Creator of the award-winning web series, Abnormal Fixation. One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.
" Maybe the philosophers were right. Man is the center of the universe. We stand in the middle of infinity; between outer and inner space..." -Dr. Duval (Arthur Kennedy) ponders the miracle of life in Fantastic Voyage . This memorable Richard Fleischer effort was the special effects spectacular of 1966; an imaginative, big budget (6.5. million dollar...), award-winning science fiction adventure.…
As Sondheim wrote, "Every Day a Little Death." By Jonas Schwartz-Owen Two worlds run through Jane Schoenbrun's Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma , and the whole trick of the movie is watching them bleed into each other. World one: the present day, where Gillian Anderson and Hannah Einbinder play actual people. World two: Camp Miasma , a fictional 1980 slasher — a movie inside the movie — that…
In 1986, the comic-book adaptation Howard the Duck -- executive-produced by George Lucas -- landed in movie theaters with a splat. The fantasy film cost thirty-seven million dollars to produce (some sources report a budget as high as 52 million, however…), and barely made back its budget. Meanwhile, audiences and critics hated the film from director Willard Huyck and writer Gloria Katz. So much…
Sci-Fi Pulse's Raissa Devereux reviews Abnormal Fixation Season Two and calls it "hilarious" and heartfelt" Check out the full review here: In Review: Abnormal Fixation, Season 2 (Web Series)
It’s no exaggeration to state that The War of the Gargantuas (1966) was a staple of my childhood TV-watching. The Japanese monster movie -- released in America in 1970 -- aired frequently on our local station WWOR Channel 9 in the 1970s and 1980s; sometimes on The Million Dollar Movie , if memory serves. Rightly or wrongly, I have come to associate these viewings of The War of the Gargantuas with…
The world needed a good Star Trek movie in 2016. Why? As a reminder of who we are, who we have been, and who, I hope, we can be again. And because -- let’s face it -- 2016 wasn't a good year for humanity . Historic international alliances were in jeopardy because of the politics of fear and resentment, and major candidates for high office painted dystopian, apocalyptic pictures of our collective…
M. Night Shyamalan’s 2006 movie Lady in the Water (2006) is a cinematic bedtime story, and on that basis, I find that it succeeds quite admirably as a work of art. The film most decidedly isn’t a fantasy spectacular or epic like Fellowship of the Rings (2001). In terms of comparison it is merely a story that a parent might tell a child on one night, or on many successive nights. So you don’t get…
Last week, I had the great pleasure of being contacted by WatchGuide , an independent German film & series community (online since 2022, 1,600+ reviews, one editorial 0-10 "Watcher score" per title), where the authors link to this blog (and the site even sent me a nifty badge; on the right sidebar!). I've had a great time digging into some of the Watchguide movie data since then, and thought the…
Writing for The Richmond Times Dispatch , movie critic Carole Kass termed Vamp (1986) “ sleazy, tawdry and disgusting. ” Oddly, those are some of the very reasons I enjoy this film so much. T he film is absolutely all those things, and, I would argue, delightfully so. But the reason Vamp worked in 1986, and still (largely) works four decades later is that the film boasts a goofy big-hearted sense…
The first two films in the long-lived Alien franchise tend to stir passionate debate, especially when placed in direct comparison to one another. There are those viewers who appreciate Ridley Scott's terrifying, original 1979 " space trucker " film and consider it the superior work of art. And then there are those who feel just as strongly regarding James Cameron's intense, militarized sequel,…
In the early 1900s, David Innes (McClure) and inventor Abner Perry (Peter Cushing) test the doctor’s experimental “ high-calibration drilling machine,” the Iron Mole, which can burrow deep into “ the bowels of the Earth .” Something goes wrong on the initial journey, however, and Iron Mole emerges not on the far side of a hill, but deep within the Earth’s core, in a heretofore unknown world called…
A key character in Futureworld (1975) informs another character that the problem at Delos -- the amusement park of the future -- is " the memory " of the nightmarish events that occurred in Western World, or for viewer purposes, the harrowing events of the great sci-fi movie Westworld (1973). The very same problem might be ascribed to this less-than-satisfactory cinematic sequel directed by…
Obsession: A Disquieting Commentary on a Popular Trope Guest Post by Jonas Schwartz-Owen Remember those beloved ’80s teen comedies, where Lloyd Dobler blares his boombox outside his ex-girlfriend’s window despite her breaking up with him, or the geek has sex with a passed-out prom queen? Hilarity ensues - until the hangover of hindsight kicks in and we realize these “charming” moments were never…
Since it is July 4, 2026, I thought it might be an opportune to remember America's Bicentennial celebration of 1976....50 years ago I remember the occasion, five decades ago, well. I was six years old, and the Bicentennial -- the 200th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence -- was all the craze, all over the country. I was in Kindergarten at the time, and much of our class work was geared…
Directed by Anthony Perkins, Psycho III (1986) is -- perhaps paradoxically -- both sleazier and more spiritual than its 1960 and 1983 predecessors were. The third film in the Psycho mythos explores a world of the fallen; a world of sex without love, and cynicism but no truth. Yet the film’s consistent use of religious symbolism suggests that Norman Bates can yet be redeemed, and yet navigate this…
One of my all-time favorite cult movies is John Carpenter’s Big Trouble in Little China (1986), a film involving an American hero treading into a mysterious, non-Western world where he feels like an “outsider.” That world, in this case, is not literally another planet, but rather the mystical and dangerous world of Chinese black magic. So. movie audiences get an on-screen representative of “us”…
Although it bombed at the box office in 1986, Labyrinth -- director Jim Henson’s elaborate follow-up to The Dark Crystal (1982) -- is one of those films that, across the span of decades, has attained cult classic status. More than that, the film has found meaning and relevance for generation after generation of enthusiastic, imaginative children. Although the film’s final act degenerates into…
"In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in the history of mankind. " Mankind ." That word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. Perhaps it's fate that today is the Fourth of July, and you will once…
In the 23 rd century, the survivors of a nuclear war live inside The City of Domes, a paradise of plenty. The world is a hedonist’s delight with the Love Shop and other pleasures, but the metropolis is not without a downside. Every citizen must die at age 30, and hope for “renewal” in a state-sponsored ritual called Carousel that keeps the civilization perfectly balanced. Policing this edict are a…