Movie-A-Day #277: Interview With the Vampire (1994).
Happy 70th birthday to author Anne Rice, whose work provided a major link in the evolution of the vampire from terrifying creature of the undead to sparkly “Twilight” fop. Despite being wildly successful and having a huge worldwide reading audience, her novels haven’t been adapted for film very often, but “Interview With the Vampire,” while imperfect, is easily the best of the bunch.
Movie-A-Day #276: The Black Cat (1934).
On this date in 1849, author Edgar Allan Poe, the father of modern horror, was found delirious and laying in a gutter wearing another man’s clothes. It would be the last anyone would see of him in public, and to this day no one knows what happened to lead him to that wretched morning after. One of his most influential stories was “The Black Cat,” although the Universal adaptation with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff bears almost no relation to the original. It’s still a fun classic horror film, though.
Movie-A-Day #275: Murder by Television (1935).
On this date in 1925, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird gave the first public demonstration of a working television system. And 10 years later, when most of the public still had no idea what television was, low-rent Cameo Pictures tried to capitalize with a cheapie murder mystery about this strange new device, called “Murder by Television.” It was a weird, creaky production that was more of whodunit than a traditional frightfest, but it did star one of the kings of horror of the time, Bela Lugosi… even if he was on the skids.
Movie-A-Day #274: Blood and Black Lace (1964).
Happy October, everybody! This is our favorite movie watching month because we love horror movies in all forms, from the silly to the sublime, from the cheap to the chilling. So all the Movie-A-Day selections for October will be horror films. Since today is National Lace Day in the United States, we’ll kick off the month with the Eurotrash gothicism of Mario Bava’s “Blood and Black Lace.”
Movie-A-Day #273: Rebel Without a Cause (1955).
On this date in 1955, James Dean met his end in a Porsche 550 Spyder in rural central California, at the age of just 24. He was an instant legend, even though his body of work consisted of just three feature films and a handful of live TV appearances. His performance in “Rebel Without a Cause” is his most iconic, defining the 1950s teenage rock ‘n’ roll generation.
Desuko Movie Spot. 