The dusty, shuffling dead don't have the sex appeal of vampires or the tragic dimension of werewolves. And yet the poor mummies are always with us -- if by "always" we mean since 1922, when British Egyptologist Howard Carter first peered into the long-lost tomb of fourteenth-century-BC pharaoh Tutankhamen and set the world's morbidly romantic imagination on fire. So brew up a pot of tanis tea, wrap yourself in a cozy blanket, and, whatever you do, don't read the ancient scroll of Thoth aloud, because the time has come to rank the ten greatest mummy movies in history.

10. The Cat Creature (1973)
Directed by Curtis Harrington, this unjustly forgotten TV movie pays homage to low-budget horror movies of the forties without being camp. Granted, once the Bast-worshipping Egyptian priestess is reincarnated in modern-day Los Angeles, the mummy looks just like Meredith Baxter in ugly seventies fashions, but, hey, she turns into a killer cat. And the supporting cast includes B-movie greats such as John Carradine, Gale Sondergaard, Kent Smith (Cat People), and David Hedison (The Fly).

9. Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy (1964)
Okay, not a good movie, but it's one hell of an entertaining Mexican-wrestler-monster mash. You get lushly built luchadoras, a crumbly mummy that turns into a bat, and an evil Fu Manchu type looking to steal some ancient treasure. What you don't get is a whole lot of mummy-on-mujeres action. Have a few more cervezas and you won't care.

Continue reading "Mummies Dearest...the Top Ten Mummy Movies" »

In a time when horror movies seem to be made mostly of recycled material, there are certain franchises that manage to provide endless entertainment nevertheless. If the sheer number of sequels (and prequels) is any sign, horror fans will never tire of series like Halloween, Night of the Living Dead, Friday the 13th, or A Nightmare on Elm Street. (The latest version of that last one hits theaters this April.) But which one is your favorite? These all have formulas worth repeating, but which one has repeated its formula best?

On the surface, the idea of time travel seems great, but scratch below and you run into all sorts of problems. Chief among them is the fact that, if you so much as step on a butterfly in the past, you'll return to a drastically different present. Here's a list of movies that provide cautionary tales of traveling back and forth in time.

10. Time After Time
The only reason writer-director Nicholas Meyer's brilliant movie is last is that it's a sweet-natured romance. It depicts H.G. Wells (Malcolm McDowell) romancing his soul mate, while pursuing Jack the Ripper (David Warner). Why is a gentle Victorian trying to hunt down a serial killer in '70s San Francisco? Because Wells has made a time machine and the Ripper has used it to jet to the twentieth century.

9. Army of Darkness
The third Evil Dead ignores the fact that messing around in the past can radically alter the future. Who cares? Forcing beleaguered Ash (Bruce Campbell) to battle hordes of dead people in the Middle Ages, with nothing but a shotgun and soon-to-be useless junker (the era being without gas stations), makes for more gruesome gags than you'd think would fit into an 81-minute flick.

Continue reading "Future Shock - The Horror of Time Travel in the Movies" »

Nothing says Valentine's Day more than chocolates, Champagne, and a horror movie. A couple of hours of mad, bad, twisted love can make any ordinary relationship look like true romance. But what to watch if you've already done My Bloody Valentine, Valentine, and My Bloody Valentine 3-D? For starters, pretty much anything by David Cronenberg. They don't call him the "king of venereal horror" for nothing. They Came From Within, Videodrome, Dead Ringers, and Crash are especially apropos. Here are some others.

10. Return of the Living Dead 3
Imagine a significant other who loves you so much that he or she would rather have a zombie version of you than none at all -- and wants to eat your brains. Hallmark doesn't make a card for that.

Continue reading "The Top Ten "I Hate Valentine's Day" Movies" »

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" »

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" »

It was a good year for homegrown horror, but plenty of delights sneaked in from overseas. A few got theatrical releases, most went straight to DVD and almost all arrived in the U.S. a year or more after they were originally released. But that doesn't make them old news: There's nothing like seeing familiar fiends -- ghosts, zombies, vampires -- from an unfamiliar perspective. You could wait for the inevitable remake, but why not sample the originals? Here are ten movies that horror buffs should check out before they get put through the Hollywood mill.

10. High Tension/Haute Tension (2003)
Yes, French writer-director Alexandre Aja's white knuckle girl-vs-ghoul thriller, written by frequent collaborator Gregory Levasseur, lifts shamelessly from Dean Koontz's novel Intensity. But it's one kick-ass horror show nonetheless.

Continue reading "Best Foreign Horror Movies of the '00s" »

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" »