The Pendulum Swings

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“And then there stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there must be in the grave.”

― Edgar Allan Poe, The Pit and the Pendulum

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The last time I saw Roger Corman's version of The Pit and the Pendulum (1961) was over 16 years ago. I know this because I wrote a capsule review about it here back when I was using this blog as a notepad. It is not my favorite of the Poe films, but on re-watching it this morning I think it's the film that really nailed the Poe films in place as a cultural force. It's also a film that follows a rule of sequels insofar as its first half is exactly the plot of Corman's House of Usher, and some of the specific story beats are also identical. Corman isn't traditionally thought of as an auteur, but at least while he was making his Poe films, he totally was one. Once the film sheds House of Usher, it winds up gathering a number of other trends loose in the genre and creating a unified theory of Gothic filmmaking circa 1960. It's a hugely influential film, not least because it looks to the Italians and one-ups them at their own game. Corman even borrowed Barbara Steele to drive home the point.

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Shakin' All Over

I originally saw Tremors (1990, directed by Ron Underwood) when it was in theaters and then never afterwards. I may have seen bits of it when it was on television, but I don't remember ever sitting down to watch the whole thing in the thirty-five years since. I remember renting the hell out of it when I was running a video store, which was maybe a sign that it should be in the rotation for Halloween. It was popular. It's still popular if the response to me watching it on social media is any indication. One of my friends calls it a masterpiece. Another claims that it's the anti-A24 horror movie. I can see that. The monsters in Tremors are purely the embodiment of a hostile universe, and not some metaphor for trauma or grief or whatever other literary therapy themes art horror likes to weave into their metaphors these days. Moreover, Tremors is antithetical to the middlebrow horror of our own age in which the nuclear family under threat is the ultimate horror bogey. The graboids in Tremors are none of that. They hearken to an older storytelling tradition, when our ancestors gathered around the campfire to hear stories of mighty heroes slaying monsters. Admittedly, we don't really have "mighty heroes" in this movie, but Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward as our two protagonists will do in a pinch. Tremors is old fashioned in another way, too: it's nothing but fun.

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Look Into My Eyes

H (2002, directed by Jong-Hyuk Lee) appeared right at the crest of the K-horror boom of the early aughts, so it found its way into relatively wide distribution around the world when it maybe ought to have remained a local obscurity. I mean, it's fine, I guess, but at a time when Korean films generally were carving out a reputation for impeccable film craft, it seems curiously deficient as a film narrative. It's clunky when it had the wherewithal to take advantage of a burgeoning pool of talent. Its leading actress, for example, was in the K-horror masterpiece, A Tale of Two Sisters, in the same year. That's a comparison it cannot withstand, but there are a few other touchstones before which it also shrinks in magnitude.

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Waiting on the Worms

For some incomprehensible reason, my local Pride celebration was held this year on the first weekend of October. The organizers and the local LGBTQ+ community center partner with our local art house to show queer-themed films in the run-up to the event. This year's slate includes a pioneering lesbian rom com (Saving Face), a key film of the New Queer Cinema of the 1990s (My Own Private Idaho), and the recent trans horror film, T-Blockers (2023, directed by Alice Maio Mackay). This last film kills three birds with one stone for me: I get to support art made by trans people, I get to support my local art house, and I get to add it to the pile of horror movies for this year's spooky season. Of the three, the first two are more important than the last, particularly in the present political moment. T-Blockers is in a tradition of DIY filmmaking that exists at the fringes of the horror genre and on the fringes of cinema itself, a swamp previously inhabited by the likes of John Waters, Russ Meyer, Kenneth Anger, Joe Christ, Maya Deren, Ed Wood, Adam Wingard and Simon Barrett, and The Blair Witch Project. This is not a commercial cinema, though some movies and filmmakers do sometimes escape into a capitalist marketplace. There are so few resources available to filmmakers in this sector that it's a miracle anyone makes any films at all here, so it is with some admiration that I note that Alice Maio Mackay has made six films before she turned 21, all while transitioning. That she is trans is an extra pair of concrete shoes to wear during the process. Maybe things are different in Australia, but the obstacles in her path have defeated more talented directors than her. T-Blockers is a bit of a mess, but it exists outside the demands of what constitutes a well-made movie. That it exists at all is a feat of will that most filmmakers could not muster. It goes to show that if you really want to make a movie, nothing can stop you.

Nota bene: you may find this post overly political. What can I say? I am a trans person living in 2025 America writing about trans art. If you don't want the politics that entails, you might be more interested in my posts on classic Hollywood films. Or engaging somewhere else entirely.

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Not Fade Away

I'm sure I saw The Invisible Man Returns (1940, directed by Joe May) when I was a kid, but I didn't remember much except some of the special effects gags, particularly the scene at the end when the Invisible Man is slowly returning to visibility and all you can see is a net of veins and arteries. I am not fond of the Universal horror movies of the 1940s so I am mildly surprised to be wrong about this film. While it may not be a masterpiece like its predecessor, it's a worthy successor. Its main innovation is a change of genre. This is not exactly a horror movie. Rather, it is a horror-adjacent crime story/whodunnit. It also has director Joe May, one of the titans of German cinema during the silent era who was reduced to helming B-movies for Universal after fleeing to Hollywood in 1933. His career was winding down at the time but he had a couple of fireworks displays left in him for 1940, including The Invisible Man Returns and The House of Seven Gables. Both star Vincent Price.

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