The Monster Is Dead: On Godzilla and the End of Spectacle
“The monster movie has always been predicated on some anxiety about technology – whether it’s nuclear bombs or genetic engineering – and we may now wonder if this isn’t an[…]
Category: Genres
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Horror · Reviews
The Devils (the Angels): Sympathy for John Landis
“I can always make something work, if I have a camera.” – John Landis There are two John Landises. There’s the director equally at home with comedy as he is[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Photo Essays
Frame Analysis: The Title Sequence for Doris Wishman’s Bad Girls Go to Hell (1965)
“This question of what makes a ‘bad girl’ is posed by the film’s title and answered by its title sequence – implied in the formal quotations (pinups) that inform each[…]
Activist & Political · Reviews
Divide(d) and Conquer(ed): Notes on Income Inequality in Late-20th- and Early-21st-Century Cinema
“As the divide between rich and poor became more extreme, late 20th-century cinema required a new approach to achieve the same end: portraying the existence of the wealthy elite as[…]
A Brutal Nobility: Painting Death in The House with Laughing Windows (Pupi Avati, 1976)
“Inherent to defamiliarization or riddling is, of course, a process of refamiliarization: as the film proceeds, we wish to see the strange normalized, the riddle answered. But in The House with Laughing[…]
Happy Birthday, Ray Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013): An Interview with the Titan of Stop-Motion Animation
This interview with Ray Harryhausen first appeared in Bright Lights in November 2007. We reprint it here as a birthday tribute to the seminal animator. * * * “I wrecked Washington, and[…]
Tokuko Nagai Takagi (1891-1919): Japan’s First Actress
Aaron Cohen’s profile of the obscure Japanese silent star Tokuko Takagi (also known as Taku Takagi), who came to America in 1906 and made a few films for Thanhouser Studios, first[…]
Crime · TV & Streaming · Writers & Critics
Monster at the End: Pessimism’s Locked Rooms and Impossible Crimes (on True Detective)
“The end has already happened, and all Rustin Cohle and Marty Hart can do is arrange the bodies in a pattern that makes them look less like bodies, more like[…]
Punishing the Wolf of Wall Street: Jordan Belfort’s Second Act
“According to documents provided by the US Department of Justice, in the year he received almost $1 million for the rights to his memoir, Belfort made restitution payments totaling just[…]
Actors & Personalities · Reviews · TV & Streaming · Westerns
Happy Birthday, Richard Boone! Got Trouble? Wire Paladin! The Western for Existentialists
Today is actor Richard Boone’s birthday (June 18, 1917 – January 10, 1981). We’re celebrating it by reprinting Alan Vanneman’s pithy write-up (previously published in issue 48, May 2005) of[…]
The Dream Behind the Reality: Amiable Lunacy and Blithe Brutality in Harvey
“What befalls Veta can perhaps be justified as part of the film’s critique of psychiatry; after all, her unfortunate experience mocks the short-sightedness and arbitrary operation of the mental health[…]
There Goes the Neighborhood: Godzilla and the Gentrification of Pulp
“Godzilla has no anarchy or eccentricity, much less any experimental spirit or Japanese weirdness. Edwards is too preoccupied with turning the movie into something new, serious, and, worst of all,[…]
Godzilla #1: Godzilla ex Machina: Taking All the Fight out of Humanity
“If Godzilla is not benevolent but merely indifferent, then his mercy amounts to that of a man sidestepping an anthill instead of trampling it under his heel.” Conventional academic and[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · LGBT & Queer · Reviews
The American Epidemic: AIDS in (Recent) Cinema and History
Discussed in this essay: The Battle of AmFar (Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 2013); Dallas Buyers Club (Jean-Marc Vallée, 2013); How to Survive a Plague (David France, 2012); The Normal[…]
Activist & Political · Experimental & Underground · Reviews
“Politics Is Theatre”: On Narimane Mari’s Bloody Beans (Loubia Hamra) (2014)
“It’s not blood, it’s red” – Jean-Luc Godard A few weeks ago Abdelaziz Bouteflika was re-elected for a fourth time as president of Algeria with 81.5% of the vote. Most[…]
Dr. Steve Jones Talks About His Book Torture Porn: Popular Horror After Saw
Dr. Steve Jones has written a book on a subject few people have examined in depth, though the press and critics have vilified it to no end. It’s a subject[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews · Writers & Critics
Could You Spare Me a Nightmare? The World of Confessions of an Opium Eater (1962)
In honor of Vincent Price’s birthday (May 27, 1911-October 25, 1993), we present Sean Nortz’s thrilling exegesis of one of the actor’s most intriguing and downright bizarre films. (After this piece[…]
Animation · Historical & Epic · Reviews
Private Snafu’s Hidden War: Historical Survey and Analytical Perspective
In honor of Memorial Day, we present Christopher Dow’s lively history and critical analysis of World War II’s favorite cartoon fuck-up, Private Snafu, which appeared originally in Bright Lights in[…]
Gay Old San Francisco: Hitchcock’s Closet Case and Other Thoughts on Vertigo
“Could Scottie’s real beau ideal be Gavin Elster?” Vertigo is famously about obsession. Brian Da Palma’s homage/rip-off is even called Obsession. But what is Scottie’s obsession, really? San Francisco’s past[…]
Experimental & Underground · Horror · New Media
Found Footage Horror #2: Textures of Silence and Decay: Marble Hornets and the Haunted Archive
This is the second of two articles riffing on found footage horror and new media. The first was Sarolta Mezei’s “Found Footage Horror #1: The Dead Rising: Aspects of Spectrality in[…]
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