It was a real privilege working on this video for Rue Morgue because I loooooove me some Return of the Living Dead. The best zombie movie of all time. You can fight me on that. BRAINS!

I’m up to my old tricks again, collaborating with Rue Morgue magazine on a video adaptation of one of their classic articles. Here’s star Julie Adams talking about working on the classic horror film Creature From the Black Lagoon!

Another one from the vaults! On this episode of the Rue Morgue Archives, we go back to 2011 for an interview with director Tom Holland about his film Fright Night. Is Jerry Dandrige cinema’s sexiest vampire? You be the judge.

I’m back with another video from the Rue Morgue Archives! This one focuses on part of a massive write-up for Psycho‘s 50th birthday, where the late, great Wes Craven talks about why he loves Hitchcock’s slasher masterpiece.

The Rue Morgue Archives return with another one from the vaults: an interview with Bob Clark about his Night of the Living Dead homage Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things!

Craig R. Baxley-directed Stone Cold (1991) is a really fun action B-movie surprise starring ’80s football star Brian Bosworth as Joe Huff, an undercover cop who helms a white supremacist/neo-Nazi biker gang helmed by Chains (Lance Henriksen) and Ice (William Forsythe). I think the goal here was to make him the next Sly or Schwarzenegger at a time when these macho guys were very bankable; unfortunately, Bosworth cannot act and lacks the charisma that made his contemporaries so iconic, but he’s still really cool in the role. Perhaps best of all, his character owns a pet Nile monitor lizard (definitely DO NOT feed it what Joe does lol), although his ’90s mullet is pretty dated and looks a bit skunky.

This movie is ridiculous from start to finish but wildly entertaining, featuring lots of over-the-top, spontaneous explosions, bad acting, cool stunts, and a ridiculous plot. The climax of the film involves the biker gang trying to take over the Mississippi Capitol, which felt disturbingly similar to the Capitol Hill riots/insurrection in early 2021. Also, I felt disconnected from many of the biker gang members, mostly because of their beliefs. I know it’s just a B-movie, but perhaps the film could have done more to condemn or interrogate the fascism in the gang – as it is, I can’t really sympathize with a character like Gut, even though he is presented as more sympathetic. I just wasn’t sure how to feel.

Henriksen and Forsythe are great as gang members, however, and no one holds back with the violence or action in this one. This was not the big break that Bosworth was hoping for; in fact, he didn’t have much of a film career after this, but it is incredibly watchable and outrageously violent. I was also really impressed that it looks like they still had the budget to use a real Huey helicopter for the climax of the film, even though it has so many B-movie qualities. Apparently Bosworth rides motorcycles and did all of his stunts for this too, which is pretty cool. I think Stone Cold is one of the great unsung ’90s movie treasures, and you’ll get hooked in from literally the first five seconds of the movie (that’s how action-packed it is!).

I’ve made another video for Rue Morgue magazine – this time adapting an interview that they conducted with Christopher Lee in 2010, from their 100th issue!

I recently began editing videos for Rue Morgue Magazine’s YouTube channel! If you’re not familiar, Rue Morgue is a magazine dedicated to the horror genre in movies and culture, and the series I’m working on adapts articles from back issues into video essays. This is my first one: an interview with John Waters!

I was inspired to make this graphic while watching this year’s Oscar nominees. Maybe you’ll find it helpful!

I recently asked a (white) kiwi friend of mine recently about his thoughts on Lee Tamahori’s riveting 1994 drama masterpiece Once Were Warriors (based on the book by Alan Duff and referring to the warrior nature of the Māori people), and he said it was “hard-wired to New Zealand DNA,” which was a fascinating response since, as a Canadian, I hadn’t heard much of it until now. It’s a brutal watch, and not one that you’ll soon forget, telling the story of a working-class urban Māori family who begin to fall apart after the patriarch Jake loses his job. Consequently, his behaviour spirals into domestic abuse (physical and verbal), alcoholism, and worse. Indeed, Jake is a pressure cooker of rage and fury, as we see not only in the beatdowns in his local dive bar, but also at home when his wife Beth resists him (violence as a means of asserting control). Jake also harbours a subconscious resentment of his wife’s status as a princess in the rural Māori community (she moved into town to be with her husband, which was the first mistake), and while it is easier to blame most of the atrocities on Jake’s toxicity, I think the real culprit is colonialism. It is colonialism that has displaced people from their land and forced them to restructure family hierarchies (the patriarchal figure is not a traditional one in Māori culture apparently).

The acting in this film is stellar, particularly between husband and wife (Temuera Morrison and Rena Owen) – what starts out as a loving, romantic interaction between them in the kitchen switches mercurially to a burst of verbal abuse, and how it incrementally gets worse – little things cause him to explode with rage and violence. These scenes were especially hard to watch, but I think they realistically show how domestic violence, and how women can get trapped in abusive relationships – it is a gradual and incrementally more disturbing pattern that ultimately controls, traps, and manipulates. Naturally, Jake isn’t a likable character, but the viewer does care about him. While he is integral to the story, the film also deals with escaping from or confronting the poison destroying the family. The film also shows the impact of violence and alcoholism among the family: Nig, the eldest son, turns to a violent gang life as a means of avoiding his family; Boogie is a juvenile deliquent who is sent to a borstal; and perhaps most notably Grace, who devastatingly suffers the worst, takes on a maternal role among the younger children in the absence and chaos of the family life, and shows a budding creative side. The latter half of the film also deals with pedophilia, rape, and suicide in a relatively short period of time, although it is not trivialized, but rather shown quite disturbingly and realistically – the victim turns to suicide because they are rejected from all available support groups and finally humiliated by the ones who they trust and love most. I was shocked how trivialized and normalized violence becomes within this culture, particularly among Jake’s “friends” – it is so commonplace that few if any criticize it or even show shock.

Grace (Mamaengaroa Kerr-Bell – sadly her final role!) was the highlight for me, and perhaps the greatest victim of the film, although everyone suffers to some extent (I still think about the kid who lives in the wrecked car under the bridge), but everything we see has purpose to illustrate the devastating long-terrm and lasting effects of colonialism and indeed postcolonial life. All of the characters, even the most despicable and heinous ones, give something to this movie and its sense of development. Duff’s novels continue Jake’s story and show his redemption. I’d like to read his novels, but I have trouble sympathizing or caring for someone who commits so much irrevocable harm and damage. This film is an absolute eye-opener to the darker side of postcolonial Māori urban life, and more broadly how domestic violence and abuse can happen, as well as the destructive effects of alcoholism and poverty. I think it is the best New Zealand film I’ve seen so far, and I’m keen to watch the sequel What Becomes of the Broken Hearted? once my soul is prepared.