The MacGuffin

In honor of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Spencer and Greg reflect on Gary Oldman’s career. Then they tackle kid-driven movies and give DVD picks of the week.

A staircase spirals around, leading you down underneath the Experience Music Project Museum. You know you’re heading in the right direction because things have taken a darker turn. The lighting has the distinct color of red, and in the background you can hear the faint cries and screams of people in desperate need of some help. Off on the left wall from the staircase is a large black and white collage of nameless faces, all perfectly photographed at the precise moment they let out a horrific shriek. It goes without saying that the tone the EMP is going for at this particular point is to create some kind of descent into a hellish place. At the bottom of the stairwell are glass doors, and once a person walks through them, they enter a world of goblins, ghouls, monsters, and a whole bunch of other really cool stuff.

With the Halloween season in full swing, there is no doubt that people will be seeing their fair share of horror films and suspenseful thrillers throughout the month. For my double feature recommendation, I decided to go a little further back into the vault. I really dig older films, and I especially enjoy older horror movies. Maybe because of the fact that films in those days were restricted in what they could show. While there is certainly a place for gory movies in all of their bloody goodness, I also think there’s a place where tension, atmosphere, and suggestion can also share in the spotlight. With that said, I decided to recommend two films that delve wonderfully into those latter aspects. Those two movies are George Waggner’s The Wolf Man (1941) and Jacques Tourneur’s Cat People (1942).

Every Saturday night The Tomb of Terror opens, unleashing reviews of the obscure and the classic in horror cinema.

Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera is a piece of horror literature history. It sits alongside Bram Stoker’s Dracula from 1897 and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein from 1818. All have been adapted many times on film and hold places as members of the Universal monsters stable. What sets The Phantom apart is that it was the first of the three novels to be adapted into a feature length film, and it has never become a long-running franchise. Both Universal and Hammer Studios sequelized Dracula and Frankenstein to death, while Phantom has just been seen onscreen in over a dozen remakes. I’m a big fan of the Universal monsters and have seen nearly all of the films included in that unofficial series, but for some reason never got around to watching the two famous Phantom adaptations that the studio produced. I’ve read Leroux’s novel and enjoyed it very much, but as far as The Phantom on film goes, I’m way behind. In fact, the two versions I’ve seen are very different in style from all the others. I saw Joel Schumacher’s musical adaptation and quickly realized that I was not the right audience for it. Tonight I’ll be covering the slasher take on The Phantom that was released in 1989 and stars Freddy Krueger himself, Robert Englund.

Every Saturday night The Tomb of Terror opens, unleashing reviews of the obscure and the classic in horror cinema.

It can be a lonely existence being a film fan. While other people have successful relationships or careers, we spend hours alone with characters that will never exist outside of their filmed story. We obsess over the tiniest of details, but no one thinks you’re great when you whip out a random bit of movie trivia. If you score a touchdown then you’re an athlete, if you know where George Lucas got the title THX-1138 from then you’re a nerd. This is why when we film fans find someone with similar sensibilities we want to spend a lot of time pouring over movies with them. I recently found someone like this. His name is Eric Binford, and he’s the main character of the horror film Fade to Black (1980). He loves films with all his heart and no one understands him. For the first thirty minutes of Fade to Black, I fell in love with Eric’s story, but after that the film loses track of its main character amidst murder set pieces and gonzo logic.