Schlock & Awe

This past weekend, we lost one of America’s most iconoclastic character actors, Harry Dean Stanton.

But the same things I loved about Nightmare emerged—more fully formed—in Red Eye.

Craven made some really great films, but Scream, to me, is the one that demonstrates every ounce of his talent.

New Nightmare has an incredible premise and a very meta, self-referential storyline, blending reality with fiction, and having fun with its own genre.

At the heart of Craven’s sometimes silly, often quite humorous, film is a critique of trickle-down Reaganomics: the rich are not rich because they work harder or make wiser decisions or because they excel in any other way ethically.

My first memory of Wes Craven is watching A Nightmare on Elm St (1984), at the age of six or seven.

The Hills Have Eyes is a story about two families, and the lengths they go to stay alive.

There couldn't have been a more appropriate movie than LAST HOUSE to greet the slow and painful end of the Vietnam era.

May 26th and 27th are the birthdays of three of horror cinema's greatest legends, Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, and Christopher Lee.

Dr. Samuel Loomis has no real rival in horror film history and the performances by Donald Pleasence were always nuanced, playful, tragic, and real, elevating whatever miserable excuse for a script he was handed into something magical.

Rest in peace, Ms. Black. Your horror was voluptuous.

Schlock & Awe is devoted to celebrating the joyous, almost innocent, creative spark behind the films that didn't change the world.