Skip to main content

A Fourth Film Challenge Emerges: Mighty Mick

While watching Halloween but thinking about The Shining miniseries from 1997 I had tried to find on YouTube earlier in the day but couldn't, and admittedly being influenced by a handful of bottles of Yuengling on this Monday night, I decided that I was going to add a much bigger master challenge to the three I earlier discussed: I wanted to watch the entire film and TV miniseries filmography of Mick Garris, plus the episodes of Masters of Horror and Fear Itself (both of which he created) that he himself directed.

Mick became known as one of Stephen King's preferred directors, doing The Sleepwalkers on the big screen for him and The Stand which I just recently purchased on VHS and The Shining from 1997 which just tonight I purchased on VHS when I decided I was going to embark on this project and later doing Bag of Bones in the early 10s too. However, it was through his creation of Masters of Horror and Fear Itself, and then as one of the top horror-focused podcast hosts in the business where he truly became a big name in the genre and I'm a huge fan of Masters of Horror and own the first season on DVD. 

Let's give a spotlight to one of the true working men of horror filmmaking. 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Green Mile (1999) - Syrupy Collection of Great Character Actors

  The Green Mile was a film that was in a regular rotation for my mom and stepdad when I was growing up, so I saw it many times in the late 90s and early 00s. My love of Stephen King mostly comes from my dad, who owned the first King book I ever read myself in late elementary school (Skeleton Crew) and numerous others I looked at on his shelf all the time and showed me miniseries like IT and The Stand. However, my mom contributed a little bit too with the likes of Creepshow and some of his other 80s adaptations and of course The Green Mile. So I figured why not revisit it since I own it? My biggest problem with The Green Mile is one I share with its spiritual sibling in The Shawshank Redemption which is that it is just very sentimental and sometimes even downright corny. Movies seemingly designed to make middle aged dads get in touch with their emotions by layering that syrup on thick. There’s a place for that and I understand why people really enjoy it, but it just simply isn’t ...

Ivan the Terrible, Part 1 (1944) - Uncomfortably Stalinist, Visually Astounding

  I know that I usually start reviews with a personal anecdote of some sort, but this one is kind of a head scratcher. My only real ties in my life to the Soviet Union are just a lifelong, morbid fascination with the Cold War era and rocking a hammer and sickle pin on my backpack as middle schooler into punk rock. However, I do like a lot of Soviet era cartoons which are a special kind of surreal and I really like some film movements of Soviet states on the fringe, and what Soviet films I’ve seen often have very strong and striking visuals. So when I saw that Ivan the Terrible Parts 1 and 2 were on Max, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to do something different for this blog even if it might be a bit shorter than my typical review. Obviously, the biggest and most valid criticism of the film is how deeply unsubtle it is in most ways, but particularly when it comes to defending and propagating the ideals of Stalinism. As a member of the left, I’m well aware there are factions t...

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) - Funny, Fun, and a Little Bit Insufferable

  The late 00s and early 10s were a pretty good time to be somebody who loved cult horror films with a sense of humor. You had the likes of Trick r Treat, Drag Me to Hell, and my favorite at the time which was The Cabin in the Woods. Whether it was on pay cable or early streaming, the film became a regular fixture in the years I mostly just spent my time frequently re-watching the same movies and drinking far too much beer. Because of that, I’ve gone some years without watching it very frequently cause I got kind of burnt out on it in my 20s but I had this former Blockbuster rental Bluray copy that cost less than 2 bucks so I figured why not see how well the film holds up? The thing that hasn’t held up so well is how smugly in love with its own dialog and cleverness the film is in a way that immediately signals that Joss Whedon was a writer on it. There’s a certain too cute quality to a lot of Whedon’s projects that have made me not like them as much as other people do, sorry to ...