Week of Review - Apt Pupil (1998)

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I want to be upfront here; I went into Apt Pupil with “they can’t all be winners” mentality.  I’m aware that digging through forgotten C-list cinema is by no means a sure thing and there’s every chance that among the genuine gems like Needful Things and The Mangler you’re going to come upon stuff that’s problematic or dated like Thinner.  However, I was in no way prepared for just how terrible Apt Pupil was going to be, this movie makes Thinner look like The Shining.  

It’s a film that I fully expected to be dated, tasteless, problematic, uncomfortable and more and while it was absolutely all of those things it was somehow so much less as well. 

It’s a bad movie I’m kind of shocked we ever stopped talking about yet also completely unsurprised it’s been swallowed up by the dust bin of history and banished by its own mediocrity.  I mean, when you’ve got a movie about a teen boy sociopath who forms an unsettling relationship with an old Nazi and it’s directed by Bryan Singer the last thing you expect it to be is so damn boring. 

Week of Review - The Mangler (1995)

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On to day two of my look back at the forgotten Stephen King adaptations of the ‘90s, today we’ll be taking a look at the Tobe Hooper film The Mangler.  This was one of the last King films of the Golden Age of adaptations, released in 1995 right before the well of adaptive works dried up almost overnight.  It’s actually somewhat staggering the level of King adaptations that cropped up between 1990 and 1995.  Including TV mini-series like IT and The Stand the first half of the ‘90s saw a staggering 12 King adaptations, the same as the entirety of the ‘80s and double the number that was made in the 2000s.  

That’s also part of why these mid-decade adaptations like The Mangler or Thinner started getting into the stranger corners of King’s canon, most of the more cinematic or standard pulp options like Christie, Misery, and The Shining had already been done so they were really scraping the bottom of the barrel with stuff about Romani weight loss curses or an evil industrial ironing machine from hell.  However, don’t let the goofier subject matter fool you because The Mangler is easily one of the best King adaptations this decade produced. 

6 Promos Release for American Horror Story Season 6

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Edited by Robert Beach

It’s that time of year again: the time where we all get to speculate on what this year’s American Horror Story theme is going to be.  If you’re new to this blog, my relationship with American Horror Story is…complicated at best.  I might best be described as an anti-fan of the show, not necessarily a hater but someone who actively dislikes the individual episodes while still being thoroughly fascinated by the drip of trailers and posters as well as the sprawling internal mythology the series has slowly cultivated. 

I'm more fascinated by American Horror Story’s style and sizzle than I am the actual plot or characters of any given season.  If you’re a diehard fan of every episode good for you, but I I’m mainly here for the weird exploration of the horror pantheon and the history of American atrocities in particular and boy are we in for a twist with season 6.