I know I’m in the minority, but I actually liked Stephen Sommers’s VAN HELSING movie, starring Hugh Jackman as the dashing vampire hunter. I appreciated it for what it was, a bit of cheesy fun. And it had Kate Beckinsale in it, which didn’t hurt. I was sorta disappointed that it never got a big…
Month: November 2015
Hypno-Exorcism
I’m that unfortunate sort of creature gifted with a passionate interest in the supernatural but burdened with an irritatingly rational mindset. I’m Mr. Spock if he were obsessed with ghosts and such, the perfect example of a cognitive dissonance. As much as I WANT there to be things that go bump in the night—what a…
Should we burn Lovecraft?
Movie director Victor Salva is a convicted pedophile. He abused a young actor on one of his movies. Yet I absolutely loved his film JEEPERS CREEPERS. Is that wrong? I did struggle with the question, ultimately deciding that, as a great many people worked hard on that movie, it was okay for me to appreciate…
Welcome . . . to Monster Park!
If I were gonna visit Italy, sure I’d see the Coliseum, the Leaning Tower of Piza, the canals of Florence. But you can bet the Parco dei Mostri, or “Park of Monsters,” in the little hamlet of Bomarzo, about fifty miles north of Rome, would be at the top of my itinerary. Numerous large-scale, grotesque…
HAIR OF THE DOG tells the story of an Alcoholic Werewolf
Well, why not? Sure, it might sound a little silly, but so did WOLFCOP, and that one ended up being pure cinematic brilliance. Not that I’m certain HAIR OF THE DOG is supposed to be a comedy or parody. It’s described as “a new perspective on a classic tale by bringing a twist of horror…
Werewolf Art Appreciation
How up are you on your classic werewolf Art knowledge? That’s Art with a capital “A,” so you know we’re talking about the highfalutin stuff, the intellectual stuff. The kind of paintings and such you might find hanging in a museum as opposed to the latest postings on Deviantart. (Not that there’s anything wrong with…
Werewolf Potpourri
Each week I search the cobweb-shrouded, darkened corners of the Internet to bring to you, my loyal subjects, all the news and ephemera relating to that fearsome, chimerical beast known as the WEHR-WOLF. Sometimes, rather than risk regurgitation of topics covered before or repetition of the overly-familiar, the offerings I present bear only a tangential…
The Universal Monsters shared universe is something to get excited about
I think we were all somewhat disappointed, if not disheartened, when we heard that Universal planned to revamp their classic monsters but offer movies that were more Action-Adventure than Horror. We have to understand, though, this is strictly a financial decision on its part. An adventure movie, rated PG-13, like the Stephen Sommers-directed MUMMY films,…
Upcoming Werewolf Flicks Look Promising
New werewolf-related projects tend to come along fairly frequently; the genre is as wildly popular as ever, and there are moviemakers aplenty willing to pander to that appetite. Granted, sometimes you have to look for them. For every GOOD werewolf film there are ten bad ones, at least. (And even a bad one can be…
Hypertrichosis: A Hairy Condition
If you’ve ever heard of JoJo the Dog-faced Boy or Lionel the Lion man, you’ve heard of individuals who suffered from the condition hypertrichosis, which causes the growth hair all over the body. I have a bit of the Carnie in my soul, so had I lived in years past and been unfortunate enough to…