The Abominable Dr. Phibes (1971)

This is part 2 in a 300 part series of Fangoria Magazine’s “Top 300 Horror Movies”. Here we go!

Why is it so damn hard to find a copy of The Abominable Dr. Phibes? For anyone who’s not a horror fan I’m sure the answer is “Because it’s called The Abominable Dr. Phibes.” Fair enough. It is a title that invokes the worst of b-movie shlock. Maybe a film you’d catch at 2:00 AM on a nostalgia channel or featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000. Yet there is a “Je ne sais quoi” to Phibes that is memorable. Or maybe it’s the fact that Phibes laid the groundwork for an iconic horror franchise and nobody talks about it.

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Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948)

I know people who can’t stand black and white movies. As if B&W is the dial-up internet of cinema. I have a theory that these people don’t actually care about the color of the screen. These people hate old movies because old movies are slow, dated, and because everyone talks like they just fled England to colonize the New World. Which is fair. Though I would argue there are old movies that work as well today as they ever did, regardless of color, or lack thereof.

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Have you ever seen, or bought, or maybe even read a copy of the film reference book “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die”? If you haven’t or have no idea what I’m talking about it’s a book that spans the entire history of film with 1001 “Must See’s” as suggested by editor Steven Jay Schneider and over 70 film critics.

When I was eighteen and a young film geek in the making I vowed I would see all 1001 movies in that book. The plan made no sense considering there are constant updates and rereleases of the book every year. Still, I went for it. How did I fare?

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Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978)

Tomorrow, the entire Mildly Pleased staff is seeing Kiss on what has been sold as their final tour ever. I couldn’t be more excited. Yet if you asked me how I felt about Kiss I would also be the first person to tell you they suck. Call it a guilty pleasure but despite all of the shitty things about Kiss—the egos, the greed, the Kiss Casket—I love their theatricality and more importantly their music. Few acts in the annals of rock have so successfully merged pop songwriting with heavy metal. Fewer have done it while wearing capes and breathing fire.

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Halloween (1978)

If you weren’t aware a new Halloween movie is coming out on October 19th. The film is a sequel, or is it a soft reboot? Either way, it’s the first Halloween film in nine years. Or as the makers want you to believe, the first in 40 years. What this means is that writer/director David Gordon Green along with his fart-ner (funny?) in crime Danny McBride has penned a direct sequel to the original Halloween. One that erases Halloween’s entire legacy after John Carpenter’s 1978 original.

What I aim to do every Friday from here until the release of this new film is answer the question “Is this a legacy worth remembering?” Which means I will review every installment in the Halloween series. I’ve seen all the films before but I thought it might be fun to revisit the franchise in this format. After all, everyone is entitled to one good scare. That’s a tagline for the original Halloween. Doesn’t really make any sense how I used it.

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