"This is the way the world ends..."

The Stephen King cycle has turned hot once again. With the enormous success of the two-part It feature at the box office, Stephen King is hitting the kind of popularity he had back in the 1980's and 1990's, when it seemed anything he put his name to had to be made into a feature film or some other grand project. The trend led to mixed results. Many of the films couldn't live up to the visceral detail that has become King's trademark. To do this, his books have taken on a large page count that has been nearly impossible to fit into a 2-hour feature film window. So there were attempts to expand that reach and use his material for the mini-series format. That's the way It was handled in those days. But there are limitations in network television, particularly 30 years ago, that had no chance of capturing the imagination of a writer with such brutal imagery. The lesson has taken hold. It was released as two films. But back in the day, it appears that even seven hours couldn't quite deliver a quality version of The Stand. Even with a brilliant cast and a script written by the horror master himself, the mini-series fell short of both expectations and the test of time.

"It's alive!"

After nearly 90 years the Universal horror cycle stands as one of the most enduring collection of horror movies today. Their influence on modern horror is unmistakable. There have been literally thousands of incarnations of Dracula, The Wolf Man and Frankenstein's Monster, but the first image that comes to your mind will always be the nightmare creations of those Universal films. Studio head Carl Laemmle, Jr. was trying to break away from his father's control and create a studio culture of his own. The results would start in 1931 when an unknown Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi jumped from the stage to the screen in Dracula, directed by Tod Browning. Laemmle's niece, Carla Laemmle, is the girl in the coach headed for Borgo Pass as the film opens to the musical strains from Swan Lake. She is reading a travel brochure about vampires and thus speaks the very first lines ever spoken in a horror film in the era of sound. Lugosi was mesmerizing, and the film was a hit. There was a depression on, but that didn't stop crowds from lining up around theater blocks to be hypnotized by Lugosi's Dracula.

"He's dangerous, amoral, he pathologically flaunts authority. He's reckless to the point of suicidal. But all of this ... everything we've done. None of it would have been possible if it weren't for him." 

Him, of course is James Spader as the enigmatic Raymond "Red" Reddington. The show is NBC's breakout hit The Blacklist, created by first-time show-runner Jon Bokenkamp. Bokenkamp is truly a newcomer to the business. He has literally only a couple of very minor writing credits to his name. Perhaps that's why The Blacklist is able to contain quite a few of the cliché elements running through television today and still feel like one of the freshest shows in a long while. Or maybe it's really Spader

“They are coming to get you, Barbara.” 

Step aside, Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Psycho; there’s a new most useless remake (of all time) in town. Seriously, to whoever is responsible for getting this film green-lit, I seriously hate you and all that you’ve done to George A. Romero’s classic and not to mention groundbreaking film. The fact that his name isn’t even in the credits on the Blu-ray is equally a blessing and a low blow. George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead is pretty well known for being the first film to depict zombies as undead, flesh-eating beings and literally kick-started its own subgenre in horror. It’s also perhaps known for one of the biggest blunders involving copyright protection, which resulted in Romero losing out on millions and the distributors pocketing most of the financial gains the film had. In 1990, Tom Savini would go on to remake the film, but this time shoot the film in color and also update it with new and improved special effects.