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Tom Fallows

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Staff Writer
Posts by Tom Fallows

Review: Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932)

Murders in the Rue Morgue 1932 poster
Submitted by Tom Fallows on Sun, 2011-03-20 23:47

The central thread of Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 short story Murders in the Rue Morgue is one of mystery. Two bodies are found, so degraded that investigators can only imagine a killer with a "grotesquerie in horror absolutely alien from humanity". Poe's novel is cerebral, focusing on analytical observation and the calculating power of the mind. It laid the groundwork for Arthur Conan Doyle's great detective and moved police work into the 20th century. Robert Florey's film adaptation however, holds no such aspirations. Here acumen is replaced by something more visceral and focus shifts to themes of desire, rage and revenge. This is after all the cinema, and here emotion is king. (read more...)

Ed Gein: Pop Star

edgein_0
Submitted by Tom Fallows on Fri, 2010-10-15 13:19

Texas Chainsaw Massacre Month. I don't know what makes men like Ed Gein superstars, when all they leave behind them is suffering, loss and madness. Maybe it's that their stories are so bizarrely gothic and so filled with lurid details that no movie could make up. Ironically movies about these creatures will later appear - the weird parts repackaged for general consumption. After this we can relax, take a breath and tell ourselves, "Well heck, it's only a movie." When this happens enough, when we've seen the film, read the books and got the pez dispenser, men like Gein become no more real to us than a Leatherface, a Freddy Krueger or King Kong. Soon they have a separate 'star image' and while they still give most of us the chills, for others they are 'anti-heroes' or symbols of rebellion. Perhaps this is the only way we can make life bearable, by fictionalizing them, making fun and denying anything really ever happened. But it did happen and Gein was real. So were his victims.(read more...)

Review: Psycho II (1983)

Psycho II poster
Submitted by Tom Fallows on Sun, 2010-09-19 20:56

Psycho II should never have been made. The original, crafted by a master, cut deeply into our collective pop-psyche, being all things to all people - and thus unique. Scholars loved its Freudian take on sexual paranoia (where a knife was no longer just a knife) and its narrative insurgency. Meanwhile mainstream cinema-goers had never before seen a film so delightfully lurid - focusing as it did on black negligee, flushing toilets and blood spiraling down the plughole. With Psycho, the modern horror film was born. A sequel then, especially one coming so many years later, shouldn't work. Yet somehow, director Richard Franklin defies expectations. Uniqueness is replaced by nostalgia, but this remembrance is used to open new doors, creating a twisting story that is at once evocative and seditious.(read more...)

Review: Let's Scare Jessica to Death (1971)

Let's Scare Jessica to Death poster
Submitted by Tom Fallows on Sun, 2010-08-01 21:18

Even from the opening image of John D. Hancock's slice of 1970s horror-melancholia it becomes apparent that this is film where things won't be seen clearly. A woman, hidden in silhouette, sits in a boat steadily drifting away from the shore. The morning mist distorts our view, while the orange sunrise adds an unreality to the scene - as if this is something dreamed. To further muddy the cognitive waters, we are introduced to this place by Jessica, who in a whispery internal monologue confesses that she is unsure of what is real and what is not. And as she is our only guide, inviting us to see the world through her eyes, we too begin to question what we see. Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a film about insanity, but what makes it so astounding is that it doesn't ask us to study madness, but rather to share in it.(read more...)

Dennis Hopper: Movie Maniac

Dennis Hopper
Submitted by Tom Fallows on Sun, 2010-05-30 18:09

For a man who appeared in so few horror pictures, there was always something frightening about Dennis Hopper. As an artist and a man, he seemed to pursue madness. For half his life he lived on a diet of booze and amphetamines, pushing his body to the brink of destruction and inviting stories of a man out of control. There are tales of him pulling knives on co-stars, threats of violence and of him drinking his way into character. Charles Manson saw him as a kindred spirit and begged Hopper to play him onscreen. Look into his eyes on any film following Easy Rider (1968) and they show a man who has stared into the abyss.
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