Similar in structure to fellow McFarland & Company releases Now a Terrifying Motion Picture! and Classic Horror Films and the Literature That Inspired Them, yet by a different author, Ron Miller’s Mystery Classics on Film: The Adaptation of 65 Novels and Stories provides a thorough breakdown of the changes that short stories and novels have … Continue reading Reading Material: Short Ends 6/21/17
This is producer/director William Castle’s second-best movie with the number 13 in its title. Its premise is that Candy (Kathy Dunn), an American diplomat’s daughter who attends an exclusive boarding school, becomes a spy. She’s 16 years old. I point that out because not once, but twice, does Candy throw herself at older men, in … Continue reading 13 Frightened Girls (1963)
Outside of The Most Dangerous Game, has genre cinema latched onto another concept more often than Eyes Without a Face? It’s the story gift that keeps on giving, as long as you change just enough elements to avoid litigation. Just ask character actor Michael Pataki (The Bat People), who leveraged it for Mansion of the … Continue reading Mansion of the Doomed (1976)
All at once, life for the otherwise successful Margaret (Rebecca Hall, The Night House) is unstable. She’s bedding a married co-worker. With her daughter set to leave for college, Margaret faces an empty nest. Worst of all, her past suddenly and literally has come back to haunt her. It comes in the form of David … Continue reading Resurrection (2022)
Crack in the World could have been born from a discussion question in your fifth-grade science textbook: “What do you think would happen if scientists broke through the center of the earth with a nuclear warhead? Explain.” Heck, Crack in the World even uses the requisite 10 words from that chapter’s vocabulary list. Underneath Africa, … Continue reading Crack in the World (1965)