The Cultural Gutter

geek chic with mad technique

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." -- Oscar Wilde

The Monster in Me

frankenstein

I’ve been spending a portion of my wee small hours (normally spent standing under a solitary street lamp on a lonely street, staring in melancholy reverie at my cigarette) revisiting old horror films. As a budding cult film obsessive, I cut my teeth on the horror films of cinema’s early decades. In the days before [...]

A Warning to the faint of heart
And eight year olds

When I was in grade two, my school thought it’d be a great Halloween activity to have a movie screening of old horror films. They showed us the 1931 adaptations of Dracula and Frankenstein, the original 1932 The Mummy, and the 1954 3-D classic, The Creature from the Black Lagoon. At age eight I had [...]

World War I and Ulmer’s The Black Cat

“Did we not both die here in Marmorus 15 years ago? Are we any the less victims of the war than those whose bodies were torn asunder? Are we not both the living dead?” The Nitrate Diva writes about World War I and Edgar Ulmer’s 1934 film, The Black Cat, starring Bela Lugosi and Boris [...]

It’s The Most Horrible Time of the Year!

It’s the most horrible time of the year! Lovecraft Season! Learn ehow to summon a shoggoth, the horrible sanity-blasting truth of your pitiful existence and salve the madness reading about The Crimson Cult.

A Century of Cinematic Horror

Decade by decade, the Movie Morlocks look at 100 years of cinematic horror, starting with the 1910 silent, Frankenstein.

Universal’s Years of Terror and Longing!

Beware the stalking half-human half beast!  Cursed with the thirst for human blood, unconscionable hubris,  and demanding a mate, the Monster Legacy site comes to life and walks among us! (as part of promotion for The Wolf Man remake). Thrills! Shock! Suspense!

At The 23-Screen Stadium-Seating Nacho-Serving Cineplex Of Madness

Uzumaki is Lovecraftian cinema at its haircurling best.

Mysterious creatures. Bizarre science. A dark, snowbound fortress. The occult. Tentacled, crustacean-inspired monsters. Hellish apocalypse. Primordial evil. Madness. Hellboy, the well-received latest film from neo-post-schlock auteur Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, The Devil’s Backbone, Blade II), offers these and other delights, all of which are common motifs in the work of that impossibly influential champion of [...]

  • Of Note Elsewhere

    This tumblr collects many bad jokes kids have invented.

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    “It’s easier to tell the same stories everyone else does. There’s no particular shame in it.

    It’s just that it’s lazy, which is just about the worst possible thing a spec fic writer can be.

    Oh, and it’s not true.”

    Kameron Hurley writes about lazy writing, cannibal llamas, female soldiers, and women here. (Thanks, James!)

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    Patton Oswalt’s multi-franchise super-movie described in his Star Wars filibuster from Parks and Recreation, animated.

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    Corrigan Vaughan writes an open letter to “Fans of Geek Things“: “I appreciate that you think I have a nice rack and that some of you even find my friends and I to be pretty. That’s very kind. I’m not, however, super in love with the fact that having a rack at all seems to preclude me from being considered a ‘real’ fan.”

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    The Black Girl Nerds Podcast discusses Black girls and women in the Heavy Metal industry with author and journalist Laina Dawes and Ursula “She-Wolf” Parson from Hear Evil News.

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    The Hollywood Reporter interviews director Takashi Miike about his new film, Shield of Straw: ” In Japan now, films are very safe. When I was young and went to old cinemas, they had a distinctive feel, an adult smell about them. As you got in your seat and the lights went down, there was a feeling of excitement: What if the film is scarier than I thought it’s going to be? You’re taken into that world. Nowadays, you can sit in the theater and know it’s going to be safe. That’s good for business, but not for filmmaking.”

    ~

  • The Book!

    From ETC Press

  • Spilling into Twitter

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