Hitchcock's Villains

My new book comes out soon…

Posted inAlfred Hitchcock, Films, Works by Eric, Writing
... so that's kind of cool. The follow-up to A Year of Hitchcock is due out in, damn, just a few weeks! Called Hitchcock's Villains: Murders, Maniacs and Mother Issues, this collaboration with Jim McDevitt is a full exploration of Alfred Hitchcock's greatest villains, what makes them tick, the themes that drive the darkness in his movies, and of Hitchcock's own psyche. I think it's pretty great. This will be my fifth book, collaborative or otherwise, with a sixth hopefully coming out next year in ebook form via the Philadelphia Weekly. (That project is still up in the air.) The…

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962)

Posted inFilms, Videos
We'll cap off this Halloween season foray into public domain horror films tomorrow with the biggest classic of the classics, but for now let's just have fun with the schlocky B-movie fun of The Brain That Wouldn't Die, a 1962 flick about a doctor who keeps his girlfriend's decapitated head alive and goes in search of a body to attach it to. Two of the characters in this movie are billed as "Blonde Stripper" and "Brunet Stripper," so you know this is good cinema. Oh yeah. It's in the public domain, so check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ljDDpEg2ZM The movie is freely…

Three, three, three! classic silents

Posted inFilms, Videos
It's the Friday of Halloween weekend. Maybe you're bored. Maybe you're looking for something to occupy your time. That's why I'm packing three, three, three horror classics of the silent era into one blog post. The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Forget about song and dance and Broadway, the real Phantom of the Opera was a creepy classic that was ahead of its time. The story has been remade five times, but it's tough to beat a silent classic with Lon Chaney. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aI0tWZc8gP4 Dr. Jekyll And Mr. Hyde (1920) Jekyll and Hyde don't rate very highly in modern horror, but…
Can Pixar Do Wrong?

Can Pixar Do Wrong?

Posted inFilms
After watching Pixar’s Up last evening, I’m beginning to wonder if Pixar is capable of making a bad film. Theirs is a track record nearly perfect beyond expectation; even their “worst” pictures are quality entertainment by any measure. You all know Pixar. They’re the folks who brought us Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and other delights. From the very start their films were charming and entertaining. Only a soulless creature does not enjoy Toy Story. The thrills of The Incredibles are matched only by the warmth of the Parr family dynamic. Monsters, Inc. showed those other animation studios that…