Monthly Archives: January 2009

Lemax Announces Spooky Town 2009 Product Line

For a few years now I have been an avid fan and collector of the Lemax Spooky Town Collection. In case you haven’t heard of them or seen them, they come out in August each year in Michael’s stores and usually occupy an entire aisle of the seasonal items. There you will find a number […]

Werewolves Rising: Underworld Launches a New Wave of Lycans

My most recent article was recently posted at Cinefantastique Online. It looks briefly at the origins and developing mythology of the werewolf in horror cinema.  The article can be viewed here. Following is an excerpt: In terms of literary development, the werewolf appeared in three novels in the nineteenth century, with George W. M. Reynold’s […]

DEAD SPACE: DOWNFALL Animated Exploration of Sci Fi/Horror and Gaming

Last weekend a new title on the shelves of the DVD section at Target caught my eye and quickly became a part of my animation collection. The film is titled DEAD SPACE: DOWNFALL, and it is a feature-length prequel to the EA Game DEAD SPACE. The subject matter, violence, and gore of this film make […]

Bits and Pieces

This week I have been tending to a personal matter and have been out of the loop in my interactions with the fantastic. With this post I will point to a couple of items from the past week that I find noteworthy and which attempts to catch me up on recent relevant events. First, yet […]

The Dark Knight: Batman, Bush, and the American Conscience

I admit that when it comes to being able to take in the latest box office happenings I am often late to the party. Time and budgetary restraints mean that I usually take in recent films as they come out on DVD. Thankfully the lag between box office and DVD debuts are shrinking these days. […]

Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Metaphysical Reflection

As readers of this site are aware, I attempt to move beyond a surface level analysis and appreciation of the fantastic in cinema and television to dig a little deeper in order to discover their social, cultural, and at times religious or spiritual aspects these venues provide. Last year I had the opportunity to teach […]

Patrick McGoohan: The Prisoner and the Scarecrow Passes Away

This seems to be the week for the passing of childhood heroes for monster kids and those of us raised on the fantastic in cinema and television. In a previous post I mentioned the death of northern California’s Creature Features host Bob Wilkins, and now news is being circulated that Patrick McGoohan has died. McGoohan […]

Article on Cinefantastique Online

Steve Biodrowski of Cinefantastique Online asked me if I would be willing to write an article each month that provided an analysis of certain aspects of fantastic cinema. I was all too happy to accept the invitation. The first article, “Of Folklore and Fatherhood: THE UNBORN and Cinematic Reflection,” has been posted here, and below is an excerpt: […]

Creature Features Host Bob Wilkins Passes Away

Another formative piece of my childhood was lost today as Bob Wilkins, the first Creature Features host in northern California, passed away from Alzheimer’s. (See the great tribute to Bob on his website, and click around to learn more about his work.) I remember many late nights in the early 1970s huddled around my nineteen-inch […]

Forthcoming Interviews on Neglected Aspects of Horror

My research and exploration of the fantastic over the last few months has unearthed some interested gems that touch on neglected aspects of horror. These include the book The Mummy’s Curse: Mummymania in the English-Speaking World(Routledge, 2006) by Jasmine Day, a lecturer in Egyptology. Of the various monster archetypes the mummy is one of the most […]

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