The Dark Projector

When you think of the movies that you like the most, which films immediately come to mind? Is it the Oscar-nominated dramas that make you think and feel complex emotions for a two-hour period? How about the action films that you’re embarrassed to say that you’ve seen the entire franchise and enjoy each new entry (hello, Fast and Furious !)? Maybe the romantic comedies that you watched growing up with friends and family that created formative and nostalgic memories for you that you relive each time you watch them? Or maybe it’s just the movies that scare the shit out of you? For me it’s a nice mix of all of the above. The concept of the guilty pleasure is something that I think kind of demeans the enjoyment that we get from them. What exactly is making us feel guilty about re-watching Dirty Dancing (Ardolino, 1987) or Clueless (Heckerling, 1995) for the umpteenth time? Why the hell should it bother us that we’ve seen all eight Fast and Furious movies, and also Hobbs and Shaw (Leit...

What can I say? The slasher sub-genre is one of my favorite categories within the horror genre. So, when faced with the reality of staying home far more often than normal, I thought, why not go for it and watch as many slasher films as I can. I won’t give you any exact numbers, because you’ll just be like, “Wow! That’s excessive!” But what I will do is break down some of the better entries of my latest horror project for you. If you too want to attempt to make quarantine a bit less painful and full of sleazy horror films, this is the list for you. The Burning (Maylam, 1981) This is generally regarded as one of the slasher classics but I, for some reason, had not watched it prior to COVID-19. Featuring some great practical make-up effects by the great Tom Savini, this 1981 film has a rather generic plot where Cropsy, Camp Blackwood’s caretaker, is accidentally horrifically burned in a prank gone dangerously awry by some of the campers. Five years later, Cropsy returns to exac...