Category Archives: Vintage Screams

Key Genre Films 1980s

Posted on 01/07/2012 by Nigel Honeybone

How things have changed. In the forties, for instance, one would find it difficult to name twenty good genre films of the decade but, since the late seventies, Hollywood has learned that their baby-booming audiences could not only handle strong horror and science fiction concepts, they craved them. Filmmakers everywhere went into overdrive. Like television today, there wasn’t a production house around that didn’t have at least one genre project in the making.

The first… More

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Sam Peckinpah

Posted on 11/02/2011 by Nigel Honeybone

Since 1967 a number of American filmmakers have tried their hand at making movies of great violence that have managed to further refine the complexity of the statement contained in the groundbreaking big-budget Hollywood blockbuster Bonnie And Clyde (1967). One filmmaker who earned his ‘Red Badge’ is Sam Peckinpah who, like Arthur Penn and John Frankenheimer, can be seen as part of the American sixties ‘new wave’ – young directors who came into movies via… More

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Twin Peaks (TV series)

Posted on 10/27/2011 by Nigel Honeybone

While it’s feasible that there’s the odd person over thirty years of age out there that didn’t see the Twin Peaks series when it was first televised in 1990, it’s unlikely that they are unaware of the cultural run-off from the groundbreaking show. Catchphrases like “She’s dead – wrapped in plastic” and “Who killed Laura Palmer?” adorned T-shirts, fans held coffee-and-doughnut parties, and large sections of the world went quiet for an hour every week.… More

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Key Genre Films 1970s

Posted on 10/06/2011 by Nigel Honeybone

With The Andromeda Strain (1971) director Robert Wise proved that he was still as adept with science fiction themes as he was with the supernatural. A well constructed thriller, it tells of a group of scientists trying to analyse a strange alien spore which comes to earth. Stanley Kubrick, having explored the sterile depths of space in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), returned to a grungy Earth to show what might be happening in the… More

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Key Genre Films 1960s

Posted on 10/05/2011 by Nigel Honeybone

Throughout the sixties, Hammer studios continued with their blood-and-thunder remakes, including The Curse Of The Werewolf (1960), The Two Faces Of Doctor Jekyll (1960), The Brides Of Dracula (1960), The Phantom Of The Opera (1962), Kiss Of The Vampire (1964), The Evil Of Frankenstein (1964) and Dracula Prince Of Darkness (1966). Hammer also delved into other aspects of fantasy over the next few years: Science fiction in Five Million Years To Earth (1967), lesbian vampires… More

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Key Genre Films 1950s

Posted on 10/05/2011 by Nigel Honeybone

Just as the thirties had been a golden age for Gothic horror films, so the fifties would do the same for science fiction. The power of the atom had undeniably hooked the public on the wonders of science. This, coupled with the development of rocket power and the first major UFO sightings, provided a wealth of exploitable material for the film industry. The first film off the launch pad was to have been Destination Moon… More

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Key Genre Films 1940s

Posted on 10/05/2011 by Nigel Honeybone

The forties got off to a cracking start with Paramount’s Technicolor production of Doctor Cyclops (1940) starring Albert Dekker as a crazed scientist who discovers the secret of miniaturisation deep in the South American jungles. The film contains superb special effects sequences which required the construction of gigantic sets and props of everyday articles, including books, chairs, pot-plants and scientific instruments. Universal Studios, while reluctant to invest their horror films with big budgets, also turned… More

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Key Genre Films 1930s

Posted on 01/20/2011 by Nigel Honeybone

In 1924 the first major theatrical production of Bram Stoker’s Dracula opened on stage in England. Starring writer-actor Hamilton Deane, the play was such a success that it was transferred to London’s West End. In 1927 the production opened on Broadway starring a young Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi. Universal pictures purchased the screen rights that same year for US$40,000, intending to make the first ‘talkie’ version of the film with their resident horror kings,… More

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Key Genre Films 1920s

Posted on 01/20/2011 by Nigel Honeybone

The coming of sound to the movies meant a great deal to the development of the fantasy genre. Although science fiction and particularly horror films had been produced since the earliest days of the medium, the addition of dialogue and, more importantly, special effects, greatly enhanced the creative abilities of filmmakers. As early as the turn of last century, Frenchman Georges Méliès had making short ‘trick’ films which had often been about or featured fantastic… More

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Luis Buñuel

Posted on 01/14/2011 by Nigel Honeybone

While the commercial form of genre cinema was being shaped, first in Germany in the twenties and then Hollywood in the thirties, it was receiving a rather different kind of input from several non-commercial intellectual filmmakers in Europe. Yet it was not so very long before the influence of the artistic movement of surrealism was making its way into the commercial cinema as well. Surrealism as a separately definable movement grew up around 1924, evolving… More

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