October 2022 – Page 3 – PopCult Reviews

PopCult Podcast – Smile/Hellraiser

It is Halloween season! This is the first of three episodes devoted to horror, culminating on October 30th with a double-sized episode.

Movie Review – Onibaba

Onibaba (1964)
Written & Directed by Kaneto Shindo

Societies collapse. No civilization on this planet hasn’t gone through an often violent transformation. Nestled within the comforting, indulgent bosom of the imperial core that is the United States, you can easily be swayed to believe “America is eternal,” but that’s thinking with a child’s mind. The United States isn’t even the same country it was when it was founded. This is why the study of history is vital to understanding our present. Humans make the same mistakes over and over, the clothes and hairstyles just change. It is also beneficial to look at art from periods of societal collapse and art that reflects on them. The chaos of collapse is a fruitful place to find human drama, moments that get to the very center of our experiences of survival.

Movie Review – Carnival of Souls

Carnival of Souls (1962)
Written by John Clifford & Herk Harvey
Directed by Herk Harvey

I made a dumb statement in my review of The Innocents. I caught myself. No one had to call me out. I used the term “elevated horror.” Ugh. I was reminded by seeing an excerpt from a John Carpenter interview that the term is meaningless. The word “elevated” implies better than something else, and when we talk about art, it’s profoundly reductive. I know what I meant and what I should have said. There is some horror that takes itself seriously and other horror that is tongue-in-cheek. I prefer the former because I want that suspension of disbelief. Tongue-in-cheek horror can be good, especially if you don’t want to lose yourself entirely in the work; you need some healthy distance & an ability to laugh at what is on screen. “Elevated” is often used to disparage low-budget films that did not have the resources of others. Yet, plenty of moving pieces of horror didn’t cost much to make. Carnival of Souls is undoubtedly one of those.

Movie Review – The Innocents

The Innocents (1961)
Written by William Archibald, Truman Capote, and John Mortimer
Directed by Jack Clayton

Horror is an umbrella term for diverse subgenres that all focus on one emotion: Fear. As a human being, you know fear has many levels and tones. You can have a momentary fright or slowly sink into the quicksand of dread. Horror cinema has films that fit this spectrum of intensity, with cheap jumpscares ruling the box office (for the most part). My personal favorite type of horror leans into existential fears. Gothic horror often does this exceptionally well, emphasizing atmosphere and striking visuals that linger. Alien is an excellent example of Gothic horror, even though it’s set in space. The fear comes primarily from our sense of dread, knowing that something terrible will happen yet not knowing why or if it can be stopped. Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw is about facing something you cannot fully understand, but it still speaks to something you’ve suppressed within yourself. For many people, that type of horror is all too real.

Movie Review – Hellbound: Hellraiser II

Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988)
Written by Tony Randel
Directed by Clive Barker and Peter Atkins

The story of Film is littered with production companies & distributors who, at one point, seemed fairly dominant only to vanish overnight. New World Pictures is one of those companies. In 1987, they changed their new New World Entertainment to reflect their ownership of multiple media & product lines. They had purchased Marvel Comics, which dumped a load of potential film & television projects in their laps. New World produced the television series The Wonder Years and the soap opera Santa Barbara. They came close to purchasing Kenner and Mattel, both toy powerhouses of the decade. Ironically, this same drive to expand was followed by a significant financial slump and restructuring.

Comic Book Review – X-Men Epic Collection: Children of the Atom

X-Men Epic Collection: Children of the Atom (2015)
Reprints X-Men #1-23
Written by Stan Lee
Art by Jack Kirby, Werner Roth, and Alex Toth

The X-Men have had quite a tumultuous history. When I was getting into comic books in the late 1980s/early 1990s, they were insanely hot. X-Men comics were some of the best-selling books, which spun off into action figures, video games, and multiple animated series. When we think of the X-Men, many immediately think of Wolverine. My personal favorites have always been Colossus and Nightcrawler. Yet, none of that is present at the beginning and wouldn’t be for over a decade. The original X-Men was such an oddball book, feeling like an afterthought by Stan Lee.

PopCult Podcast – Bullet Train/Bodies Bodies Bodies

There’s only thing worse than hanging out with a bunch Zoomers at a hurricane party. And that would be riding a high speed train in Japan filled with assassins.

Movie Review – Blonde

Blonde (2022)
Written & Directed by Andrew Dominik

I knew this would be one of those movies where social media would have the stupidest takes on either side of loving or hating it. The criticism, of course, lacks as much nuance as the film itself. But that’s how most Americans engage with art; in a completely shallow way. They have been trained so they don’t get pesky ideas or start understanding how complex existence can be. Blonde is a bad movie, but it is not misogynistic out of malice but rather from completely vapid stupidity. Andrew Dominik’s failure is not that he did not accurately represent Marilyn Monroe’s life but that he made a terrible adaptation of a novel. It has no narrative threads or thematic consistency to tie everything together and comes off as an incoherently angry waste of time.

Movie Review – Village of the Damned

Village of the Damned (1960)
Written by Wolf Rilla
Directed by Stirling Silliphant, Wolf Rilla, and Ronald Kinnoch

Uncertainty is a regular part of life, but the systems we live under often create ways to blunt it. This is done by providing the citizens with a host of needed resources and using propaganda to shape their worldview. However, these systems can’t hold back the tide of reality forever and cracks inevitably appear. COVID-19 has been one of those uncertainty moments, something so significant that it pierces the veil and creates chaos. We are also conditioned to go into immediate denial (the effects of the propaganda) even if we see it happen right before us. “But I was assured,” we say, “That the people in charge have everything under control.” If you haven’t been convinced yet, just wait; things will get worse as denialism grows in the face of multiple global catastrophes.

Movie Review – Black Sunday (1960)

Black Sunday (1960)
Written & Directed by Mario Bava

While the French critics were wringing their hands over Eyes Without a Face, the Italian cinematic world was embracing the fervor of horror movies in the same way all of their films seemed to overflow with passion. Elements of gore and the Gothic were treasured, and the filmmakers associated with these pictures clearly understand the nature of spectacle in film. Mario Bava is the father of Italian horror movies, having directed the first horror “talkie” in the country, I Vampiri. Black Sunday was his first solo effort; he was no longer collaborating and could finally indulge in the lush horror he loved. The result would be a piece that formed his trajectory for the rest of his days and established actress Barbara Steele as one of the scream queens of the decade.