Hallowed be thy Shakes: The 3 Macbeths

Shakespeare's Macbeth is super psychedelic Halloweenish expat hallucidoses. It's got witches! It's got real Hunter S. Thompson-esque fear and loathing. It's the thriller from Scotland's Hillas and there's three great film versions by three titans of cinema - Orson Welles, Roman Polanski, and Akira Kurosawa.A tale of woe, blind ambition, remorse, hallucinations, drinking, wife-on-husband nagging, archetypal psychology (Lady Macbeth is a great paranoid/inner...

Read More

And that's how you play get the guests: SCORE (1974)

The title above is a line from WHO'S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? (1966), delivered by Richard Burton after he demolishes the entire foundation of another couple's marriage (my review here). One thing that's nigh un-demolishable is the WOOLF itself, a great film based on a great Edward Albee play, which proved a reliable blueprint for Jerry Douglas's all-nude 1970s stage play Score, AKA No One's Afraid of Virginia Woolf, (no doubt jumping into the foamy...

Read More

Halloween Fever: Acidemic Horor Writing Collection

As I prepare to pack up my lair and move to horrifying Park Slope, here's a Halloween horror film writing round-up of my online writing from the past seven years or so... Don't be traumatized, just be scared! It's healthier!  Argento Family Reunion: MOTHER OF TEARS(2007) Dir. Dario Argento / Starring: Asia Argento, Udo Kier, Dario Nicoldi"The end of this film, which is basically watching gallons upon gallons of yucky ooze get poured onto Asia...

Read More

DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978) Twilight of the Betamax

Halloween is heating up down at Acidemic. As our mangy staff prepares to move to Park Slope Brooklyn before the zombies reach 14th St., now, more than ever, we need to hold onto the classics. If you had to take only one horror DVD with you to your new pad, leaving the rest to fall into the hands of the undead hordes, would there be any other logical choice than DAWN OF THE DEAD (1978)?An artistic peak in the midnight movie genre, it's the crossroads...

Read More

This Sweet Cesspool: PSYCHOMANIA (1971)

This month Severin releases the seminal entry in the once ubiquitous zombie biker genre, PSYCHOMANIA (1971) a British production in which Hammer's sometime director/writer Don Sharp made sure the cuts matched and the pacing didn't lag. Alas, somewhere along the line the negative of this amazing film was lost, so we'll never get to see this in super duper high... def. On the other hand, who needs it? The story of bikers who commit suicide and return...

Read More