Robert Emmett Murphy, Jr.

  Evolution (2016)   Among the many cultural transformations that came after WWII (ended 1945) was pressure on parents to speak to their children more realistically about Sex and Reproduction. Under this pressure, I don’t think many parents totally came to the plate as well as they should’ve, but at least silly Myths like Storks Bring Babies started to disappear. My mother trained as a Nurse towards the end and immediately after the War and was influenced by the Writings of Dr. Benjamin Spock’s landmark book was “The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care” (1946); she was blunt her children; she might not think we were old enough to learn certain things yet so there were questions she wouldn’t answer, she would never tell us the nonsense her mother told her. This obviously is all well and good, but the Mysteries of these things were still overwhelming, perhaps made even weirder because the Lies or Myths that needed to be unlearned later were at least easy to process, whi...

  Re‑Animator (1985)   When Roger Ebert reviewed “Re-Animator” he chose to quote Pauline Kael, "The movies are so rarely great art, which if we can't appreciate great trash, there is little reason for us to go."   Who is going to deny it applies to Horror more than the other Genres?   This is based on a novella “ Herbert West–Reanimator” (1922) by Howard Phillips Lovecraft (HPL). In life Lovecraft was never able to support himself as either a Writer or an Editor, but was admired by his peers, and created a uniquely Atmospheric and Philosophical body of SF,F&H prose. The work was not restricted to, but most famously represented by, his Cthulhu Mythos stories, considered Popular Fiction’s first great, original Mythological Cycle. Though it constitutes only a handful of stories, the Mythos has now deeply penetrated all aspects of America’s Fantastic Culture, and almost every writer of SF,F&H have reflected upon and addressed Lovecraft’...

  The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976)   "And then he looked around him again, at the big hotel room, the almost untouched tray of liquor, and back at Newton, reclining in bed. 'My God,' he said. 'It's hard to believe. To sit in this room and believe that I'm talking to a man from another planet.' "'Yes,' Newton said, 'I've thought that myself. I'm talking to a man from another planet too, you know.'" -from Walter Tevis’ novel, “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1963)   Part 1. Background and stye(s) This film started as a novel of the same name by Walter Tevis which was strikingly Autobiographical for a work of SF; Tevis fictionally cast himself as an Outer Space Alien to explore his own feelings Isolation and his own descent into Alcoholism, wrecking all the better ambitions he held before his self-decent. Fiction granted Tevis the power to be a bit more Grandiose than a more Realistic Narrative could’ve, and in many...