Seth Harris

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.

Movie Review – Eyes Without a Face

Eyes Without a Face (1960)
Written by Georges Franju, Jean Redon, Pierre Boileau, Thomas Narcejac, Claude Sautet, and Pierre Gascar
Directed by Georges Franju

The 1960s were the prelude to the horror boom of the 1970s. This means you’ll find some archetypes and tropes refined here, elements that will be at their zenith in the following decade. Foreign film markets were gaining strength during the Sixties, with places like France & Italy at the forefront. There weren’t many French horror films then, so Eyes Without a Face was quite different. Producer Jules Borkon thought it was an untapped market in France and purchased the rights to a horror novel he’d recently read. Director Georges Franju had only made documentaries, so this was his first fictional narrative feature. Smartly, he hired writers who had worked on Les Diaboliques and Hitchcock’s Vertigo to help work out the script. The result is something that feels like a horrific modern fairy tale. A princess locked in a tower in the woods who has been turned into a monster by another.

Movie Review – Hellraiser (1987)

Hellraiser (1987)
Written & Directed by Clive Barker

The 1980s were a significant transformation in horror movies. In the 1970s, the horror genre often followed the trend of bleak social commentary and used genre tropes to communicate more prominent themes. Like the rest of the movies in the following decade, more emphasis was put on the spectacle. You can see this in the gratuitous kills of series like Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street. The Evil Dead movies of Sam Raimi also fall into this category. While cleverly written and filmed, they are more like a cinematic experience than a storytelling one. Hellraiser lies in the middle, both attempting to tell a story about some dark subject matter while delivering envelope-pushing visuals. The result is something I’m not in love with, but I can appreciate it. I also definitely understand why a film like this can be so beloved by particular groups of people.

Comic Book Review – Copra Round One

Copra Round One (2014)
Reprints Copra #1-6
Written by Michael Fiffe
Art by Michael Fiffe

I had to close my book a few pages into Copra Round One because I needed to check something. A quick search online confirmed I was seeing what I saw correctly. This is a fan continuation of John Ostrander’s Suicide Squad series with all the serial numbers filed off. Character designs and personalities make it evident that this is a love letter to that 1980s DC Comics classic from top to bottom. Also, they throw in analogs for Marvel’s Doctor Strange & Clea just because they can. The name “Suicide Squad” is never used; there’s no mistaking this is written by someone who loves those characters but couldn’t get a job at DC writing a revival. But, in true indie comics fashion, Michael Fiffe did it anyway, resulting in a wild trip.

October 2022 Posting Schedule

New Movie Reviews

Oct 7th – Blonde

Oct 16th – Decision to Leave

Oct 23rd – Black Adam

Patron Pick – The Spy Who Came In From the Cold

This is a special reward available to Patreon patrons who pledge at the $10 or $20 a month levels. Each month those patrons will pick a film for me to review. If they choose, they also get to include some of their thoughts about the movie. This Pick comes from Bekah Lindstrom.

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold (1965)
Written by Paul Dehn & Guy Trosper
Directed by Martin Ritt

One of the most destructive forces on the planet since World War II has been Western intelligence agencies. The CIA. MI6. These orgs have devoted themselves to an increasingly insane ideology that sees the upholding of a system that crushes the most vulnerable as “noble” and “good.” Regular people exist as pieces on a board, to be manipulated and moved about, with little regard for their lives. This espionage lifestyle has been glamorized in films, mostly the James Bond series, with fanboys thinking they too could be a dashing spy in a tuxedo bedding buxom women at every turn. The reality is much like what we find in a John LeCarre novel. The lives of spies are ones riddled with paranoia & alienation. When you master being a manipulator, how can you trust that other people aren’t doing the same to you?

Movie Review – Tucker: The Man and His Dream

Tucker: A Man and His Dream (1988)
Written by Arnold Schulman & David Seidler
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

The Tucker automobile had captured Coppola’s mind since childhood. While at UCLA’s film school, the burgeoning director further developed his idea for this biopic. Marlon Brando was approached to star as the lead, then Jack Nicholson, and then Burt Reynolds. Coppola decided he wanted to make it experimental, a modern musical where he would reference Bertolt Brecht and Kabuki performances. His colleague Paul Schrader’s Mishima film inspired him, and Coppola wanted Tucker to be like that. In 1986, George Lucas encouraged Coppola to make his Tucker movie; he thought Tucker was one of the best things the filmmaker had developed in a while. Lucas would produce it, but he convinced the director to back away from the project’s experimental nature. Instead, Coppola would take inspiration from the work of Frank Capra, an exploration of the American Dream and the hope that industrialization brought in the wake of World War II. This would be Coppola’s final production of the 1980s.

PopCult Podcast – Confess, Fletch/Limbo

Detectives seem to be back in at the movies and on television, so we have two extremely different detective stories.

Movie Review – Gardens of Stone

Gardens of Stone (1987)
Written by Ronald Bass
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola

There’s a good reason you probably have never heard of this Coppola film. It is bad. Like truly, the bottom of the barrel, not even the fun kind of bad. Yet, it doesn’t make me dislike the director or think he’d completely lost his creative touch. To understand why Gardens of Stone is so bad, you need to know what happened to Coppola during the production. It is no big reveal that Coppola centered his family in his life. You can see this in how he included them in every level of his film’s production. The man kept the people he loved the closest to him.