31 Days of Halloween 2021 Day 28: 'Horror Noire' Explores The Horror of Race in America

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. Might throw in the odd horror related book, comic, or music review as well. I've done this the last few years here and on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded. Other times I didn't. Last year I completely failed and didn't do it at all. I'm optimistic about this year.]

Spinning out of the 2011 book Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films from the 1890s to Present by Robin R. Means Coleman which in turn led to the 2019 documentary HORROR NOIRE: A HISTORY OF BLACK HORROR, we now have the anthology film HORROR NOIRE (no additional subtitle). The film is an anthology of six short horror tales from black filmmakers with primarily black casts, and like many anthologies, the results are a bit hit and miss.

 

“The Lake” is about a teacher apparently coming out of a troubled relationship who takes a job at a new school and moves in to a beautiful lake house. Her caretaker warns her not to go swimming in the lake, though, because it has a tendency to bring out the worst in people. There’s a lot in this segment that goes unexplained that really should have been clarified, and the ending is abrupt and unsatisfying.

31 Days of Halloween 2019: Nightmare Cinema

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded. Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can pull it off this year.] 

Review by Bob Ignizio

Not many patrons enter the mysterious movie theater in NIGHTMARE CINEMA, but those who do come to regret it. That’s because The Projectionist (Mickey Rourke) doesn’t show just any old movies. The films he shows are personal nightmares ripped straight from the minds of those watching them.

The first moviegoer to get more than they bargained for is a Samantha (Sarah Withers), a young woman who sees herself thrown into what appears to be a by the numbers woodland slasher film in which she is pursued by a killer known as “The Welder” (Eric Nelson). Writer/director Alejandro Brugués (JUAN OF THE DEAD) almost holds off too long on revealing the twist. But when it finally comes, it’s the sort of cheesy, fun surprise you’d expect from an episode of an eighties horror anthology series like Tales From The Crypt or Monsters. B-

31 Days of Halloween 2018 Bonus: 'Spook House 2' Provides Kid Friendly Comic Book Scares

[I wanted to write something about my favorite kid friendly horror comic for Halloween, so I did.] 

Writer/artist/publisher Eric Powell is probably best known for his action/horror comic book ‘The Goon’, in which thuggish anti-hero The Goon and his diminutive sidekick Franky battle zombies, witches, and other forces of evil. That book is on hiatus at the moment, but you should definitely check out the collected trade paperbacks. They’re a lot of fun.

At the moment Powell’s primary focus is another action/horror book called ‘Hillbilly’, but he’s also found time to do something that is all too rare these days. His Albatross comics company has given a home to ‘Spook House’, a horror anthology miniseries of “scary stories fit for kids.”

31 Days of Halloween 2018: These 'Ghost Stories' Can Even Scare A Skeptic

[Once again I'm going to attempt to do a horror(ish) movie review a day for the entire month of October. I've done this the last few years on The Cleveland Movie Blog. Most of the time I succeeded (usually with the help of a few other writers). Other times I didn't. We'll see if I can pull it off this year.]  

 Despite being an avid, long time horror fan, the truth is very few horror movies scare me. Like anyone, a good jump scare can startle me, and some of the more boundary-pushing films out there most definitely disturb and/or disgust me. But in terms of shivers-down-the-spine terror, not much gets to me.

GHOST STORIES got to me. More than once.

Written and directed by Andy Nyman and Jeremy Dawson, GHOST STORIES is a British horror anthology film. It’s in the tradition of similar films that were in their prime in the 1970’s when Amicus studios released such titles as THE HOUSE THAT DRIPPED BLOOD and DR. TERROR’S HOUSE OF HORROR. But with its subtler brand of ghostly thrills and chills, it owes more of a debt to 1941’s DEAD OF NIGHT.