SHADOWPLAY (Free subscription) | 11/30/2009
LA PHRENOLOGIE BURLESQUE — that is the name of the nameless Georges Méliès film illustrated in Denis Gifford’s monster movie book! I owe this information to two people: (1) Shadowplayer Douglas Noble, an excellent cartoonist as well as a cinephile, recognized the image as one that had been used by artist/filmmaker Dave McKean (MIRRORMASK) as the basis for [...]...
SHADOWPLAY (Free subscription) | 11/27/2009
Yes, the one whose back is being licked by the giant skull? Denis Gifford includes this image in his seminal big green book A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, but does not tell us what film it’s from. He does say it’s a Georges Melies. And some evidence of that can be gleaned by the style, [...]
SHADOWPLAY (Free subscription) | 11/23/2009
That’s “cave” in the Latin sense, of course, meaning “beware.” Beware of TROG, one of the worst films I’ve yet sat through as part of my demented quest to experience every morsel of terror and ennui suggested by the photo-illustrations within Denis Gifford’s A Pictorial History of Horror Movies. TROG it was, of course, that inspired [...]
SHADOWPLAY (Free subscription) | 11/20/2009
A quick update on my See Reptilicus and Die mission — a mission almost as old as Hitchcock Year and likely to run and run. I’m trying to view every film illustrated in Denis Gifford’s A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, a prodigiously visual tome that haunted my childhood like a big green flapping bat. [...]
SHADOWPLAY (Free subscription) | 11/01/2009
I despaired of ever finding THE MONKEY TALKS, an uber-obscure silent Raoul Walsh caper, but find it I had to do, for it features in a saucy still in Denis Gifford’s transeminal A Pictorial History of Horror Movies, and I am sworn — sworn! — to see every film illustrated therein. In the movie, the talking [...]
