PopCult Reviews

Movie Review – Books of Blood

Books of Blood (2020)
Written by Adam Simon & Brannon Braga
Directed by Brannon Braga

I cannot convey to you how awful this movie is. It’s not rare to find a bad adaptation of a Clive Barker work, but this is possibly new levels of disconnect from the tone of the writer’s stories. It sadly doesn’t surprise me because, for as ambitious as Hulu seems to be about creating original horror content, they have yet to deliver any that is enjoyable to watch. I was pretty let down by the adaptation of Nathan Ballingrud’s The Visible Filth as the Hulu original film Wounds. I didn’t care for that picture for the same reasons I walked away feeling lousy about Books of Blood.

Movie Review – Halloween (1978)

Halloween (1978)
Written by John Carpenter & Debra Hill
Directed by John Carpenter

Few sounds in horror are as iconic as the opening notes of the Halloween theme music. Filmmaker John Carpenter was able to capture the tension of this story with such a seemingly simple score. You literally cannot make a Halloween sequel at this point without including the music; it has become as linked to the franchise as the central antagonist Michael Meyers. Everything about Halloween seems too simple at first glance, tropes that we have come to find yawn-inducing in movies now. But there is just something about how Carpenter deploys them, tongue in cheek at some moments and brutally real in others, that elevates it above the slasher shlock that was to come.

Black Horror Actor Spotlight

Clarence Williams III is not a horror specific actor; none of the performers in this post would be considered that. However, one of his last roles to gain him more considerable notoriety in pop culture was a significant horror role. Williams was born in New York City to a family of talented jazz musicians, so you may think he would have followed in those musical footsteps. A chance accident, walking on stage at a theater in the Harlem YMCA, set the young man down the path of a different sort of performing.

Movie Review – Psycho (1960)

Psycho (1960)
Written by Joseph Stefano
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock

Psycho is, without a doubt, one of the most iconic films ever made. Even people who have never seen the movie have likely seen it parodied, especially the infamous shower scene. It’s interesting to note how mixed initial reviews of Psycho were. Hitchcock directed Vertigo and North by Northwest, very classy, glamorous thrillers in the two years prior. Psycho is definitely sleazy in comparison, especially the exploitative nature with which is approaches sex and violence. Hitchcock had to restrain himself to a degree, but he definitely gets away with a lot because of who he was.

Comic Book Review – Wonder Woman by John Byrne Volume 1

Wonder Woman by John Byrne Volume 1 (2017)
Reprints Wonder Woman v2 #101 – 114
Written by John Byrne
Art by John Byrne

I first became aware of John Byrne when I was about 7 or 8 years old. I remember being at K-Mart (I think) and picking up one of those 3 for a dollar polybagged comic book grab bags. Inside, I had two issues of the Superman reboot helmed by John Byrne (issues 2 & 3) to be specific. I remember I really liked the art, especially Byrne’s take on Jack Kirby’s New Gods characters. I’d been aware of who Darkseid was from watching Challenge of the Superfriends, but this was my first introduction to the larger pantheon of characters in that niche of the DC Universe. Being a child at the time, I wasn’t quite aware of John Byrne’s love affair with the work of Jack Kirby, but fast forward to the mid-1990s, and the writer-artist was folding in those elements to his run on Wonder Woman.

Movie Review – Scream

Scream (1996)
Written by Kevin Williamson
Directed by Wes Craven

I do not enjoy slasher movies. Of all the subgenres of horror, I have just never found people running around with knives all that scary. Yes, in real life, if someone was running at me with a weapon, I would be terrified. But when it comes to horror fiction, I am always more disturbed by existential horror and stories with Lovecraftian themes about unavoidable cosmic terrors. The 1980s and 90s were dominated by slasher pictures, most notoriously the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series. The latter film franchise was started by Wes Craven, one of the slasher flick founding fathers, beginning with the gruesome The Last House on the Left in 1972. After almost twenty-five years of making these movies, Craven delivered what I think is the final word on the whole affair with Scream.

Movie Review – Don’t Look Now

Don’t Look Now (1973)
Written by Allan Scott & Chris Bryant
Directed by Nicholas Roeg

I was a child when I first encountered the work of Nicholas Roeg, and I didn’t even know it. That was in the film adaptation of Roald Dahl’s The Witches. It’s not considered Roeg’s work and near the end of his career when projects weren’t as abundant. In college, I really discovered the magic of his particular style of filmmaking by watching his films from the 1970s (Performance, Walkabout, The Man Who Fell to Earth). What drew me to him was this picture, Don’t Look Now, a measured, tense horror film about the inevitability of death and the weight of grief. This is all done through a brilliant editing technique that simulates clairvoyance.

Comic Book Review – The Low Low Woods

The Low Low Woods (2020)
Written by Carmen Maria Machado
Art by Dani

I became familiar with author Carmen Maria Machado from her short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties. It’s a wonderful book of stories that are horror but also a commentary on being a woman. There’s some inventive work going on here, including a mind-blowing story presented as episode recaps of Law & Order: SVU episodes that become a sinister, disturbing & reality-bending tale. When I saw her name attached to a Hill House Comic title, I got pretty excited to see what she had to offer.

Movie Review – Candyman (1992)

Candyman (1992)
Written & Directed by Bernard Rose

Portions of major cities have been allowed to decay for one reason, the people that live there are not considered worth the effort to keep the area maintained. In America, this is typically seen in non-white neighborhoods, often low-income housing for Black people. I used to work at a school that serviced a nearby housing complex, and the city built a wall that blocked this neighborhood from the view of high-end hotels downtown so that guests wouldn’t see the area. The city spent money to build but not to improve that neighborhood but hide it from monied eyes. The same thing happens in the U.K., where Clive Barker set his short story “The Forbidden,” which would serve as Candyman’s basis.

TV Review – Raised by Wolves Season 1

Raised by Wolves Season 1 (2020)
Written by Aaron Guzikowski, Heather Bellson, Don Joh, Karen Campbell, & Sinead Daly
Directed by Ridley Scott, Luke Scott, Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, Alex Gabassi, & James Hawes

It’s hard to argue about the influence Ridley Scott has had on science fiction since the late 1970s. Through two movies, Alien and Blade Runner, he was one of the chief figures in elevating science fiction movies above the B-flick reputation they had garnered since the 1950s. My feelings on Scott have waned since Prometheus and revisiting some of his work. He is excellent in production design, but most of his work is very shallow thematically and frequently features undercooked plots. I was interested to see what Raised by Wolves would be like, a television series, a format that demands more character development. The result is a mixed bag with many things to love but a season finale that feels like everything went off the rails.