Frankenstein: 200 Years Later, It’s Alive
Jacob Elordi. Photo: Netflix The ”Dark Universe” project that Universal started crashed and burned with the release of The Mummy (2017), a critically maligned box-office flop. However, it’s nice to…
Gaslight: Marriage of Delusion
Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman. Photo: MGM It isn’t often that the title of a movie gives rise to a new verb, but Gaslight did. When we say that someone’s…
Gaslight
In London, a former detective (Frank Pettingell) begins to suspect that something isn’t quite right in a household where a murder was committed years ago. After spending some time in…
Elephant Man: A Victorian Sensation
John Hurt. Photo: Brooksfilms In 1979, John Hurt terrified a whole world in the sci-fi-horror movie Alien, in a sequence that required a lot of special makeup effects. One year…
The Muppet Christmas Carol
The fourth Muppet movie is the first after Jim Henson’s death and now more clearly than ever is the concept directed at children. A smart commercial move, but I’m sure…
Jack the Ripper: Finding Hyde
Photo: Thames Television When David Wickes set out to make a miniseries about Jack the Ripper that would premiere on the centennial of the infamous murders in Whitechapel, he announced…
From Hell: The Ripper Unmasked (Again)
Johnny Depp. Photo: 20th Century Fox When I was 16 years old, I wrote a paper on Jack the Ripper. I suspect my teacher worried about my choice of subject,…