I still remember watching the opening scene of Payne’s Nebraska and thinking “OK, nice, it’s a little character-establishing vignette before the main story begins…wait, this IS the main story?!”
Christopher Lee has very little dialog. It’s probably to make him seem more menacing.
Hammer was low budget. They were primarily shot at Bray Film Studios.
I may buy a Hammer blu-ray collection with 20 films. It’s for nostalgia. Local tv used to run horror films late Saturday nights. Usually sponsored by a Used Car dealer. I remember all the commercial breaks were for cars and sales he offered.
I personally have a loathing for the characters in WH - Heathcliff is not a moody romantic hero; he’s just a toxic bully tormenting three generations of a rather milquetoast family and forming a dysfunctional codependency with the unhinged Cathy. It’s a good story but it’s not really a romantic one.
Anyway: if anyone’s going to make a watchable version of it, it’ll be Emerald Fennell. But I probably still won’t watch it.
The critical reviews for Greenland are actually pretty good, and I’m now planning to watch it. It’s supposed to be more relatable than a typical effects-loaded apocalypse film.
I watched almost all of the vintage horror films that TCM aired around Halloween, including those Hammer films. The one that really got to me is Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed. His monster isn’t a monster at all, just a body with a someone else’s brain, a brain of a doctor no less. But the scene of true evil is when Dr. Frankenstein walks past the bedroom where his assistant’s wife (girlfriend?) is on the bed in her nightgown. She begs him to leave, but he locks the bedroom door behind her, forcing himself upon himself as she lies helpless and the scene fades. In this film, the monster is indeed Dr. Frankenstein himself, not the guy with the transplanted brain.
Another interesting film they showed was Mark of the Vampire (1935). It’s a very short film, at just over an hour, due to some strict censorship. The gist of the story is there was a murder in Transylvania, and the victim had two fang marks on his neck. The superstitious villagers fear it is the work of Dracula. Bela Legosi as Dracula then shows up, along with his ghostly daughter, both wearing what we now consider to classic vampire outfits. Their house is creepy, filled with spiders and cockroaches and one ugly rat (a possum!) Lionel Barrymore is there to deduce the cause of the man’s death, and then another man is dead with the mark of the vampire. The resolution is a real hoot, very clever. It was so unexpected that it made me smile.
I joined Film Independent so I could screen their 2026 nominees (and vote on them!) in the comfort of my home, and Dust Bunny was first up (as a nominee for Best First Feature).
Definite Leon vibes (but with none of the creepiness), and some live-action Coraline feel as well. I loved this movie, and I think the horror label it’s gotten is technically correct but doesn’t really do it justice. It’s a fun narrative with a lot of familiar and unexpected faces, and the kid is terrific. Visually delightful as well. Some of the tonal shifts were a little abrupt, but it all worked out.
Greenland (2020). It was mentioned before but now that I’ve seen it I’ll throw in my 2 cents. Pretty damn good for a movie I had previously not even heard of. Fine dramatic tension as it focuses on the struggles of a husband and wife with a 7-year-old boy to survive a series of cataclysmic strikes from a huge fragmented comet. Surprisingly good special effects, too. Better than average in the apocalyptic genre.
I just watched a pleasant little holiday short film, “Treevenge”.
Shin Godzilla and Godzilla Minus One.
A few years ago, the family decided that we should watch zombie movies for Christmas instead of the usual holiday fare. Thinking a little more about it, we concluded that zombie movies are really more appropriate for Easter and Godzilla movies are for Christmas.
Shin Godzilla was released in 2016 and where prior films in this series commented on nuclear war, this one drew inspiration from the 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster in Japan. An early form of the creature surfaces in Tokyo Bay, the government begins to hold meetings about what to do about it as the creature then moves inland into Tokyo. As the creature evolves and becomes more destructive, a taskforce is established, attacking it is attempted (and fails), more meetings are held. Eventually Godzilla is frozen and his rampage is stopped. I enjoyed that there was a bit of a satirical tone to the movie. While a kaiju is making its way through a city, there is endless bureaucracy and some people trying to make political moves instead of doing what’s best for everyone. I thought Godzilla itself was a bit overpowered but that was kind of the point. The effects are done well and it’s worth a watch, imo.
Godzilla Minus One (2023) - This tells a bit of an intimate story about found family overcoming PTSD as well as the traditional kaiju storytelling strategies. Kōichi Shikishima, a failed kamikaze pilot is stricken by fear after seeing Godzilla maul the mechanics at an air strip and is unable to fire on it with his aircraft guns. Felling dishonored, he makes his way back to Tokyo, finding his home destroyed and his parents killed during the bombing of Tokyo. He meets Noriko Ōishi, who lost her family as well, and a rescued baby and the three build a life together. Godzilla makes its way to Tokyo though and Shikishima, still wracked with PTSD and survivor’s guilt, is called back into action to help stop the monster. I really like the interplay between the monster smashing the city and the redemptive arc of one pilot. The monster’s presence is well used and the threat level increases very well during the movie, raising the stakes as we move through the story. This is a very good movie that I definitely recommend.
Putting the God back in Godzilla, as it were?
A Night to Remember (1958) (TCM) The other, and dare I say it, superior story of the sinking of the Titanic.
Without all the Star of the Ocean and “paint me like your French girls” folderol, the focus of the story is on the miscommunication between the Titanic and the rescue ships, Californian and Carpathia. The hero is 2nd Office Lightoller; the villains, if any, are the captain of the Californian who slept through the whole thing. And the blatant classism inherent in the ship – 2nd class and steerage passengers were not allowed on deck until the 1st Class passengers had been safely seen to. (I’d be interested in seeing how the fatalities were spread across the 3 classes of passengers.)
The tragedy is in the “women and children first” policy and the terrible consequences it has on the (largely anonymous) couples and families.
A few vignettes were copied directly by James Cameron: Bruce Ismay leaping ashamedly into a lifeboat; Molly Brown demanding that her lifeboat return to pick up survivors.
With Kenneth More (Sink the Bismarck), Laurence Naismith (Bismarck, Jason and the Argonauts), Honor Blackmon (Jason, Goldfinger), David McCallum (Great Escape, Man from U.N.C.L.E.)
Gosh, you guys are getting me to watch this one that I skipped.
Did I just see a sequel is on the way?
This was a fun and great movie. I really did like the protagonist being a kamikaze who did not die honorably like he was supposed to. I’m not part of the Japanese culture and am not even an expert, but I like any story that deals with cultural pressures that are not really beneficial.
Godzilla Minus One Also has the best Jaws homage ever.
Saw this on Friday (our first time in a theater in at least five years) and had the same reaction.
OK, tell me. You mean Godzilla’s “fins” or spines sort gliding along the water? I’m not a huge Jaws fan, have only seen it one time.
We watched it, too. Had seen it before so it wasn’t a surprise, but I love it. Clever
Yes, Greenland 2: Migration, to be released in theaters January 9, 2026. Same writer, same director, and at least two of the primary cast.
The best Godzilla movie I’ve seen.
I like that it returned to Godzilla just being bad, instead of a protector of humans that fights some worse monster. As you noted, the original Godzilla was about the horror of nuclear war. Turning him into a necessary evil to defeat something worse has too many parallels to the way America tells the story of the atomic bomb. Keep Godzilla evil like he was intended.
The small boat is more of a reference than Godzilla/shark. Almost every scene with the small boat and crew is inspired by a scene from Jaws.