By Joe Shelton Thirty-seven years ago a cheap, nasty little horror film called “The Evil Dead” splattered onto theater and drive-in screens across the country.  Cheap (or is it thrifty?), exploitative, and bizarre, “The Evil…

By Joe Shelton The great literary critic Leslie Fiedler (who once taught at MSU) wrote that American literature “as a whole seems a chamber of horrors disguised as an amusement park ‘fun house'”.  And if…

by Joe Shelton                 Justice League resembles nothing so much as a less scary, more confusing Frankenstein’s monster. Only rather than an arm here and a leg there, it is put together out of bits…

by Joseph Shelton                 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene is one of those film documentaries, like Room 237 or philosopher Slavov Zizek’s Pervert’s Guide to Cinema movies, that takes an wide view of a relatively narrow subject.…

by Joseph Shelton                 The best comedy on tv, which places it fairly high in the running for best show of any kind, is about a sad man who lives in Bakersfield, California, though he’d…

by Joseph Shelton                  Thank God for little blessings, like the laughter of children, the smell of rain, and independent sci-fi and horror films. Let everyone else have their The Greatest Showman (out now on…

by Joseph Shelton                 Watching certain movies reminds us why we should read more books.                 Pop quiz, hotshot: what 2018 film, the tenth in its series, not only has a bevy of references to…

By Joe Shelton      The original Blade Runner is at once a fascinating failure and an accomplishment.  In its original theatrical release it was a consummate mess, an LA noir as filtered through German…

by Joseph Shelton                 Remember when they still made action movies that weren’t all so high concept (and budget)? That is to say, remember the action thrillers they made before the only bankable genre in…