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In Wes Craven’s “Scream” — not quite the definitive horror movie but certainly the definitive account of horror fandom — final girl Sidney famously responds to the question of whether she likes scary movies with a resounding no. “What’s the point? They’re all the same,” she says through the phone to the movie’s slasher. “Some stupid killer stalking some big-breasted girl who can’t act who is always running up the stairs when she should be running out the front door.”

Her complaint acts as a clever joke about the stale state of the mainstream slasher genre that Craven was riffing on (and unintentionally revived) through his tongue-in-cheek meta spin. But it’s also a nod toward the less-than-flattering viewpoint that gatekeepers and non-horror aficionados have toward the genre, as a playground for cheap and easy B-movies and formulaic jump scares.

Anyone who dives into the history of...

The new genre retrospective book from author Adrian Roe, Seasonal Screams: A History of Holiday Horror will release just in time for Halloween (literally) on October 31, 2024.

The book features exclusive cover artwork by Graham Humphreys, which you’ll find below.

Seasonal Screams: A History of Holiday Horror will take you on a terrifying journey through your favorite seasons, with contributors and interviewees including Neil Marshall, Ellie Cornell, Jeff Lieberman, Linnea Quigley, Daniel Stamm, Mellissa Anderson and more.

The press release previews, “Whether it’s the dry autumnal leaves that shatter under your feet with every step during Halloween, or the cold crisp snow turning the world white over Christmas, there has always been a special relationship with film and the changing seasons. Or more specifically, with the public holidays that are celebrated during these traditional and familiar dates marked by default on our calendars. To some, these moments represent something far more profound,...

For over 25 years, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival called the Castro Theatre home. With the iconic theater now closed for a year-plus-long renovation, Sfsff has relocated to the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, located in a beautiful park created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition at the north edge of the Presidio. The auditorium, primarily a performance space, seats nearly a thousand and features a spacious foyer where passholders could visit and relax between shows (particularly useful on chilly weekends).

Sfsff prides itself on mixing landmark productions and audience favorites with rediscoveries, revelations, and rarities, often recently uncovered and restored. And for its 27th edition this year, the festival presented 20 features and six short films over five days, all with live musical scores by some of the finest silent film accompanists in the world.

The opening night film, Albert Parker’s 1926 swashbuckler The Black Pirate, certainly qualifies as both landmark and favorite.

Movies That Made Me veteran guest and screenwriter Dan Waters discusses his favorite year of cinema (1989) with Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Love At First Bite (1979)

Hudson Hawk (1991)

Demolition Man (1993)

Heathers (1989)

Warlock (1989)

The Matrix (1999)

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Barry Lyndon (1975)

Jaws (1975)

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Nashville (1975)

Born On The Fourth Of July (1989)

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Driving Miss Daisy (1989)

Field Of Dreams (1989)

My Left Foot (1989)

Crimes And Misdemeanors (1989)

Do The Right Thing (1989)

Drugstore Cowboy (1989)

Sex Lies And Videotape (1989)

Easy Rider (1969)

Midnight Cowboy (1969)

The Wild Bunch (1969)

Apocalypse Now (1979)

All That Jazz (1979)

Hair (1979)

Alien (1979)

Fight Club (1999)

Office Space (1999)

Magnolia (1999)

The Sixth Sense (1999)

The Blair Witch Project (1999)

American Pie (1999)

The Iron Giant (1999)

All About My Mother (1999)

Being John Malkovich (1999)

The Breakfast Club (1985)

Pretty In Pink (1986)

Dr. Strangelove (1964)

Say Anything… (1989)

Miracle Mile (1989)

True Love (1989)

Powwow Highway (1989)

Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

Southside With You...

Lock the doors. Turn on the lights. Check under the bed. Crank up the volume. It’s time for another Halloween Parade!

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Click here, and be sure to indicate The Movies That Made Me in the note section so Josh can finally achieve his dream of showing Mandy to his wife!

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Scream Blacula Scream (1973)

Mandy (2018)

Carnival of Souls (1962) – Mary Lambert’s trailer commentary

Night Tide (1961) – Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

A Bucket Of Blood (1959) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s DVD review, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Dementia 13 (1963) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Region B Blu-ray review, Glenn Erickson’s director’s cut Blu-ray review

The Godfather (1972) – Ernest Dickerson’s trailer commentary, Randy Fuller’s wine pairings

The Godfather Part II (1974) – Katt Shea’s trailer commentary

The Conversation (1974) – Josh Olson...

The Phantom Carriage

If you ask someone to name a Swedish film, there's a high likelihood that Ingmar Bergman and, particularly, the subject of Death and chess may come up but Sweden's cinematic output runs wide and deep. Early pioneering studio Svenska Biografteatern helped the country to get a foothold on the international stage and notable early films include Victor Sjöström's 1921 silent horror The Phantom Carriage. The country proved that it can still make the global headlines earlier this year when Gothenburg Film Festival screened its entire 60-movie programme in a lighthouse for a competition winner - Swedish nurse Lisa Enroth, who was one of 12,000 entrants worldwide.

So this week we're taking a break from themes for our Streaming Spotlight to shine a light on a handful of highlights from Swedish cinema, including some well-known names...

Nent Group’s Swedish label Brain Academy is plotting two major films from A-list writing-directing teams. The first, “The World Council of Magic,” is helmed by “The Most Beautiful Boy in the World”’s Kristian Petri, based on a screenplay by genre-bending author John Ajvide Lindqvist(”Border,” “Let the Right One In”).

”The World Council of Magic” is my first script not based on one of my stories,” said Lindqvist, often dubbed the Stephen King of Sweden. The film deals with a group of elderly magicians of the practical kind. In their hungry youth, they searched for the secret behind actual magic. Now, when they’re in their seventies, one of them gets the long-awaited revelation that allows him to manipulate the material world with his mind,

“Magic, real magic! But like with all great powers, it comes at a high – and bloody – price” said Lindqvist. “Despite their own lack of powers,...

You can tell that the Halloween season is getting closer, between various retailers already donning their shelves with tons of decorations, the days are getting shorter, and Turner Classic Movies has debuted their October schedule online, which features an abundance of genre awesomeness that will be hitting airwaves this fall. Without a doubt, TCM is one of the best resources for classic film, so for those of you looking to broaden your horizons this Halloween, definitely check out their calendar and set those DVRs.

Also, TCM has designated Godzilla as their “Monster of the Month” for October, so look for a bunch of classic films featuring the “King of the Monsters” and other beloved Kaiju throughout October as well.

**All Listings are in Est.**

Friday, September 27th

3:15pm – The Mummy’s Shroud

6:30pm – The Mummy (1959)

Saturday, September 28th

2:00am – Belladonna of Sadness

3:30am – House (1977)

Sunday, September...

Margarethe von Trotta on Olivier Assayas, Stig Björkman and Ingmar Bergman: "They went in 1990 for five days to Stockholm to make a big interview with Bergman for Cahiers du Cinéma ..." Photo: Anne-Katrin Titze

In the second half of my conversation on Searching For Ingmar Bergman with Margarethe von Trotta, we discuss Daniel Bergman and his father, Victor Sjöström's The Phantom Carriage, Winter Light and Ingrid Thulin, Ruben Östlund filming Margarethe, Jean-Claude Carrière, Fanny and Alexander, Cries And Whispers, Marianne & Juliane.

The connections to Olivier Assayas and the supernatural in Personal Shopper (see the impressive Hilma af Klint: Paintings for the Future exhibition currently on view at the Guggenheim Museum in New York), Stig Björkman, Wild Strawberries and Alfonso Cuarón's Roma appeared.

Liv Ullmann with Margarethe von Trotta in Searching For Ingmar Bergman

Margarethe von Trotta has had a remarkable career working with her longtime cinematographer Franz Rath...

Classic horror film lovers get excited, as Turner Classic Movies just unveiled its movie lineup for the Halloween season. I’d run through and list all the classics that will be popping up throughout the month, but there’s just too many to list. This is Turner Classic Movies after all. Check out the full lineup below, and let us know if you’re excited for any of these! (via Bloody Disgusting)

Wednesday October 3, 2018

8:00 Pm The Unknown (1927) Dir: Tod Browning

9:00 Pm The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Dir: Rupert Julian

10:45 Pm The Monster (1925) Dir: Roland West

Thursday October 4, 2018

12:30 Am The Penalty (1920) Dir: Wallace Worsley

2:15 Am The Unholy Three (1925) Dir: Tod Browning.

4:00 Am He Who Gets Slapped (1924) Dir: Victor Seastrom

Saturday October 6, 2018

2:00 Am Deadly Friend (1986) Dir: Wes Craven

3:45 Am Demon Seed (1977) Dir. Donald Cammell

Sunday October 7, 2018

8:00 Pm The Mummy’s Hand (1940) Dir: Christy...

The ’20s were, for all intents and purposes, the birth of the feature-length horror film. While there had been some dabbling in the genre prior, (The Student of Prague, The Avenging Conscience, The Queen of Spades) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) changed everything. In its wake came Nosferatu, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Unknown, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and The Phantom of the Opera, among others, irreversibly changing the course of genre history. But of this early wave of horror, two stand movies in particular stand out: the first two Swedish horror films.

Released back to back in 1921, The Phantom Carriage was one of the most audacious films of its day. Based on Selma Lagerlöf’s classic novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!, The Phantom Carriage is a supernatural morality play about David Holm (played by director Victor Sjöström), a lonely, miserable drunk spending New Year’s Eve...

Now that our new house is settling, we wanted to bring back our weekly DVD & Blu-Ray Releases posts. We are calling this weekly post “Home Invasion”. If you plan on purchasing these items via Amazon, all you need to do is click on the buttons provided or on the artwork and not only do you get the same price you normally would with Amazon, but you help us out a little bit as well – which is all we ask because this list does take some time to put together.

All Descriptions are from Amazon.com unless otherwise noted. We have excluded the Netflix code on this particular post. This is due to all of the changes with Netflix and their DVD mailing program. If you want us to include the code in future Home Invasion posts, where you just click a button to add it to your queue, leave us a comment below.

Criterion will release The Phantom Carriage (or Körkarlen in its native Swedish), the 1920 silent film by the acknowledged father of Swedish cinema, Victor Sjöström, on Blu-ray and DVD on Sept. 27.

Death's chariot awaits at the stroke of midnight in The Phantom Carriage.

Mixing drama, fantasy and horror, the movie concerns an abusive alcoholic (portrayed by Sjöström himself) who takes to heart a legend that claims that the last person to die on New Year’s Eve before the clock strikes twelve is doomed to take the reins of Death’s chariot and work to collect fresh souls for the next year.

Based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, the innovative silent classic is filled with groundbreaking-for-their-time special effects. It’s also reportedly the film that inspired Ingmar Bergman to get into the business of making movies (which worked out pretty well for him).

Featuring a new digital...

Mauritz Stiller's silent movie masterpiece Erotikon – one of David Thomson's "10 lost works of genius" (The films that time forgot, Film & Music, 20 August) – has been beautifully restored by the Swedish Film Institute in Stockholm as part of a handsome box set of recently restored films from Sweden's "golden years" of cinema (1917-24). These include two more Stiller masterworks, Gösta Berlings Saga and Herr Arnes Pengar, and two directed by Ingmar Bergman's mentor, Victor Sjöström – Terje Vigen and The Phantom Carriage – who, like Stiller (says Thomson), "needs to be recovered". In fact, Sjöström enjoyed a two-month retrospective of his work at the National Film Theatre (BFI Southbank) in 2004. Another "lost" Stiller film, the Gunnar Hedes Saga, will play at the BFI London Film Festival in October. The recovery of these two geniuses of cinema is well under way – indeed, they never really vanished.

Clyde Jeavons

Archive consultant, London Film Festival

World cinemaSweden

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