Girl Meets Freak
Backwoods Horror
Movie Discussion: Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses (2003)
Girl Meets Context: Children of the 1990s know Rob Zombie as the frontman of White Zombie, a.k.a. the feral guy with dreads doing ‘magic hands’ in the “Thunder Kiss ’65″ video. But it turns out Zombie was dead serious about that video’s aesthetic statement – it wasn’t simply a bunch of empty references meant to … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Wes Craven’s The Hills Have Eyes (1977)
Girl Meets Context: Inspired by Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Wes Craven (director of 1972′s controversial grindhouse classic The Last House on the Left ) made The Hills Have Eyes both as an homage to Hooper’s movie and also an attempt to cash in on it’s success. Set in the Nevada desert, The Hills Have Eyes is … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986)
Girl Meets Context: Twelve years after the release of the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre, director Tobe Hooper finally made a sequel to the film. Written by Kit Carson (the ex-husband of scream queen Karen Black), the sequel picks up 13 years after the events depicted in the original film: Lefty (Dennis Hopper), a former Texas … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Tony Maylam’s The Burning (1981)
Girl Meets Context: The Burning isn’t a well-known movie outside of horror movie fandom, but it is often cited as one of the best of the 1980s slasher craze (alongside films like My Bloody Valentine, Black Christmas and Alone in the Dark). It was produced at the same time as Friday the 13th Part 2 in order to cash in … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Steve Miner’s Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981)
Girl Meets Context: When the original Friday the 13th was a massive success, a sequel went into production almost immediately. Adrienne King, who played the first movie’s final girl, Alice, asked to be included only peripherally, after a bad experience being stalked by an obsessed fan. Friday the 13th Part 2 introduced Ginny, played by Amy Steel, often … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Sean S. Cunningham’s Friday the 13th (1980)
Girl Meets Context: The enormous financial success of John Carpenter’s Halloween in 1978 inspired Paramount Pictures to want to emulate its model: a slasher like Halloween could be made on the cheap with no-name actors and reap huge profits, even if only moderately successful at the box office. Friday the 13th, made really only as a cash-grab using this … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Drew Goddard’s The Cabin in the Woods (2012)
Girl Meets Context: It is difficult to even synopsize The Cabin in the Woods because the plot of the movie relies so much on twists and turns… so please be forewarned that there will be massive SPOILERS AHEAD!!! If you haven’t gone to see this movie yet, rush to your local theater to see it, then … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Greg McLean’s Wolf Creek (2005)
Girl Meets Context: Sometime in 2009 Kristine and I started our “Horror Movie Club,” watching a horror movie every couple of weeks together. Things went smoothly until we hit our first snag: a late-night screening of Wolf Creek that rattled Kristine to the bone and still, to this day, remains the only movie we’ve watched that … Continue reading
Super-Sized Movie Discussion, Part 3: Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)
Girl Meets Context: On Friday, December 2nd 2011, Kristine and I held our second Horror Movie Sleepover. We started with Frank Darabont’s 2007 adaptation of Stephen King’s novella The Mist, and couldn’t believe all the Walking Dead cast members that were in it. Then we watched another 2007 horror movie, the Spanish supernatural thriller The Orphanage by J.A. Bayona, who is … Continue reading
