Repost: Re-Animator (October 15th at the Capitol Theater, part of 12 Hours of Terror)

[RE-ANIMATOR screens Saturday October 15th at the Capitol Theater as part of 12 Hours of Terror. The event starts at 8:00 pm.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft is arguably second only to Edgar Allan Poe as an American master of the short horror tale. His most famous works tended to deal with scientifically plausible (at least to readers at the time) cosmic menaces rather than the supernatural. Even when he dealt with concepts like witchcraft, it was with a scientific explanation involving weird geometry. And when it came to graphic depictions of horror and violence, Lovecraft was the picture of restraint, generally suggesting rather than showing. Even at the time he wrote these tales, between 1917 and 1935, his work was considered tame compared to his more lurid contemporaries. But then there was “Herbert West, Re-Animator”, a gory serial about a medical student who has invented a serum that brings the dead back to life as violent, cannibalistic zombies, all this decades before George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD made the cannibal zombie archetype the norm.

31 Days of Halloween 2015: Motivational Growth (now available on home video)

[31 Days of Halloween 2015: MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH is now available on DVD, Blu Ray, and On Demand.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

*Note: As with last year’s 31 Days of Halloween marathon of horror movie reviews, we’ll be diving deep into the new release section looking for modern horror fare, hoping for the best, but frankly expecting the worst.*

“His name was Kent. He was my television set. He died somewhere around week 67. Odd, I always thought I’d be the first to go.” So says Ian (Adrian DiGiovanni) when we first meet him sitting in the squalor of his apartment in writer/director/editor Don Thacker’s MOTIVATIONAL GROWTH. Distraught over the loss of what was essentially his only friend, Ian tries to kill himself by mixing chemicals in his bathroom, but fails. It seems he’s doomed to continue his miserable existence, but then he discovers a sentient pile of mold has taken up residence on the side of his sink, and The Mold (the voice of Jeffrey Combs) apparently wants to see Ian reach his full potential. Getting there may just involve a few murders, though. Not to mention suckling black liquid from The Mold’s fungusy teat.

31 Days of Halloween 2013: From Beyond (October 19th at the Capitol Theatre)

[FROM BEYOND screens Saturday October 19th at the Capitol Theatre as part of 12 Hours of Terror. Event starts at 8:00 pm and goes until 8:00 am the next morning.]

Review by R.J. Justavick

By 1986, us horror movie fans had thought we’d seen it all. Zombies taking over the world, check! A hideously burned monster that attacks us in our dreams, yep! A deformed killer in a hockey mask killing anyone that gets in his way, sure thing! A machine that stimulates the human pineal gland and turns people into sex crazed brain eaters while also opening up a dimension to another world full of terrible, nasty creatures, oh sure we...wait, what?

Crazy machines! Goopy, gross monsters! A pretty lady in dominatrix gear! FROM BEYOND has it all! But the best thing this gem has going for it is its director, Stuart Gordon. Gordon, who had proved his abilities to deliver on what horror fans craved with the gloriously gory RE-ANIMATOR the year before, again takes a story from the great horror author H.P. Lovecraft as his inspiration for this film.

31 Days of Halloween 2013: Re-Animator (October 9th at the People's Temple)

[RE-ANIMATOR screens Wedneaday October 9th at 7:00 pm at the People's Temple.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

Horror writer H.P. Lovecraft is arguably second only to Edgar Allan Poe as an American master of the short horror tale. His most famous works tended to deal with scientifically plausible (at least to readers at the time) cosmic menaces rather than the supernatural. Even when he dealt with concepts like witchcraft, it was with a scientific explanation involving weird geometry. And when it came to graphic depictions of horror and violence, Lovecraft was the picture of restraint, generally suggesting rather than showing. Even at the time he wrote these tales, between 1917 and 1935, his work was considered tame compared to his more lurid contemporaries. But then there was “Herbert West, Re-Animator”, a gory serial about a medical student who has invented a serum that brings the dead back to life as violent, cannibalistic zombies, all this decades before George Romero's NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD made the cannibal zombie archetype the norm.