I came to watch this film via a roundabout process. Around twenty years ago, I lived in LA and went on a date with an attractive bartendress from a watering hole I frequented. She told me she’d acted in several horror films, including one of the “Creepshow” sequels, and a movie based on the H.P.…

Sometimes a movie tries too hard. Like everyone, I loved “Silence of the Lambs.” And I’m a fan of the follow-up, “Hannibal”, with its great “brain-eating scene.” (How could you not love a good (or even mediocre) brain-eating scene?) And, I appreciated the first time Hannibal Lector graced the screen, played by Brian Cox in…

“Deadly Manor”, made in 1990, is a horror film about a group of young people (including a hitchhiker who may be more than he seems), who enter a mysterious mansion in the middle of a forest. As you might predict, one by one they are killed off. Being that I would’ve been around the same…

So I’ve got a theory about horror films. They’re at their best when they’re subversive—celebrations of nihilism from hustlers working the film industry’s fringes, just trying to make a quick buck. Think Craven’s “Last House on the Left”, Hooper’s “Texas Chainsaw…”, Cunningham’s first “Friday the 13th” films, and a lot of the 80s horror schlock…