this a Christmas movie. Only the last fifteen minutes or so are set at Christmas (and even then there's a little ambiguity surrounding the timeline), but that sequence is both thematically rich and interesting as a case study in how the holidays were viewed in the 1920s. More than that, if you think I'm above grasping at any opportunity to discuss a movie made by F. W. Murnau, the director of Nosferatu, through the prism of holiday media, you're seriously mistaken. In some ways, Faust is an even more impressive accomplishment than Nosferatu. The design and composition of some of these shots is incredible. Make up effects, set decoration, lighting, and camera angles are used to create some gorgeous sequences that - in the expressionist tradition - warp reality into something new. There were moments when actors almost looked more like stop-motion marionettes or animated figures than real people. Likewise, the balance between shadow...
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Maniac Cop 2 (1990)

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Let's kick this off with a disclaimer. In fact, let's do a slew of disclaimers. I haven't seen the first Maniac Cop movie, nor have I seen the 1980 movie, Maniac (which I understand to be a different series, but I'm guessing there's some sort of tenuous thematic or conceptual connection, given both were directed by William Lustig). More than that, the Maniac Cop movies are drifting either into or adjacent to the exploitation genre, an area where my experience is limited. If you're a fan of that stuff, you're probably not going to think much of my opinion (though, for what it's worth, I do have a few nice things to say about aspects of this movie). But the corollary of that is if you're not a fan - or especially if you have no idea what I'm talking about or who William Lustig is - you're probably better off taking my advice and steering clear of this. For the most part, I found this boring, which is a surprising complaint given this movie is a...
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Midnight Kiss (2019)

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Of the four Christmas or New Year's themed installments in the Blumhouse/Hulu "Into the Dark" series of holiday movies, this was my least favorite, though I should qualify that by acknowledging I'm not the target audience for this either way you slice its hybrid queer slasher genres. That said, skimming the Letterboxd reviews implies this was divisive among that audience, with some loving the exploitation angle and some finding the story and characters dull. Hopefully some context will help you determine where you'd fall in that continuum. At least according to my reading, the point of Midnight Kiss is metatextual, which is to say what the movie is  is more significant to understanding it than what it's about. The movie is essentially using the classic slasher formula, framing, and perhaps most importantly gaze to tell a story about gay men. Rather than exploiting female bodies for a predominantly straight male audience, Midnight Kiss focuses on male bodies fo...
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New Year, New You (2018)

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This is the third movie I've seen that was produced as part of the Blumhouse/Hulu collaboration Into the Dark, a holiday-themed streaming series of horror movies. The other two, both set at Christmas, were pretty good (and more importantly interesting), and this maintains that trend. "New Year, New You" is a thriller co-written and directed by Sophia Takal, who'd go on to make the 2019  Black Christmas remake (also produced by Blumhouse) the following year. This also maintains the trend of feeling like it may have been reworked into a holiday movie, rather than originally envisioned as one. I'm not sure that was actually the case with any or all of these, but the holiday elements keep feeling somewhat peripheral to the stories and primary themes. To be clear, this is in no way a complaint; only an observation. I'll also add that if I'm right and some of these were existing scripts adjusted to work with the holidays, they justified the alteration by making...
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The Oracle (1985)

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I think the worst way to watch The Oracle is to go in blind, the way I did, without knowing anything about the background or filmography of director Roberta Findlay. Granted the second-worst way to watch it would probably be after reading up on Findlay's history, but I wanted to provide a bit of context before saying I spent the first hour of this movie utterly baffled by what I was watching, or at least why it was made. The acting and direction are bad to the point I found myself wondering if it was intended as satire or parody, the pacing is glacial, and there's little internal logic to the plot. The good news is one of those elements - the pacing - improves significantly in the last half hour, at which point the movie does sort of coalesce into something semi-coherent (at least from a genre standpoint). I wouldn't call the final film good , but it turns into something of substance. Let's back up. Roberta Findlay helped her then-husband, Michael Findlay, develop the g...
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The Brain (1988)

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A low-budget throwback to old creature-features, The Brain is the sort of cheesy horror movie that aims for mediocrity and mostly hits its mark. Conceptually, it's notably similar to the cult classic, They Live, released the exact same day in 1988, but of course lacking Carpenter's skill. That's not to say The Brain is entirely without merit. As a cheesy, monster/alien invasion flick it has some fun puppetry, and the movie leans into the style of '50s drive-in movies so hard I found myself wishing they'd shot this in black & white. This wasn't made to be taken seriously, so if you're looking for something along those lines, well... honestly, you're still probably better off with They Live, Little Shop of Horrors, or just selecting something from the era this is emulating. The movie's premise concerns a televised psychologist, Blake (secretly an alien, played by David Gale), who's working with a psychic alien (this one a giant brain puppet wit...
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