Author Archive: Dennis Dermody
Dennis Dermody
November 10, 2020
Cult
Sometimes only film noir will do. That post-War black & white cinema of existential dread, a landscape of shadowy city streets; seedy bars; and smoke-filled cop precincts. A nighttime universe populated with dangerous dudes and devious dames. But what I…
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Dennis Dermody
November 6, 2020
Movies
There’s always a sense of impending dread in a film from director Bryan Bertino. A sense that everything is not going to turn out all right in the end. It makes his films memorably darker but often a lot scarier. …
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Dennis Dermody
November 1, 2020
Movies
What’s unfortunate about this indie horror film by Marcel Walz is, while there are a lot of terrific twists, you just wish it was a scarier film. The story is about Faye (Sarah French), a famous actress living up in…
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Dennis Dermody
October 28, 2020
Blu-Rays
Wait- there’s new footage in Alfred Hitchcock’s influential shocker- Psycho? As it turns out when Psycho came out in 1960 these few seconds were in the film. It’s only when the film was later re-issued in theaters and eventually released…
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Dennis Dermody
October 22, 2020
Streaming
It does pain me to see Halloween irrevocably neutered by the pandemic. But that doesn’t mean we should give up scary movies. If anything, horror films have a way of being cathartic during trying times. Talk about getting you out…
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Dennis Dermody
October 16, 2020
Cult
I’ve written about inanimate objects that kill in movies, but those were about possessed machinery and killer furniture. While I was lying in bed the other night counting corpses, I began to think of all the weirder items that have…
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Dennis Dermody
October 11, 2020
Blu-Rays
They don’t call it “fall” for nothing. Thank God at least for home media which gives you respite from the madness. This month is there is great mix of classics like Picnic to rancid rarities like Massacre in Dinosaur Valley.…
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Dennis Dermody
October 4, 2020
Cult
One Christmas I received the best present ever- the actual Jason mask prop from one of the films. John Waters had somehow gotten it for me but there was a glitch in the delivery and somewhere along the line it…
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Dennis Dermody
October 2, 2020
Movies
A young couple vacationing in a tropical paradise find themselves in a living, waking nightmare from director Darren Lynn Bousman (who directed several of the Saw movies and knows how to sadistically tighten the noose on poor unfortunates). Luke Hemsworth…
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Dennis Dermody
September 25, 2020
Movies
I am overjoyed the NY Film Festival persevered this year, despite the odds. And they did so with their usual intelligence and humor (the festival poster by John Waters was a great, funny touch). Their film choices were even more…
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