Next SFF Author: Joseph Fink
Previous SFF Author: Gemma Files

Series: Film / TV


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Sandy’s 2018 Film Year in Review

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 80 films that I saw in 2018 (a paltry total for me … maybe I’ve been reading too much?), only eight were new, and 72 were old. Thus, my annual Top 10 Best and 5 Worst lists are necessarily different than most. With me, any film that I saw for the first time in 2018 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,


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Nightflyers: Mystery and horror aboard a haunted spaceship

Reposting to include Marion’s review of the new SYFY channel adaptation of Nightflyers. You can find it below our reviews of the novella.

Nightflyers by George R.R. Martin

Nightflyers was first published in 1980, won the Locus Award for best novella, and was nominated for a Hugo Award. It was made into an unsuccessful film in 1987. It’s recently been on people’s radars due to the upcoming SYFY series based on the novella. You can purchase it in several new (2018) formats including an illustrated edition,


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Some Must Watch: Book vs. film

Some Must Watch by Ethel Lina White

There is a word that film buffs like to use to describe a type of motion picture that, because of its tautness and high suspense quotient, almost seems as if it had been directed by the so-called “Master of Suspense” himself, Alfred Hitchcock. The word, naturally enough, is “Hitchcockian,” a term that might be fairly applied to such wonderful entertainments as Gaslight (both the 1940 and ’44 versions), Charade, The Prize and Arabesque. But of all the pictures that have been honored with the adjective “Hitchcockian” over the years,


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Psycho: The modern horror era begins

Psycho directed by Alfred Hitchcock

It is not every filmmaker who can manage the difficult trick of coming up with four consecutive masterpieces, but that is just what British director Alfred Hitchcock was able to do as the late 1950s segued into the ’60s. His 1958 offering, Vertigo, took time to find its audience but today is recognized by the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine as the single greatest motion picture ever made; 1959’s North by Northwest is surely one of the all-time great entertainments;


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Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer: Pretty potent stuff

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer directed by John McNaughton

Loosely based on the real-life exploits of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, who confessed to the slayings of over 600 people but who was ultimately convicted in the homicide of a “mere” 11, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer changes some of the established facts around, yet remains a very strong experience for the viewer. As revealed on a certain Wiki site, the film was shot in just four weeks in 1986, at a cost of around $110,000, but was not released until four years later.


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The Happening: Respectful awe

The Happening directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Following the inanity of the borderline train wreck that was 2006’s Lady in the Water, writer/producer/director M. Night Shyamalan rebounded in a very big way with his next film, 2008’s The Happening. His contribution to the type of eco-horror film that was all the rage in the 1960s and ’70s — I’m thinking of such films as 1963’s The Birds, 1972’s Frogs, 1977’s Kingdom of the Spiders and 1978’s The Swarm


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Brides of Dracula: Even without Lee, a very fine Hammer offering

Brides of Dracula directed by Terence Fisher

The title is something of a misnomer. As the story goes, following the worldwide success of Hammer Studios’ The Horror of Dracula in 1958, star Christopher Lee decided that he did not wish to participate in any possible sequel, fearing that he might be later typecast in the vampiric role. Thus, despite the sequel’s title, Brides of Dracula not only does not feature Lee’s participation at all, but the world’s most famous neck nosher is nowhere to be found. Rather, what the viewer gets here is another Transylvanian vampire,


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Split: A dude with TOO much personality

Split directed by M. Night Shyamalan

Over the years, there have been any number of films that have dealt with lead characters who suffer with what the layman might term “split personality.” Putting aside all the many iterations of the Jekyll & Hyde story, in 1957, audiences were given both Lizzie, in which Eleanor Parker played a woman with three distinct personalities, and, five months later, the more well-known The Three Faces of Eve, in which Joanne Woodward played a woman with the exact same predicament. In 1960,


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The Mysterious Doctor: Eleanor shines in her second film

The Mysterious Doctor directed by Benjamin Stoloff

A seeming meld of fog-shrouded Universal horror and the rah-rah wartime propaganda films that were so prevalent during the era, the Warner Brothers offering The Mysterious Doctor turns out to be a minor concoction that should just manage to please modern audiences. Released in March 1943, during the darkest days of World War II, the picture provides some chilling escapism while at the same time inspiring its target audience to greater productivity in the war effort. For today’s viewer, the film works as an efficient little chiller and as a showcase for its ingénue female star,


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From Hell It Came: Kimo therapy

From Hell It Came directed by Dan Milner

Back in the 1960s, when I was just a young lad and when there were only three major television stations to contend with, The New York Times used to make pithy commentaries, in their TV section, regarding films that were to be aired that day. I have never forgotten the terse words that the paper issued for the 1957 cult item From Hell It Came. In one of the most succinct pans ever written, the editors simply wrote: “Back send it.”


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Next SFF Author: Joseph Fink
Previous SFF Author: Gemma Files

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