Robert Emmett Murphy, Jr.

  Poltergeist (1982)   There’s some controversy over who really directed this film, which I’ll get to later but, however you stand on the controversy, no one is denying that this is more Producer Steven Spielberg’s film than Director Toby Hooper’s. It shares with most of Spielberg’s early films recurrent themes of the essential shelter of the nuclear (or near-nuclear) family and a view of the affluent American suburb that is almost utopian. Moreover, Spielberg wrote the screenplay, which he admits the influence of Nigel Kneale ("The Stone Tape" (1972)). Another obvious influence was Rod Serling’s "Twilight Zone" (TV anthology series (originally aired 1959) specifically Richard Matheson’s script, "Little Girl Lost" (based on Matheson’s 1953 short story of the same name and first aired in 1962).   Early in his career both Serling and Matheson had a very direct influence of Spielberg’s development. Spielberg’s very first directing job was the pilot fo...

  Carry On Screaming (1966)   Unless you are English, and probably even if you are, you’ve likely forgotten this wonderful Horror Parody. It was a collision of two thematic forms, one on life-support for well-more than a decade, the other that had nearly died in the early 1940s, but had revived in the late-1950s -- I mean the British Musical-Hall Comedy (akin the Vaudeville in the USA) and the Gothic Horrors we mostly relate to the era of the Classic Monsters of USA’s Universal Studios.   Producer  Peter Rogers  and Director  Gerald Thomas , wanted to keep the style of Musical Hall Comedy alive, and were the driving force behind the series, which included 31 films running from 1958 to 1995, and during that long run there was a 13-episode-long TV series and a few Christmas Specials also for TV. They relied of a regular cadre of talent both in front and behind the camera, but I’m fairly sure Rogers and Thomas were the only persons involved in every si...

  The Descent (2005)   Horror fiction has always been a male-dominated form, both among creators and content. Never-the-less, making female characters the central players in Horror fiction isn’t new. The “Woman in Peril” sub-Genre not only older than cinema, but even older than the time that Critics and Marketers started creating clear Genre categories for fiction, good examples are Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” and her sister Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” (both first published in 1847).   Still, commonly presenting stronger female protagonists would take some time, the first hints of the coming revolution would appear, surprisingly, in one of the first Slasher films, “Black Christmas” (1974). Other Slasher’s mostly displayed loathsome misogyny so bluntly that it began to annoy even male Horror creators, and they pushed back. That, most likely, would make the most important landmark “Alien” (1979).   The ‘70s was the Feminist Era, and the concerns it p...

  Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1986, not fully released till 1989)   We have an unhealthy attraction to Serial Killers in this country. The FBI estimates that at any given time, there are maybe 200 active in a nation of 350 million, meaning there are two and one half times as many active Congresspersons than Serial Killers, and let’s be honest, how many of you can name more famous Serial Killers than Congresspersons?   Horror films about Serial Killers can be traced back to the dawn of horror cinema with “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” (1920) probably being the first. For the next 85‑odd years, though they were popular, there were precious few attempts to make the ones in cinema reflect the ones in the real world. This film changed that and brought about a sea‑change in other filmmakers’ perception of the subject. Since “Henry ¼ ” there have been a string of biopics about real‑world Serial Killers that at least attempt to be thoughtful and realistic, and so...