Hammer Films’ The Devil Rides Out is a strange beast: a heady cocktail of stately drawing-room drama, occult chills, and pure pulp lunacy, all handled with a straight face by people who should have known better but somehow pulled it off magnificently. Directed by Hammer’s maestro Terrence Fisher, the film remains one of the studio’s…
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) – Review
There are movies you respect, and then there are movies you quietly resent for making everything else look lazy. The Adventures of Robin Hood sits in that second category, prancing around in glorious Technicolor like it knows it set the template and nobody’s really topped it since. It’s annoyingly perfect, but at least it has…
The Oblong Box (1969) – Review
What happens when you mix Edgar Allan Poe, African voodoo, Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, and a British moral panic about imperial guilt? You get The Oblong Box, a gothic fever dream that starts in a coffin and ends in colonial karma. Directed by Gordon Hessler with enough fog and guilt to fill a Hammer vault,…
Witchfinder General (1968) – Review
Some horror films entertain. Some horror films scare. Witchfinder General just fixes its gaze on you, mutters “you’re doomed,” and slaps you across the face with raw cruelty. Vincent Price, usually the maestro of gothic camp, here gives one of his coldest and most viciously restrained performances. No cobwebby castles or spooky theatrics; just a…
Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood (1922) – Review
1922’s Robin Hood – released as Douglas Fairbanks in Robin Hood – is one of those silent-era spectacles that makes you wonder if early Hollywood briefly lost its collective mind and decided to build an entire medieval city just for fun. Released at the absolute height of the silent swashbuckler craze, the film exists largely…