Re-making a horror classic is always going to be tricky business as it opens you up for hard comparisons, but the most successful way to tackle such a daunting task is to simply take the general premise of the original and then go off in your own wild and different directions, David Cronenberg’s The Fly…
Author: Mike Brooks
Film grad who spends most his time trying to catch up on his "To Watch" pile of movies.
Cat People (1942) – Review
When one thinks of low-budget horror films, such as I Was a Teenage Werewolf, we imagine movies that were designed to fill the neighbourhood Drive-Ins with their cheap thrills and cheaper production value, but in the early 1940s RKO Pictures had an ace up their slave in the form of producer Val Lewton, a man…
The Return of Swamp Thing (1989) – Review
In 1982 director Wes Craven tackled the live-action adaptation of Swamp Thing, a DC comic book created by writer Len Wein and legendary artist Bernie Wrightson back in the 70s, but with a script that had only a modicum of similarities to the source material – a scientist turned into a swamp monster and a…
The Colossus of New York (1958) – Review
The sight of a colossal robot threatening the local populace is not a unique idea in the world of science fiction, Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still being a prime example of this subject matter, but in 1958 producer William Alland tapped director Eugène Lourié to helm a science fiction film that dealt…
Battle of the Worlds (1961) – Review
When it comes to alien invasion films Hollywood has a few good examples under their belt, with George Pal’s adaptation of War of the Worlds and Ray Harryhausen’s Earth vs. the Flying Saucers being particularly good entries, but in 1961 moviegoers were treated to a science fiction adventure film from Italy, one where mankind would…