This 1990 action film is an underrated piece of festive lunacy with an extremely fun if slightly overcomplicated plot, but there are a lot of stunts and explosions to smooth things over. If you doubt its festive credentials, the opening scene involves a guy crashing his car into a Christmas tree lot. You can’t get more Christmassy than that.
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IMDB: Dark Angel aka I Come In Peace
Lucy Moderatz (Sandra Bullock) works as a token collector for the Chicago L train. Having lost her father the previous year, and with no family to speak of, she agrees to work over Christmas. Lucy has a crush on Peter (Peter Gallagher), a handsome commuter, who passes her kiosk every day in a whirlwind of perfect hair and 90s post-yuppie business attire.
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IMDB: While You Were Sleeping
Face/Off sees John Travolta as FBI agent Sean Archer, who is tracking the notorious terrorist Castor Troy, played by Nicolas Cage. But when Troy tries to kill him and kills Archer’s son instead, Archer becomes consumed by revenge. Six years later, he catches up to Castor and in the ensuing chaos puts him in a coma. But Castor has planted a huge bomb in downtown LA and the only possible way for Archer to discover the location … is, of course, face transplant surgery.
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IMDB: Face/Off
Eli Roth’s Thanksgiving first came to life as one of the fake trailers in Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino’s ill-fated Grindhouse experiment. Now supersized as a feature in its own right, Thanksgiving is a seasonal slasher that pits a masked, axe-wielding maniac against a group of college kids and assorted townsfolk.Read the full review at Screen Realm:
https://screenrealm.com/thanksgiving-movie-review-2023-horror/
IMDB: Thanksgiving
When HP Lovecraft sat down at his desk to write his short story From Beyond, did he picture, in his mind’s eye, Ken Foree in his underpants battling a giant worm, Barbara Crampton being attacked by a swarm of carnivorous flies, or Jeffrey Combs ravenously munching on a human brain? It’s fair to assume he probably didn’t, but director Stuart Gordon did and that’s precisely why the 1986 film From Beyond is a deranged, no-holds-barred body horror masterpiece.
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IMDB: From Beyond
It's been a while since I wrote and posted a short story, so here's one I wrote back in July for the Australian Writers' Centre Furious Fiction contest. It's an experiment with a different style. Terse, serious, not my usual smart-arse approach. I took an immediate dislike to the contest's prompts. I felt like it was leading submissions down a mawkish, sentimental path. So it inspired me to push hard in the opposite direction and as far away from a contrived, saccharine childhood memory as it would take me. The idea came quickly, easily and somewhat belligerently, as they sometimes do, and I enjoyed writing this one a heck of a lot. With the right idea percolating, this is a style and an approach I'm keen to revisit.
In addition to the 500 word maximum and a three day window to write it, the criteria were:
Father fell in a puddle of red and grey and did not get up. The Bearded Men carried the tatters of him home. The People stood aside and bowed their heads as they brought him through the Great Gate and up Wisdom Hill to the Keep.
Mother cried out when she saw them approach. She said she had seen it in the stones. She closed her doors and went to sleep that night and did not wake up. There was noise and screaming and the Bearded Men looked at me and spoke in loud voices to one another. They said it was IMPOSSIBLE. They said there was no other choice.
I stood upon the ancient, granite cliff top with a BUMPER of ale in hand, the copper taste of fox blood in my throat, as archers set my parents’ bones aflame. Their ash as one with our ancestral seas.
The Bearded Men said Mother and Father had been called to God but I did not hear God speak. The Bearded Men set a crown upon my head. They said it was my PRIZE of birth. The Bearded Men said I must rule, as Father. They said it was God’s decree but I did not hear God speak.
The Bearded Men said our enemies in the north would come, and come they did. They saw our land as soft and ripe for picking, as summer fruit. I sat in the Round Hall with the Bearded Men. A fire burned in the hearth. Acrid smoke pillared to the heavens, as my parents’ funeral pyre. With tears in their eyes they asked me if I chose acquiescence. But if I was to rule, as Father, I chose war.
The enemy raided our lands with savage incursions on our sacred earth. But the People were steadfast and repelled them with hatred. They could not be broken. For every step the enemy gained, they lost one in return. The war years were of attrition.
After five cycles, our neighbours to the East brokered an accord. I stood in a tent with our enemy. A ferocious man who wore the skulls of his own sons as trophies. A terrible man who made his generals quake. A blind man who called me child. I drove a knife into his throat. They did not expect this from one so young. And when I ate my enemy’s heart I was a boy no more.
My enemy’s commanders fled. I usurped their lands as my domain. From mountain peak to valley floor, there was prosperity. The People received me in rapture. The Bearded Men praised the Will of God. But still I did not hear God speak.
Perhaps I am God?
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IMDB: Primal
