7 Days of Halloween: The Hound of the Baskervilles

Mr. Burns of The Simpsons has a simple command to "release the hounds," and it could have its origin in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the 1959 adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's third Sherlock Holmes novel, directed by Terence Fischer, which starts with an aristocrat sending loose his fiendish...

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7 Days of Halloween: The Descent

I once went spelunking in rural Pennsylvania when I was in Boy Scouts. I feel very fortunate that the experience was nothing like "The Descent." In my experience, like that of virtually every human in recent human history who has gone caving, the scariest thing is when your guide tells you to turn off your helmet light so that you can see just how dreadfully dark it is under the earth. I might have...

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7 Days of Halloween: Nosferatu

The first time I saw "Nosferatu," the first adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula," was in high school, and regrettably, it was a DVD of the 1998 "remastering" with an introduction from David Carradine and a soundtrack provided by the metal band Type-O Negative. However, this newest version, released...

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7 Days of Halloween: 28 Weeks Later

From the very first attack, there seems to be about a thousand things happening simultaneously. But just as with the first film ("28 Days Later"), "28 Weeks Later" dispenses with one complication of these kinds of horror films: these monsters can run, and they are a hell of a lot meaner than any other...

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7 Days of Halloween: Scream

From the beginning of the iconic opening scene featuring Drew Barrymore, "Scream" makes it unconventionally known that it is the Hollywood horror movie so well aware of the tropes of the genre that it doesn't mind totally embracing them. Barrymore appears briefly as a young high school student ready to watch a scary movie one evening when she receives a bizarre call from what could sound like a deeply...

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7 Days of Halloween: Star Trek ("Wolf in the Fold")

There's no starship but instead a room that can only be described as a brothel or a strip club featuring yet another scantily clad female, providing another example of how "Star Trek" in some ways was one of television's most sexist shows. Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley),...

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7 Days of Halloween: Carnival of Souls

"Carnival of Souls" is a horror film with the same production DNA as "The Naked Kiss" from 1964, which was released two years after this Herk Harvey eerie independent horror film. Eerie is a word I worried I would use often in this review, and I can't be blamed: an eerie vibe is constituted throughout...

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The Best Beach Boys Songs

Having recently written a top Beatles list and with the summer release of "Love and Mercy," a biographical film of Brian Wilson, I was inspired to follow up with my take on the best Beach Boys music. "Love and Mercy" is the directorial debut of Bill Pohlad, who produced "Brokeback Mountain,"...

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