Robert Emmett Murphy, Jr.

  Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (2010 Novel by Seth Grahame-Smith)   This book is better than you’d think, and maybe that’s the problem.   If the forecasts of the end of paper-based publishing as we know, and the similar forecasts of end of the Novel as an important art form, prove correct, what will we be left with?   Well, one thing I note when I go into a bookstore is that though maybe I can’t find I personally want any more, there’s an ever-growing abundance of at least one product. The product is remarkably adaptable to our all-too-instantaneous culture and so deeply committed to vacillating fashions that though these books are individually ephemeral, they are collectively eternal. I refer to Novelty Books.   Each is quickly produced, and just as quickly forgotten, yet the space they occupy in the store is never empty, and if you return to that space over and over again, you will see that our impulsive and unconsidered consumption of fac...

  The Chain (2019 novel by Adrian McKinty)   Everywhere there are dangers and everywhere we see our own vulnerabilities. We generally push those thoughts aside because our vulnerabilities are embedded in our ability to function in our society; we can’t worry too much about nefarious internet Data-Miners because we rely so much on those same communications mediums to feel part of the world, and we can’t live in constant fear of our children being kidnapped because that fear would distort our children badly.   Often our only defense from sheer, stark, soul-crippling, terror seems complacency, but that complacency is itself a vulnerability. To avoid madness, we vicariously embrace our wildest fears. We are rational people, not like those embracing Satanic Panic, Pizzagate, Qanon, and other witch-hunt-breed conspiracy masturbations, but still love to decompress through pulp/popular fictions. Yes, unfortunately, these fictions feed the fears of the Satanic Panic et al...

  The Pit and the Pendulum (1961)   “Edgar Allan Poe is not the easiest writer in the world to adapt to the screen. The frenzied, hyperbolic narration of a homicidal madman, the constant air of sexual perversity and dread that throbs behind every word - these things come over strongly on the page in the hands of a gifted writer.” n Critic Zack " Marlowe " Handlen Watching Director Roger Corman's first decade of film making is like watching a precocious kid grow from Kindergarten to University. Even is his first five years (starting in 1955) when he Directed a shocking 24 features and Producer many more, his product was often (mostly?) stupid and bad, but in equal measures dynamic and groundbreaking. In 1960 he started on his Edgar Allan Poe Adaptations and achieved his first Critical praise, unexpected financial success, and proved capable of capturing the atmosphere and drive of an Author known by all but who had daunted so many other filmmakers. By 1964, these...