Roderick Heath

Rewatch: Freddie Francis's The Creeping Flesh. Francis's best film and one of the most original, interesting, undervalued works of UK horror. Kicks the Victorian Era sensibility in the balls and keeps kicking.

Wow. If only so many turned up on election day.

Rewatch: Woody Allen's Love and Death. "Wheat..."

Shivers (1975) / The Brood (1979) . Alternate titles for Shivers: They Came From Within ; The Parasite Murders ; Frissons Director / Screenwriter: David Cronenberg By Roderick Heath Many directors have made great Horror movies. Som…

...Vale Samantha Eggar. In memoriam, my look at her in her most kindly and maternal screen role, David Cronenberg's The Brood:
filmfreedonia.com/2022/10/08/s...

Strong candidate for greatest horror film. Grand narratives of nation, history, war, identity, all distilled to a situation of perfect existential dread. The protective and destructive impulses, inseparable, making monsters. Fight Death all your days, knowing you know nothing.

Rewatch:

YouTube video by KissVEVO Kiss - I Was Made For Lovin' You

...Vale Ace Frehley. Forgive the basic choice of song here, but I love the way his solo kicks in and cooks after the chugga-chugga bass part. Rock alchemy.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhIs...

I'd probably rearrange this some now but it's still basically right.

List: The 150 Greatest Horror Films By popular request - yes, there were a couple of you - this is my personal list of the greatest horror films. Unlike my science fictio...

The Top 150 Horror Films list I did on This Island Rod in 2016. thisislandrod.blogspot.com/2016/08/list...

super-duper-ultra-maxi-secret

He was fine but he was no Gaiseric.

I clicked on that Rolling Stone Top 250 Songs since 2000 list and the first song I saw on it was Train's Drops of Jupiter and I closed it again.

There needs to be a word for describing when various fringe concepts and concerns leave the petri dish of niche online communities and gain Frankensteinian life in the internet beyond...

Viewing: Tibor Takacs' I, Madman. Too cramped in budget to be the exercise in style it wants and indecisive in story, but still an enjoyable, occasionally striking meta-horror-noir. Jenny Wright a winning lead.

I've always found The Seven-Per-Cent Solution one incredibly gorgeous.

...Vale Drew Struzan, THE Hollywood poster artist to a generation. This one of his worked on too few people, alas, but it worked on me as a lad when I saw it on a VHS box.

Rewatch:

I've gone back to using my old iPod recently because I realised that combining one of the things that's most fun and relaxing - playing music - with one of the major sources of anxiety - a phone - was a profoundly bad thing to do.

Hey, you gotta retain brand recognition.

You still look a little maniac. Just a little.

Rewatch:

Reds (1981) . . Director/Coscreenwriter: Warren Beatty By Roderick Heath “No, I haven’t seen Commie Dearest,” filmmaker Paul Morrissey quipped when asked if he had seen Warren Beatty’s Reds. “The cult of the p…

...and Warren Beatty's Reds:
filmfreedonia.com/2013/07/28/r...

The Godfather (1972) / The Godfather Part II (1974) / The Godfather Part III (1990) . Director: Francis Ford Coppola Screenwriters: Francis Ford Coppola, Mario Puzo, Robert Towne (uncredited) By Roderick Heath Mario Puzo was a journalist and sometime novelist who, frustrated by hi…

...Vale the illustrious Diane Keaton, a hard one to take in part because she always seemed eternally vital. In memoriam, my essays on Francis Coppola's The Godfather trilogy...
filmfreedonia.com/2019/02/23/t...

We have successfully created the desert and called it peace...

I had a similar experience with the Night Gallery pilot a few days ago. They talk about modern TV being more cinematic but that pilot was more genuinely cinematic than most modern movies.

Viewing: Kenneth Branagh's All Is True. Interesting, well-acted but fidgety attempt at a portrait of an aging bard, alternately soap opera-ish, sitcomy, and awkwardly pseudo-modern. Ben Elton, you sir are no Will Shakespeare.

I ... don't think that's a hot take. Actually a dead-on take.

Viewing: Steve Gordon's Arthur. Sitcom direction of a slightly refurbished 30s screwball script, but it does have charm and some laughs.

I'm glad joining ICE is finally giving life structure and career prospects to every weapon-wielding psychopath in the US, anyway.

2/2 ...just a dude who only needs a couple of good whacks from the hero to go down. The swirling leaves of autumnal England, stage curtains of romance and veils of death, posh manse and mud pit. Vale Norman Eshley.