For the readers long ago who embarked on the journey through Dante Alighieri’s vision of the darkest steps of Hell, they found themselves guided by the poet Virgil. For listeners in the classic Golden Age of radio, it was Raymond who led them behind the creaking door of the Inner Sanctum, and for the watchers of late-night television in the ’60s through the ’80s—in some lucky cases, even later—their trip into the dark often began and ended with their local horror host. Our tr

No other film bridges the sacred and the profane quite like Charles Laughton’s “The Night of the Hunter” (1955), a Depression-era fairy tale that ends one cinematic age and inaugurates another, painted in all the shades of nostalgia Norman Rockwell left out when depicting the past. Part noir, part parable, it is a story of flight and faith, innocence, and inheritance, revealing the uneasy marriage between American piety and spectacle — a theme that would echo throughout postw

There’s a singular moment—a pause—when you learn that your favorite film is about to be remade, reimagined, and/or getting a sequel in a different decade. Even when the intruder is only a spiritual successor within the same IP family, it’s a feeling that’s hard to name: it might arrive as dread, as defensiveness, as anticipation, sometimes all three at once. Of course, the original doesn’t vanish when a remake appears. The copy on your shelf, the lines you know by heart, the

I am well aware that by kicking this thing off with words like “greatest” and “ever,” I am wading into highly subjective waters. Anyone proclaiming that any one person or place or piece of pizza or work of art is the preeminent example of its kind, “of all time,” is either selling something, engaging in a bit of cheeky hyperbole, or else they’re probably just an asshole. Stirring the pot. There is a decent chance this whole thing spirals into a diatribe and lands me firmly in

I. Amid the chaos of a malfunctioning shark and blockbuster ambition, it was the stillness of a story—told low and slow in the belly of a boat—that gave “Jaws” (1975) an inexorable sense of reality, serving to heighten fears imagined. Robert Shaw’s portrayal of Quint, recounting the horrors of the USS Indianapolis, etched itself into film legend. Shaw seemed to summon the performance from his marrow— something personal, something primal. It evoked the late-night tales told by

James Whale (Left) - Boris Karloff (Right) The Motion Picture Production Code—enforced from 1930 and reaching its most stringent application from 1934 until its decline in the late 1960s—represented one of the most aggressive regulatory frameworks in American cinematic history. Known commonly as the Hays Code, it functioned as both a moral compass and a tool of censorship, explicitly forbidding depictions of what it termed “sexual perversion.” The Hays Code was never just abo

If, like me, you grew up in Central Florida during the final bow of a golden age for theme parks, then you may have more memories than most of pyrotechnic demonstrations celebrating the movie magic of box office hits from decades past. As a young child— already weary of fireworks, lacking any contextual knowledge of film, and harboring a persistent belief that an accident would happen while I was present—I was terrified anytime something blew up. The film-loving adult I grew

Known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” Lon Chaney Sr.—silent film actor and pioneering makeup artist—is revered for his transformative performances and groundbreaking prosthetic work. He starred in more than 150 films and was an audience favorite, earning him the kind of immortality the screen seldom grants. Through both purpose and ability, he chose to embody characters existing outside the realm of conventional beauty and normalcy, giving depth to figures often relegated t

The audiences who once gathered to witness live feats of escape and illusion, whether in grand theaters or intimate parlor rooms, were the very same who later beheld cinema’s first flickering screens. For some, the experiences might have felt much the same—the same stirring of wonder, the same exhilaration for human possibility, and the same reverence for those fleeting moments when we allow ourselves to be deceived, if only to escape into a world where anything feels within

Time is one of the few variables with enough power to end, improve, inspire, and change the memory of love. Whatever its influence, we usually understand its meaning years later, but on the screen, we can live through its passages in hours. Manipulating time lends not only the philosophical and societal questions science fiction asks, but also those of personal reflection, changes in perspective, and a chance to see how our lives might have turned out if we had loved differen

The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) We spend most of our time looking either downward or directly ahead, splitting our focus between screens and various realities. For many of us, looking up is occasional—admiring the moon, watching a plane land, or enjoying a fireworks show. Our upward glances connect us to a world larger and more unknown than comprehension allows. When you don’t know, you wonder. Wonder, of any and every kind, is the imagination’s lifeblood. It is the grea

There is a capacity within the best-told stories on screen to become timeless in a way that connects people across generations, despite the differences in years between those watching them. During the holiday season, we are reminded to extend uncommon kindness and promote inclusion to those outside our social spheres. We’ve long been encouraged by a multitude of traditions to see ourselves as more similar than different, to foster a moment of peace and light during the darkes

You can debate the luxuries of 4-D, surround sound, IMAX experiences, and electronic reclining chairs till the credits appear, but born-and-raised Polk County residents will tell you the best place to see a movie in town has none of those. They’ll wax poetic about the Silver Moon Drive-In, and its Americana theater experience: the smell of popcorn, a freshly baked pizza on your dash, the sound quality that can only be achieved by speakers in an enclosed space, the prices that

Named by French critics to describe films based on mid-20th-century crime fiction, noir features a style and language unique to itself. These films often center on stories told from the viewpoint of morally gray or explicitly criminal protagonists, with shadows used so powerfully that they become central characters themselves. With the Second World War behind us, writers could more freely question the nature of crime, our economic structure, and the moral dilemmas hidden behi

THERE IS A MONOLITH IN THE KITCHEN OF MY HOME. I do not remember how old I am, or if I could even call this my first memory because to organize those first sparks into consciousness would be impossible, but I know I am old enough to open the fridge, or more specifically, the freezer. My cousin Ashley is babysitting me and she’s asleep on the couch - not out of derelict of duty, it had to be well past midnight, but even in my childhood I was a night owl. So I was awake, and fo

I belong to the last generation with limited internet access, so I figure that I found “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” (1974) because of the kindhearted celebratory antics of a man living in the neighborhood I grew up in. Every Halloween, he’d run around in his front yard with a chainsaw (without chains), and without access to the film he referenced, I began to intertwine the feeling of the one night a year when the world and I were on the same page with the sound of a chainsaw