REVIEW: The Howling [1981]

Well he didn’t get up and walk out on his own. With the amount of 1980s horror films that go all-in on the blood and gore from frame one, the few that don’t can’t help but standout. What’s funny is that the latter were the types I disliked as a kid. I remember watching Joe Dante‘s The Howling decades ago on television and thinking it was too boring to ever want to watch again. We don’t even get to see a werewolf—the supernatural entity we’re promised—until two-thirds of the runtime…

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REVIEW: Gremlins [1984]

“What’d you call this? The putrid stage?” There had been gremlins in existence before the diminutive green monsters screenwriter Chris Columbus, director Joe Dante, and creature creator Chris Walas imagined and yet theirs are the ones we immediately think about when the word is uttered. The design is a far cry from Bugs Bunny’s colorful adversary in 1943’s “Falling Hare” or the human sized counterpart opposite William Shatner in the 1963 “Twilight Zone” episode “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet” and by far the creepiest. From their reptilian skin, mucus covered sharp…

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