Girl Meets Freak
Splatter Flicks
Movie Discussion: Alexandre Bustillo & Julian Maury’s Inside [À l'intérieur] (2007)
Girl Meets Context: If Martyrs is the blood-soaked Cinderella of the mid-2000s wave of so-called “New French Extremity” films, then Inside is that movement’s Ugly Stepsister. Made by first-time co-directors, the film has been hailed by horror fandom (and press) as one of the 21st century’s signature classics. The film has a bare-bones premise: a young woman named … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Girl Meets Context: Ten years after the success of the original Night of the Living Dead, George Romero was inspired to pen a sequel after a visit to the Pittsburgh-area Monroeville Mall (where Dawn was filmed). Unable to find financial backing domestically, Romero was mentored and supported by Italian horror legend Dario Argento (director of films such as … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead II (1987)
Girl Meets Context: Sam Raimi chose an unusual path for his sequel to the cult classic The Evil Dead. Rather than making a film that continued the story of the first movie, he rebooted the film entirely. Just like in the original, Ash (Bruce Campbell) and his girlfriend Linda go to a remote cabin in the woods … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Lamberto Bava’s Demons [Dèmoni] (1985)
Girl Meets Context: Directed by the son of legendary Italian horror auteur Mario Bava, Demons takes some of the giallo tradition’s stylish nonsense and blends in supernatural elements, over-the-top gore setpieces and a bleak dystopic worldview. Demons was stewarded and co-written by horror meastro Dario Argento, and may be the most celebrated of Lamberto Bava’s extensive filmography. … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive (1992)
Girl Meets Context: Dead Alive is one of the most notorious splatter movies of all time, and is often cited as New Zealand director Peter Jackson’s (the Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong) first signature masterpiece. The movie is set in 1950s Wellington and concerns a zombie virus that begins after a rare Sumatran rat monkey bites … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985)
Girl Meets Context: Re-Animator was the most exciting directorial debut in the world of horror since Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead in 1981, and it put director Stuart Gordon on the horror map in a big way. Combining the manic intensity of H.P. Lovecraft’s original story with a pitch-black sense of humor, Re-Animator became an instant cult classic. It … Continue reading
Double Feature Discussion, Part 2: The Spierig Brothers’ Daybreakers (2009)
Girl Meets Context: After a rough couple of weeks complicated by insane work commitments, personal tragedy, and inclement weather, we finally watched our next two movies just days apart. We chose two vampire flicks that both draw heavily from the zombie and splatter movie traditions: Robert Rodriguez’s Tarantino-scripted From Dusk Till Dawn and Daybreakers, an … Continue reading
Double Feature Discussion, Part 1: Robert Rodriguez’s From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Girl Meets Context: After a rough couple of weeks complicated by insane work commitments, personal tragedy, and inclement weather, we decided to do our first-ever “Creature Double Feature.” We chose two vampire flicks that both draw heavily from the zombie and splatter movie traditions: Robert Rodriguez’s Tarantino-scripted From Dusk Till Dawn and Daybreakers, an Australian … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead (1981)
Girl Meets Context: The premise of The Evil Dead couldn’t be simpler: five college-aged friends rent a remote cabin in the Tennessee woods for the weekend and are terrorized by demonic forces. Those forces are unleashed when they find and play tape recordings of a scholar translating passages of an ancient Sumerian text (referred to in … Continue reading
Movie Discussion: Clive Barker’s Hellraiser (1987)
Girl Meets Context: On December 20, 2011 Kristine and I queued up the horror/dark fantasy film Hellraiser, the directorial debut of horror novelist Clive Barker, adapted from his own novella. Barker burst onto the scene in the ’80s with his beloved Books of Blood, a series of story collections that were marketed with a pull quote from … Continue reading
