Listen up, men of Earth! Female aliens may look sexy -- in fact, a disproportionate number of them resemble members of the Swedish Bikini Team -- but tread lightly should you cross paths with one. Odds are, she wants your precious bodily essences, and you probably won't like the way she goes about getting them. And even if she has some other unearthly agenda, you stand a good chance of ending up with the short end of the stick.

There's a reason they say the female of the species (Species, get it?) is deadlier than the male. And it's not just that an awful lot of them have dozens of long, thick, thrusting tentacles. With that in mind, study this list of the ten top girls of alien horror in horror history and commit it to memory. The wretched, worthless, puny human hide you save may be your own.

Continue reading "Forget Venus! Femaliens Are From Mars and They're Out for Blood" »

Everyone who grew up believing in guardian angels, raise your hand if you found the whole idea super creepy. Seriously... angels who prowl around in the shadows, keeping an eye on what you were doing? Sure, they have your best interests at heart, but doesn't that sound an awful lot like cosmic stalking?

Most movies about angels accentuate the positive: Cute angels, sweetly sexy angels, wise and benevolent angels who gently manipulate human affairs with an eye to the best possible outcome. That's all very nice and all, but it pays not to forget that Lucifer was the best and the brightest of God's angels until he got an attitude and decided he'd rather rule in hell than serve in heaven. Hence movies like Legion, in which good angels and bad angels kick the bejabbers out of each other with an eye to earning their wings -- even if they have to tear them off each other. With that in mind, take a stroll through this garden of evil angels... pray they're not looking over your shoulder.

Continue reading "Five Evil Movie Angels - They're Devils in Disguise" »

There are no horror movies among this year's Golden Globe nominees, unless you want to count the best foreign-language feature nod to The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke's icy examination of the systematic, multi-generational cruelty in a small German town. But that would be quite a stretch, even if Haneke did make Funny Games (2007).

That said, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) has always been far more generous to the genre than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Maybe it's their old-world roots: Many HFPA members come from places that take ghosts, shape shifters, ghouls, haints bog beasts and assorted other fiends very, very seriously. And they come from countries that take horror movies seriously too -- it took the French to coin the word cinefantastique, which sounds so much classier than "fright flicks" or "monster movies."

Whatever the reason, for 60 years, genre movies -- horror, science fiction and fantasy -- have gone home with shiny Golden Globe statues and the warm 'n' fuzzy feeling that somebody out there really, really likes them. Here are some highlights, along with a couple of dismal lows:

1944: Ingrid Bergman takes home a best actress award for Gaslight, in which she played a woman terrorized by her monstrous husband; to be fair, Bergman got an Oscar as well. Gaslight, by the way, gave the world the term "gaslighting," as in systematically trying to make someone think he or she is crazy. Bergman's husband does sneaky little things like rig the lights so they dim and flicker while they're together and then, when she wonders innocently what could be wrong, denies that any such thing happened and solicitously asks whether she's feeling quite all right.

Continue reading "Maitland McDonagh - A History of Horror and the Golden Globes" »

Matt Reeve's (Cloverfield) remake of the extraordinary Swedish vampire movie Let the Right One In (2008), is due out on Oct. 1 -- and horror fans can only hope the movie isn't as dumbed down as the new title: Let Me In.

But U.S. remakes of foreign horror movies aren't always as dismal as The Invisible (2007) and Pulse (2006), based on Joel Bergvall and Simon Sandquist's Den Osynlige (2002), and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo ( 2001), respectively. Some are actually good, like these:

10. The Vanishing (1993)
In Dutch writer-director George Sluizer's bleak 1988 version of The Vanishing, a man becomes obsessed with finding his girlfriend who disappeared at a highway rest stop while he waited by their car. The Hollywood remake is a solid thriller, anchored by Jeff Bridges' Oscar-worthy performance as a genial sociopath.

Continue reading "The Ten Best American Remakes of Foreign Fright Flicks" »

Set in a world where the vampire-to-human ratio skews heavily towards the bloodthirsty undead, Australian writer-director team Peter and Michael Spierig's scifi horror tale Daybreakers is filled with clever details, but falters as a satirical allegory about top-of-the-food-chain hubris.

The year is 2019, one decade after the onset of a plague that turned its victims into vampires; they in turn infected others, rapidly swelling the ranks of the undead exponentially. Now vampires run everything from the corner coffee kiosk to multi-national corporations. They live in suburban tract houses, take the subway to work and watch pretty newscasters on flat-screen TVs; sullen clusters of delinquent teens hang out on street corners and homeless beggars look for handouts. This facade of ordinary civilization rests on the foundation of blood farming: Mega-corporations like Bromley-Mark extract blood from comatose humans and sell it like any other commodity. There's no carnage in the streets or unbridled bloodlust in the air, and corporate fat bats like CEO Charles Bromley (Sam Neill) are raking it in.

Continue reading "Daybreakers Review - Corporate Vampires, Disgusting Decapitations and Elvis Presley" »

2009 is barely over and already I'm thinking ahead to what frights to 2010 could hold. By and large, I'm not especially excited about the dozens of much-hyped remakes and sequels on the horizon. And past experience tells me that some of the year's greatest delights are still flying below my radar. But these ten projects have piqued my curiosity and as the philosophers always say, half of life is having something to look forward to.

10. Blair Witch 3
Between the 10th anniversary of The Blair Witch Project and the hoopla over Paranormal Activity, it's no surprise that Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez have been making noises about doing their own sequel (they had nothing to do with 2000's Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2). And let's face it: Their post-Blair Witch careers haven't exactly flourished. But cynical snippiness aside, I'd love to see them do a kick-ass follow up. It's hard to tell where this project is: It might just be talk, but then there was that casting call for a "Blair Witch Remake" to be made in Scotland by one Stacy Hopkins -- who seems to have no credits whatsoever -- and specifies "mostly Canadian and U.S. actors." I love a mystery.

Continue reading "Freddy, Wolfman and Blair Witch Stand Ready to Terrorize 2010" »

The decade now drawing to a close was clogged with pointless horror remakes and endless sequels, but it also introduced a slew of fresh faces. If the horror genre feeds on new blood, then fans have nothing to fear: It's not only alive and well -- it's thriving. Here are ten writers and directors to watch... with the lights on and the door bolted.

10. Takashi Shimizu

With Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998), Shimuz's first feature, Ju-On (2000), and its sequels made J-horror a world-wide phenomenon. Unlike Nakata, Shimizu directed the U.S. remake, The Grudge (2004), which returned $110 million on a $10 million investment; Gore Verbinski's 2002 The Ring made $20 million more -- but cost five times as much. Terror is an international language.

Continue reading "21st Century Horror Is Proud to Present Eli Roth, Rob Zombie and Neil Marshall" »

The weather outside is frightful, and what's going on indoors isn't much better. Snow may sparkle like party glitter, but being snowed in might mean death by maniac, monster, or malicious spirit. Check out these movies and commit their lessons to memory before you take a long drive, despite winter-storm warnings, to spend the weekend at a cabin buried deep in the woods.

The Shining (1980)
Everybody remembers the rambling, luxurious Overlook Hotel and the creepy ghosts that haunt its rooms and corridors. But the relentless snow that blankets the roads is equally responsible for the fate of the hapless Torrence family. If the roads were open, Jack Nicholson would be flashing his "Heere's Johnny!" grin for an audience of none.

Continue reading "Maitland McDonagh - The Ten Most Chilling Wintry Fright Flicks" »

Can you say aughties with a straight face? I can't and I dare you to try. But let's move beyond "aughtie" this and "aughtie" that: The years 2000 to 2009 produced a bumper crop of terrific horror movies. Made by both genre veterans and neophytes, they range from down-and-dirty torture porn to sly mockumentaries; post-modern ghost stories to white-knuckle suspense tales; go-girl manifestos to off-kilter monster movies. And that's just the English-language pictures! Clearly, reports of the genre's demise have been greatly exaggerated.

10. Black Sheep (2006)
Yeah, killer sheep. This clever, funny and occasionally genuinely frightening variation on Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds hails from New Zealand, where the ratio of ovine, even-toed ungulates to puny humans is roughly ten to one. How do you like them odds, naked ape? What if we add some top secret, gene-manipulating shenanigans? Thought so... better hide that mint jelly while you can, because these sheep aren't going to be cowed.

Continue reading "Maitland McDonagh - The Top Ten Horror Movies of the '00s" »

Sure, there's plenty of junk littering the horror landscape. But 2009 was a terrific year for horror movies: Veterans like George Romero and Frank Henenlotter came up with surprisingly fresh variations on classic themes, and first-timers proved that a great idea and a little ingenuity could transcend low-budget limitations and leave jaded fans shivering in their socks. Can you say Paranormal Activity? So without further ado, these are my picks for the ten best of 2009.

10. Dead Snow/Dod Sno
Yes, it's in Norwegian -- and who cares? It speaks the universal language of Nazi zombies laying siege to a cabin crammed with horror-movie stereotypes: The hot girl, the movie geek, the jock and the jockette, the hound dog, the sensible babe and all the rest. What begins as an assured exercise in wringing suspense from classic set-ups  becomes a gore-soaked romp. Dead Snow is a fine addition to the ranks of Nazi-zombie horror movies.

Continue reading "Maitland McDonagh - The Top Ten Horror Movies of 2009" »