No, it’s not some stupid new band. Or even some stupid old band. To be honest it does kind of sound like the name of some 70’s super group. But, no. The Corman-Poe cycle refers to a series of films in the 60’s by Roger Corman and based on works of Edgar Allan Poe. There’s a very good reason that I’m talking about it today though. Other than it being Halloween today, of course.
The other week Dave had me thinking about what got me into horror. Not just the things that I love now, but stuff from when I was a kid. I’ve spoken before about my ultra-permissive parents. I was pretty much allowed to watch whatever I wanted because I wasn’t easy to scare. Thinking back on it this might have come from the fact that by the time I was 10 (or however old I was when I started picking out scary stuff to watch) I had already read a lot of creepy books. My father always had tons of books around. While he wasn’t into horror novels he did have things like Lovecraft, Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe. I read all of them, but the Poe stories stuck with me. So much so that some of the first horror movies I ever saw were the Roger Corman films based on Poe’s stories.
Now most people think of Roger Corman in relation to schlock B-movies of the 50’s or the SyFy schlock of the 2000’s-the nows. There was this lovely time in the 60’s though where he produced and directed some really good schlock featuring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone, and many other notable actors of the time. I was drawn in by the stories, but I stayed for the acting. I’m sure you can understand why. If you haven’t seen them I highly recommend you give at least one of them a shot. Clearly Corman and Price worked well together as they went on to do 7 films based (sometimes VERY loosely)on the works of Poe. They aren’t scary, but they are creepy and fun.
Continue reading “The Corman-Poe Cycle”
You know how sometimes your friends suck? Oh wait, some of my friends might be reading this. In that case: you guys suck sometimes. Like when I want them to go see a stupid movie with me. I couldn’t interest a single person in the movie Crawl. We can get a whole group together to see The Meg, but not one person for Crawl? Maybe I love creature features too much. Maybe I’m just more into seeing crappy b-movies on the big screen than everyone else. Whatever it is I’m glad I finally got to see Crawl, but maybe my friends were right after all.
The town of Centerville used to be “A Real Nice Place” according to the sign that welcomes you to this sleepy farmland. The kind of town where a white farmer wears a hat that says “Keep America White Again” while talking to a black farmer in the local diner. The gas station doubles as a horror themed comic shop, but it’s not so out of the way that it can’t get regular deliveries from WU-PS (because RZA is the delivery man. Get it?). The three local cops are going about their quiet lives on the day that the dead decide to rise from the grave. Nobody seems very surprised though since Adam Driver’s junior cop immediately pegs this disturbance as zombies. What follows is the dead-est of deadpan comedies as the characters all try to survive this outbreak. It isn’t quite a “zomedy”, but it also isn’t too gory for you to watch with the squeamish types. I don’t know a ton of people who have seen this yet so I’ll go easy on spoiling anything. I want everyone to see this movie, and there’s a better chance of that if I don’t tell you how it ends. But, as Adam Driver’s character repeatedly tells us, “this is going to end badly”. 
You probably know who Eli Roth is even if you don’t think you do. He directed Cabin Fever (the good one), Hostel, and (the not good homage to Cannibal Holocaust) The Green Inferno. He’s also had acting roles in several movies, but aside from Inglourious Basterds they’re mostly cameos. A quick look at his IMDB page shows that he is not only a fan of horror, but knows a thing or two about it. You’ll also notice that while he only has 16 credits as a director he has 101 credits as himself (or at least it stuck out to me). It also gives me the idea that he’s a guy who likes to hear himself talk. 
There are probably some spoilers coming up, but since the movie has been out for a week as of the time that this goes up it’s on you at this point. I mean Dave already wrote about it, so I don’t know how I could spoil it more. I’d also apologize for writing about something he’s already covered if I didn’t have such a different opinion. I hadn’t planned on writing about yet another horror movie this month, but I had so many problems with something that I was so excited about seeing that I feel like I need to talk about it. I was really looking forward to this movie, but I sadly didn’t find it as entertaining as Dave did. Apparently we’re going to disagree on movies involving Danny McBride since he hated Alien: Covenant while I liked it, and he loved the new Halloween and I was underwhelmed. I didn’t hate it, and I don’t feel like my qualms are nit-picky, but I had serious problems with the movie that others don’t seem to have. 
NEEDLESS THINGS 