Friday, March 29, 2024

Movie Reviews

Reviews of primarily American movies featuring actors and actresses of Black / African-American descent in the horror-movie, slasher, gore, supernatural and related spooky film genres.

Blacula horror movie poster
Blacula has become synonymous with black horror -- and rightly so -- but beyond being a seminal film that kickstarted the modern concept of black horror, it was also one of the earliest and most successful movies in the influential "Blaxploitation" era of cinema, propelling a movement that satiated...
Freaks horror movie poster
Like Carrie four decades later, Freaks is one big -- or rather, small, given the size of the characters and its 60-minute length -- revenge flick that portrays the mistreatment of social outcasts for 90% of the film, only to have them rise up and tear the mutha down...
Ganja and Hess horror movie poster
Ganja & Hess is an acquired taste (pun intended), but for those who acquire it, it's a vivid, stylish, introspective trip. It's also utterly weird and confusing in that art-house, experimental '60s/'70s sort of way. The story revolves around Dr. Hess Green (Duane Jones of Night of the Living...
Rod Serling in Night Gallery movie poster
The highlight of this feature-length anthology pilot for Rod Serling's TV series Night Gallery is the opening story, "The Cemetery," a delicious cat-and-mouse game between iconic actors Ossie Davis and Roddy McDowall. Davis plays Portifoy, long-time butler to a rich old white geezer. He thinks he's in line to...
The Shining horror movie poster
As a kid, The Shining made an impression on me not so much because it was a creepy, nightmare-inducing trip (which it was), but because Scatman Crothers ended up with an axe in the chest. It was an early prototype for the now-cliched black character death in modern horror...
The Invitation movie poster
The Invitation is a delightfully demented thriller that plays on the awkward social dynamics of dinner parties, from meeting new people and trying to discern what makes them tick to reuniting with estranged friends and trying to get past what pulled you apart. Of course, this treatment takes things...
Pooka (Into the Dark) horror movie
If you’ve seen Nacho Vigalondo films like Colossal, Extraterrestrial, Timecrimes and Open Windows, you know he’s not one for conventional genre storytelling. His movies tend toward the unpredictable, either in content or structure -- or both -- and his latest, Pooka!, is no exception. That said, perhaps the most surprising...
28 Days Later horror movie poster
Those of you looking for a sequel to Sandra Bullock’s alcoholic drama 28 Days will probably be disappointed in 28 Days Later. The first clue that you have the wrong movie might be all the British accents. The second might be all the murders. The gritty and truly frightening...
Candyman horror movie poster
Outside of Blacula, perhaps no figure personifies "black horror" more than Candyman. And like Blacula, the iconicity is deserved. This movie is one of the most atmospheric and genuinely frightening films of the '90s -- granted, it's much scarier before Candyman (Tony Todd) reveals himself to be a rather...
Demon Knight horror movie poster
One of the better horror movies of the '90s, Demon Knight is helmed by a black director and features a black hero (and a woman at that) -- and yet it takes place in neither the ghetto nor voodoo-infested Louisiana, the Caribbean or Africa! But, you ask, where else...