On the surface, The Wicker Man is the story of how one police constable’s attempt to scrooge up a town’s May Day revelries fails miserably. But The Wicker Man is a film with complex depth, and delving into those murky waters is aided considerably by a few of the key texts that went into crafting the film’s story.
A washed-up, alcoholic superhero must pull himself out of depression and obscurity in order to defeat the villainous Christopher Lee in one of cinema’s first deconstructions of comic book superheroes. It also happens to be a musical.
If jungle adventure movies have taught us anything, it’s that modern man, with all his so-called “refinement” and “civilization”, is the most dangerous animal of all. Even though those city folk ultimately fall prey to quicksand, cannibals, and hungry wild animals.
Hammer and Christopher Lee tackle Satan and Dennis Wheatley’s occult adventurer Duc de Richleau on one of the studio’s finest horror films, despite some shoddy special effects at the back end.
Release: 1985 Director: Philippe Mora Screenplay: Robert Sarno, Gary Brandner Starring: Christopher Lee, Annie McEnroe, Reb Brown, Marsha Hunt, Sybil Danning, Judd Omen, Ferdy Mayne, Patrick Field, Jimmy Nail, Jirí Krytinár, Ladislav Krecmer, Jan Kraus, Petr Skarke, Igor Smrzík, Ivo Niederle Country: United States, Great Britain AKA: Stirba: Werewolf Bitch There are those among us…
Hessler and Price are together again (for the first time) for a Poe adaptation that actually has a little something to do with Poe, or at least as much as any AIP Poe film has to do with Poe. Poe’s short story, “The Oblong Box,” has to do with a man who witnesses the obsession…
My latest article for The Cultural Gutter is now up. In keeping with the season, it’s science fiction with the heart of a horror film. Gothic Galactic takes a look at Mario Bava’s brief forays into the cosmos
