Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) 08, 10/29.

"Maybe you didn't realize it - I didn't until too late - but October 12, 2008 marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of [Michael J] Weldon's magnum opus The Psychotronic Encyclopedia of Film," writes Rob Gonsalves at Hollywood Bitchslap. "This monolith of cult, exploitation, classic, mondo, and just plain cool films became the gold standard by which all other such compilations would be judged - the schlock-cinema equivalent of The Trouser Press Record Guide, left atop coffee tables in slacker dens everywhere for friends to lose themselves in.... Weldon, with the help of Ballantine Books, legitimized the low, the weird, the obscure, the greasers and sluts and punks of celluloid."

"Horror buffs are probably already familiar with the name Stephen Romano. After all, he scripted the first segment ever for Showtime's Masters of Horror series (Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, directed by Don Coscarelli) and his short story collection The Riot Act drew lavish praise from the likes of John Skipp and Joe R Lansdale. Now Romano is poised to break out with Shock Festival, an illustrated fictional history of 101 exploitation movies, all of which were concocted by Romano himself." Pete Vonder Haar talks with him for Film Threat.

"Though undoubtedly intended to honor the film's iconic status as a classic chiller, Film Forum's decision to start its week-long revival of Rosemary's Baby on Halloween in some ways diminishes Roman Polanski's achievement," argues Tim Grierson. "Sure, it's one of the finest horror films ever made, but 40 years after its premiere, Rosemary's Baby (adapted from Ira Levin's 1967 novel) plays more like an unnerving commentary on our still-sexist society than it does a traditional scare flick." More from Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer.

Back in the Voice, Nick Pinkerton finds Passengers to be "a kind of declawed, inside-out Final Destination - with none of the sense of showmanship, and all the looming malice of a mawkish condolence card." And Luke Y Thompson reviews Saw V: "The method to the madness of the traps turns out to be quite clever, but the rewriting of Saw mythology is the slasher equivalent of revising Star Wars so that Greedo fires at Han Solo first."

"On the grand scale of horror franchises which have progressively pillaged their brilliant origins, the Hellraiser series is right up there with Halloween and Saw," writes Ben Child. "A series of seven increasingly rushed sequels have followed the Clive Barker 1987 classic which introduced the world to the demon Pinhead. Yet studio Dimension have at least been taking their time over plans for a series reboot: they announced yesterday that French horror ingenue Pascal Laugier is to become the third director to take charge of the project."

Also in the Guardian: "I'd like to think that the stereotype of lots of boys in black zombie T-shirts is finally going away. They're not the majority any more." That's Adèle Hartley, founder of Edinburgh's Dead by Dawn horror film festival, in Wendy Roby's piece on "the female hunger for horror."

More "Great Pumpkins" at the Reverse Shot Blog: "Meet Me in St Louis, that big old slab of female-centric Americana, contains perhaps the century's greatest cinematic evocation of Halloween, outpacing even John Carpenter's sharp visualization of that most dreaded suburban twilight 34 years later," argues robbiefreeling, who's also got an entry on the Night Gallery episode, The Cemetery. Plus, Nathan Kosub on Pumpkinhead.

"Nature, Nurture and the Guilty Parent in Bride of Frankenstein (Whale, 1935) and Young Frankenstein (Brooks, 1974)," an entry from Glenn Kenny in the Auteurs' Notebook.

"Mother of Tears is just good enough to hope that [Dario] Argento has another classic up his sleeve, but bad enough to realize what an unlikely bit of alchemy that would be," writes Andrew Bemis.

James Rocchi: "Susan Sontag told us about disease as metaphor; with The Fly, Cronenberg gave us an incredibly potent ultimate expression of that idea."

Robert Horton revives his 1984 "appreciation of a horror duo by Joe Dante and John Sayles," Piranha and The Howling.

At the SpoutBlog, Lauren Wissot argues that Daughters of Darkness is the "Sexiest Vampire Movie Ever."

Matt Singer carries on listing at IFC: "Puddy In Their Hands - Ten Old Movie Makeup Jobs That Hold Up, Part II."

"Halloween in the Time of Cholera," a photoset from Steve Chasmar via Coudal Partners.

Online viewing tip. Via Jerry Lentz, the trailer for The Mind Snatchers, starring Christopher Walken.

Posted by dwhudson at October 29, 2008 4:13 PM