For years, Stanley Kubrick’s independently financed first feature, Fear and Desire, was a suppressed film, next-to-impossible to see. The man responsible for suppressing it was Kubrick himself, because he considered his youthful effort to be “nothing more than a bumbling amateur film exercise . . . a completely inept oddity, boring and pretentious.” One could ... read more »

I can feel the Twilight zeitgeist in the air tonight, perhaps it’s because I live across from the cinema and the line around the block and I hear them out there, howling. Maybe I’m too sensitive but the liberal arts feminist in me digs it, baby. It’s TWIN PEAKS kind of foggy mellow, with purple ... read more »

Much as I actually like Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) and goth women generally, Maila Nurmi (as Vampira, above) was the greatest of them all. More stunningly beautiful than her successors. Funnier. Sexier. And scarier. (That scream…) Bet you didn’t know she was brought to Hollywood by Howard Hawks. Not for her latent goth qualities (she was ... read more »