Category Archives: Editorials

Editorials

Celebrating 40 Years of One of Horror’s Most Tragic Love Stories: “The Fly”

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It began with the premise of a Cheeseburger and ended up as the “Romeo and Juliet” of horror.

David Cronenberg’s bold remake of THE FLY, shows the cinematic community how a remake is done, and done well. It also took the initial love story immersed in the original 1958 film and took it a step further by throwing us on an emotional roller coaster where we all really rooted for these two, even toward the bitter end in the hopes that Brundle could be saved from his insect brain logic.

Cronenberg’s THE FLY is considered pretty unanimously as one of the greatest monster movies and body horror flicks of the 20th century; but this movie is so much more than that, and often I see the love story that literally sits at the heart of the plot, gets overlooked by the grotesque nature of the movie. Without a doubt, it’s one of the saddest, and most painful love tales one can watch unfold on-screen. Seth and Veronica’s whirlwind romance looks and feels so authentic, as the pair have incredibly believable chemistry that sucks you right into this strange world of telepods, insects, and tragedy. And leaves you in a hot mess of tears and puke- because you and I both know this movie can easily produce projectile vomit for the queasy.

One of the key points that really feels like a stab in the heart of viewers, is a half-mutated Brundlefly’s speech to Veronica on “insect politics”. Veronica is desperate to help Seth, however, Brundle knows that he is beyond her help and orders her to stay away as he feels the insect inside of him has at this point, completely taken over.

“You have to leave now, and never come back here. Have you ever heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects don’t have politics. They’re very brutal. No compassion, no compromise. I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now the dream is over… and the insect is awake. I’m saying… I’ll hurt you if you stay.” 

GUT-WRENCHING.

The biggest kick in the dick is at the very end, however. Brundle, insane with an idea to fuse him, and a now pregnant Veronica together in the telepods seem like the answer to his problem. With the help of a concerned, although douche ex-lover and co-worker of Ronnie’s, she manages to escape leaving Brundle’s DNA to be accidentally fused with the pod itself. Now we have a mutated human-fly-telepod. Good grief. Seth, reaching deep inside to his human counterpart shakily grabs a shotgun a distressed Veronica has in her hand and points it at his head, urging his love to end the madness. A hysterical Geena Davis complies and blows Goldblum’s brains out, giving us one of the most miserable endings to any horror film.

It’s a tear-jerker every time, and not something that normally happens at the end of a horror film, as most end on an emphatic cliffhanger that all is not well, producing that exciting adrenaline rush. Here, we’re left with our hearts broken for both Seth and Veronica-wishing for a better outcome, but all is gone and lost permanently.

That is, until THE FLY II came about, which also does a superb job of making us cry our eyeballs out. You know exactly what scene I’m talking about.

At the time of this article, there are no announced plans for a 40th anniversary physical media release, but I’m sure once we get closer to the date, there will be one. For now, you’ll just have to stick with an older release or stream on Amazon Prime Video.

Editorials

ANGUISH TOPS ACTION: THE SCENE THAT DEFINES ‘PREDATOR’

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Whether you categorize it as action, science fiction, horror, or all of the above, PREDATOR (1987) is a god-tier film. With Dan Trachtenberg’s PREDATOR: BADLANDS (2025) set to surpass the franchise OG at the box office nearly four decades later, it’s time to talk about what made a ninth film possible: a brief but game-changing scene that lifted PREDATOR from interesting to indelible.

Though the film is a hybrid that refuses to be limited to a single genre, it’s impossible to deny that PREDATOR has action movie tendencies. And late-eighties action meant the machismo went to 11, a fact that required PREDATOR to venture beyond awe into something raw.

Screenwriters Jim and John Thomas threw down a gauntlet of emotion ranging from exhilaration to fear, but were keenly aware that to rise above the body count of action and slasher popcorn fare demanded the audience feel the toll of loss.

Despite boasting of peak Schwarzenegger, the bravado of Carl Weathers, and the otherworldly presence and performance of Kevin Peter Hall, none were up to the challenge of carrying PREDATOR to the mountaintop.

That daunting task was placed in the more than capable hands of Bill Duke.

The film’s first act firmly established the camaraderie between Duke’s Mac and Blain (Jesse Ventura), so when Blain fell, Duke took center stage.

After Dutch (Schwarzenegger) said “[Blain] was a good soldier,” Duke’s heavy-eyed declaration “he was my friend” superseded the well-worn trope of the revenge-fueled tunnel vision to come. Mac was mourning.

Accompanied by Alan Silvestri’s Taps-inspired horns, Duke knelt next to his fallen comrade, and those same eyes spoke volumes about years, memories, and an unbreakable bond. As the horns swelled and Mac took one last drink from the flask they’d often shared, only two words escaped Duke’s lips: “goodbye, bro.”

With two words and less than sixty seconds, PREDATOR clearly communicated that these weren’t one-liner-spouting action heroes inexplicably taking out an entire army, they were human beings trying to survive.

The culmination of the Thomas’ writing, Silvestri’s score, and Duke’s delivery created a magical moment that forced the audience to share the suffocating weight of Mac’s sorrow.

In that moment, PREDATOR went to a place few movies of its ilk or era dared visit—that soldiers were people—and sometimes people lose. A moment that guaranteed PREDATOR would stand the test of time.

Editorials, Horror Nostalgia

35 Years of Trauma: How Stephen King’s “IT” Miniseries Gave an Entire Generation Coulrophobia

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The year is 1990. NASA had launched the Hubble Space Telescope, the Undertaker made his national debut at the WWF Survivor Series, and one of Stephen King’s greatest (and most controversial) novels was adapted into a visual nightmare that premiered as a two-part miniseries on ABC on November 18th, 1990. And to put it mildly, kids of the ’90s were never the same after seeing Pennywise on their large, boxy floor television set.

I remember quite vividly as a kid, being hyped up for this television horror event, and while my peers were entangled with the brand-new series Beverly Hills, 90210, all I could think about was this upcoming Stephen King movie about a killer clown. Mind you before you come at me, at this age, I had yet to read the book nor know anything about the story other than what I had seen via TV previews, as afterword I was to discover that Pennywise was more than a clown, and as a young horror nerd, I liked what I saw. So my eyeballs were ready, and after the first night of Part 1, I was both traumatized by a clown with a million teeth and my prepubescent body was enchanted by a young Jonathon Brandis. It was quite a new experience for a movie to both disturb me and set my loins aflame. Rather impressive, actually.

Outta my way, Bev. My heart burns there too.

My pre-teen admiration aside, STEPHEN KING’S “IT”, at the same time set the world on fire and brought about a resurgence in Coulrophobia (fear of clowns) in both young and old; however, for kids my age it begat a fear we never thought we may have, or much thought about and because of Tim Curry’s masterful performance, it ignited a long-standing match against anyone with a painted face of nightmares. I mean, let’s talk turkey since it’s November:  I don’t know if it’s the makeup hiding their real faces; if it’s the sense of enforced fun, this idea that you’ve got to be laughing; or maybe it’s just that we don’t like anything that tricks us repeatedly, and makes us keep coming back for more. Clowns are fools who enjoy making others look foolish, after all. Nothing more distrustful and downright disrespectful than that. It’s as if this fear was hidden in our subconscious and awakened by Stephen King himself. So if clowns didn’t bother you before the premiere of 1990’s IT, they most likely had some sort of uneasy impact on you. Those are just facts.

And if you read the book after watching the miniseries, as many of us did, that didn’t help the cause much.

As long as the miniseries was, clocking in a total of 3 hours and 12 minutes, the experience of watching it seemed like an eternity, but in the best of ways, as Pennywise torments the Losers’ Club through his favorite clown apparition, a werewolf, a sewer-dwelling slime monster, and shape-shifting into seemingly normal inhabitants of Derry. Even IT’s final boss image of what is closest to his true self, a giant spider, with those awful effects that were almost unforgivable even in 1990, all that was merely background noise to Curry’s Pennywise the Dancing Clown and to this day if I were to ask you to paint me a picture of a scary clown, chances are you’re going to show me a picture of Pennywise.

The miniseries itself wasn’t a massive hit at first, but at the time, after the television airing, it was a whisper between kids at the playground that in turn fed into curiosity and ultimately a discovery of one hell of a new fear of clowns. The IT miniseries, among many of Stephen King’s works of the 90s, being adapted into television events like THE STAND, THE LANGOLIERS, and THE SHINING, outclassed them all regarding cult horror classics and mainstay power, and that is largely due to Tim Curry’s Pennywise performance at the end of the day with becoming a larger than life icon in the horror genre. So much so that when the remake was announced back in 2016, the million-dollar question was, “Who exactly has the balls to fill Tim Curry’s clown shoes as Pennywise”? It was Curry’s role and both charming and utterly terrifying rendition that gave an entire generation of kids nightmares and a lifelong fear of clowns. Curry’s ability to articulate the absolute joy in scaring the crap out of the children; children (the Losers’ Club) whom many of us could relate with in one way or another, is to this day unmatched. No matter how much budget you out into a movie, and I’m in no way knocking Skargard’s rendition of IT, but you can’t deny Curry’s study of this otherworldly monster and the impact he had on an entire generation and beyond. He was perfect.

Be proud of that, Tim. Fuck those kids.

Stephen King himself acknowledged, “his novel ‘IT’ probably contributed to your lifelong fear of clowns”, via the Los Angeles Times, and follows it up with, in so many words, “calm your tits, folks”. Real easy coming from a guy who also wrote in an extremely graphic child orgy into said novel. I think it’s safe to assume not a lot of things bother that man. And the resurgence of clown scares before the release of IT (2017), only validate that the character of Pennywise itself, harbors a tremendous influential power over our own psyche. That, in itself, is terrifying enough. To boot, we all know to steer clear of storm drains. Just another added phobia of sewers that at least half of 90s kids have.

Thanks, Stephen King. No, I don’t want it.