But Call Me Betsy

 Okay, so last weekend, Dan's mom was in town. She loves movies, and there are many TV shows that we both enjoy--mostly mysteries on PBS like Father Brown or Broadchurch . I really wanted to see Nope but I knew that was a bridge too far for her, so we settled on Where the Crawdads Sing . I read a few reviews of the movie and the consensus was that it was pretty bad. I'd also read the book and found it to be highly implausible. I figured I wouldn't like the movie. I didn't. I didn't hate it either, but in thinking about the lens we've been using in our horror class, there were four distinct places where the film failed miserably. 1 and 2.  Gender and Physicality: the main character is a Kya, a young girl who lives in the swamp regions of North Carolina. Her entire family (mom, three sibilings, and dad) decide to just leave her behind. The mom vanishes first, and never reappears. The siblings split one at a time and also never return or even send a letter. Dad, t...

 Okay, everyone, I switched my movie to the 2021 version of Candyman , so that I could explore more of the themes of race in horror films. For preparation, I'm going to watch Horror Noire: A History of Black Horror, a documentary based on a book by the same name.  I think that will provide a good context in addition to the readings we're doing and some other outside sources. Another good piece I found to read is from The New York Times , " How Black Horror Became America's Most Powerful Cinematic Genre ," by Gabrielle Bellot. This article should be useful because it discuss Candyman, as well as some other films we've viewed so far in this class. I will go back to the podcast list I posted as well to see if any of them review Candyman .  I'm particularly drawn to this movie because it's set in the Cabrini-Green housing projects on the southside of Chicago. I lived in Chicago for five years in my early twenties. My section of town was on the Northside ne...

Or should that be "Zombies and I" or "I Zombie" (a show I will never watch)? I've always been a bit of a scaredy cat with horror films. I think this comes from my mom taking me to see an R-rated movie when I was too young---I can't remember exactly what it was, but there was a scene where a guy swallowed a bit of film and then another guy cut it out of him. I'll Google it later.   My other earliest memory is seeing a horror movie on TV with Karen Black. I've since learned it's called The Trilogy of Terror (1975)   and there were three stories, but the one I remember is this lady getting a wooden doll from another country, and it comes alive and chases her through the house and then inhabits her body. I distinctly remember that she gets it into the oven, but it pops out. The last scene is a possessed KB sitting waiting with a butcher knife, her teeth jagged like the doll's. In looking at that film now, it's clear that the entire thing is ...

Hi, thinking about how other people in this class I'm taking may find info about their related horror movies through podcasts, so I'm going to post links to podcasts that discuss horror films and books.  FACULTY OF HORROR : a podcast that allows you to use the index to search for episodes about dozens of movies (293 to be exact). While I couldn't find Teeth or Scream 4 , there is a podcast focused on Interview with the Vampire and Get Out . The podcast updates every couple of weeks and hosts are based in Toronto.  THE BLOODLUST: Proclaimed as the a podcast by "four classy broad and one token dude," this podcast looks at recent movies reviewing them "artfully and sarcsastically. " Their latest review is about the movie Dashcam .  STRAIGHT CHILLING : Based out of Jacksonville, FL this podcast is by a group of freiends who meet every week and talk about movies and shows including season four of Stranger Things , The Black Phone starring Ethan Hawke, and P...

In this class, we first saw Medusa in Teeth , as a quick flash in one of the movies that was being watched. Very meta. The legend of Medusa is that she has a head of live snakes and that if you look at her, you will turn to stone.  No one can forget the lightning streaked bride of Frankenstein in the movie with the same name, or her comic counterpart from the Mel Brooks movie, Young Frankenstein.  I'm also thinking about women in films who were maybe read as atypical bad asses, like Charlize Theron in Mad Max (she was the futuristic heroine) but also in Monster (she was the main character who murdered, but we are sympathetic to her because we see she's had a very difficult childhood and life).  

I haven't yet watched Raw , the 2016 horror film about a female veterninarian turned cannibal. I am going to listen to a podcast, despite the spoilers that are likely to come. You can listen to it too here: In this post, I will lay out some of the arguments they make about reading this film through a queer or feminist lens. The director, Julia Ducournau, calls this the movie a "coming of age film with fantastic elements," but the podcast creators see it as a body horror film about women consuming men and categorize it as more of a feminist movie.   The guest was film critic, Dede Crimmins . She first points out how this is a film where some critics say that the characters are unlikable. Likeability is often a topic of fiction writing--how it is often a critique of female characters in a way that it's not for male characters. Female characters who do not fit the mode of maternal, or giving, or caring--or whatever the general stereotypes as that females are "suppos...