Anyone who knows me well could tell you that I don’t see a lot of new films. As a matter of fact, of the 143 films that I saw in 2016, only four were new, and 139 were old. Thus, my annual Top 10 Best and Worst lists are necessarily different than most. With me, any film that I saw for the first time in 2016 was eligible for either list. If the film made me laugh, or think, or tear up, or sit suspensefully on the edge of my seat, or amazed me with something that I had not seen before,
January 10th, 2017. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror edited by John Betancourt & Robert Weinberg
This is the seventh anthology that I have reviewed that has been drawn from the pages of Weird Tales, one of the most famous pulp magazines in publishing history. Each of the previous collections had employed its own modus operandi in presenting its gathered stories. Weird Tales (1964) and Worlds of Weird (1965) had been slim paperbacks featuring previously uncollected stories. The Best of Weird Tales: 1923 (1997) had spotlighted tales solely from WT’s very first year.
January 9th, 2017. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | Brian Lumley, C.L. Moore, Clark Ashton Smith, Eric Frank Russell, Fritz Leiber, Gene Wolfe, H.P. Lovecraft, Henry Kuttner, Manly Wade Wellman, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Nancy Springer, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Ray Bradbury, Ray Russell, Robert Bloch, Robert E. Howard, Robert Sheckley, Tanith Lee, William Hope Hodgson | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Heu-Heu, or The Monster by H. Rider Haggard
Heu-Heu, or The Monster is one of the 14 novels that the great H. Rider Haggard wrote that deals with the life of Allan Quatermain, an English hunter in South Africa. This is a stand-alone novel. Unlike the first two novels in the series, King Solomon’s Mines and its sequel, Allan Quatermain; the so-called Zulu trilogy (Marie,
December 26th, 2016. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | H. Rider Haggard | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock
After his post-WWII convalescence in France, Steven Huxley is returning to his family’s home on the edge of Ryhope Wood, a patch of ancient forest, in Britain. For as long as Steven remembers, his father, who recently died, had been so obsessed with the forest that it destroyed their family.
Upon returning home, Steven finds that his brother Christian is quickly following in their father’s footsteps — both figuratively and literally — for he has also discovered that this is no ordinary forest! It resists intrusion from Outsiders,
December 21st, 2016. Kat Hooper, Kelly Lasiter, Tim Scheidler and Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Robert Holdstock | BSFA Award, World Fantasy Award | SFF Reviews | 19 comments |
Night Train Murders directed by Aldo Lado
Since watching Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left (1972) more than 30 years ago, I have abided by my promise to never see this film again, it being truly one of the most repugnant that I’ve ever sat through. And yet, I didn’t as much mind Aldo Lado’s homage/remake/pastiche of three years later, Night Train Murders. As in the original, the film deals with the brutal rape and murder (inadvertent, in the Italian picture) of a pair of college girls by a trio of brutish thugs (in the latter film,
December 16th, 2016. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Chessmen of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Editor’s note: This title can be purchased free on Kindle.
The Chessmen of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fifth JOHN CARTER novel out of eleven, first appeared in serial form in the magazine Argosy All Story Weekly from February to April 1922. It is easily the best of the Carter lot to this point; the most detailed, the most imaginative, and the best written. Carter himself only appears at the beginning and end of the tale.
December 13th, 2016. Sandy Ferber and Tim Scheidler´s rating: 4 | Edgar Rice Burroughs | Free! | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Mr. Meeson’s Will by H. Rider Haggard
Editor’s note: Mr. Meeson’s Will is free in Kindle format
Mr. Meeson’s Will was first printed in book form in October 1888, after having first appeared earlier that year in The Illustrated London News. It was H. Rider Haggard’s 11th novel (out of 58), and one in which his experiences as both a writer and aspiring lawyer were given vent. The novel is at once a tale of adventure,
December 9th, 2016. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4 | H. Rider Haggard | Free!, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
A Wrinkle in the Skin by John Christopher
Although most of us probably deem earthquakes to be relatively infrequent phenomena, the truth is that, as of this writing in late November, almost 150 such seismic events, ranging from relatively minor to completely devastating, have transpired somewhere in the world in 2016 alone. That’s an average of one earthquake every two or three days! But although these events are not only, uh, earth-shattering for those in the areas directly affected, few would deem them a possible concern for long-term, apocalyptic scenarios, as might be the case with,
December 5th, 2016. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 4.5 | John Christopher | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Haunted Castles by Ray Russell
Thanks to the ongoing Penguin Classics series, this reader was finally able to purchase and enjoy Chicago-born author Ray Russell’s classic novel of modern-day exorcism, The Case Against Satan (1962), which the publisher rereleased in late 2015. Now, Penguin Classics has followed up by giving the world a beautiful new edition of the 1985 Russell anthology entitled Haunted Castles: The Complete Gothic Stories, which consists of three novellas and four shorter pieces …
November 17th, 2016. Sandy Ferber´s rating: 5 | Guillermo Del_Toro, Ray Russell | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Deep Red directed by Dario Argento
Following his so-called Animal Trilogy — 1970’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage and 1971’s The Cat O’Nine Tails and Four Flies on Gray Velvet — and immediately before creating what turned out to be his most popular picture as of this date, 1977’s Suspiria, Italian director Dario Argento released, in March 1975, one of his most critically acclaimed films, Deep Red (or, as it is more sonorously known in Italian, Profondo Rosso). All these decades later,
November 9th, 2016. Sandy Ferber | Film / TV, Horror | SFF Reviews | 13 comments |
Do it! One of the best things I've read in recent years.
This reminds me. I want to read Addie LaRue.
We’re in total agreement David!
I felt just the same. The prose and character work was excellent. The larger story was unsatisfying, especially compared to…
Hmmm. I think I'll pass.