Cronos (1993)
June 6, 2026
Guillermo del Toro reroutes the vampire myth through a clockwork device in his startling 1993 debut. The fascination with antique machinery.
Tag: Practical Effects
Practical effects age better than pixels because the camera photographed something real. This tag collects reviews and essays celebrating practical effects work: puppets, prosthetics, and the craft of physical movie magic.
1980sNear Dark (1987)
June 6, 2026
Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark strips every vampire cliche and builds a Western instead. That tension carries the picture.
1990sFrom Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
June 6, 2026
The tonal whiplash is the entire experience. From Dusk Till Dawn earns its 7 by being two completely different movies stapled together, and by the strange fact that the staple holds.
2020sAbigail (2024)
June 6, 2026
Kidnappers grab a twelve-year-old ballerina who turns out to be a centuries-old vampire. The film's clever structure borrows from the heist movie.
2020sRenfield (2023)
June 6, 2026
Nicolas Cage's gloriously unhinged Dracula anchors a comedy about escaping a toxic boss, undercut by an overstuffed plot. Reframe Dracula's servant Renfield as a man in a toxic codependent relationship with his narcissistic boss, and play it as a workplace…
1990sInnocent Blood (1992)
June 6, 2026
John Landis fuses the vampire film with the mob movie in a fun, tonally chaotic horror comedy. The film's premise is its strongest asset.
1990sVampires (1998)
June 6, 2026
John Carpenter turns vampire hunting into blue-collar work and James Woods carries the whole film. Not a calling, not a tragic destiny, not a brooding romance with the dark.
1980sAn American Werewolf in London (1981)
May 19, 2026
John Landis' 1981 horror-comedy. Rick Baker transformation effects won first Best Makeup Oscar.
1970sThe Exorcist (1973)
May 19, 2026
William Friedkin's 1973 demonic possession drama. Linda Blair as Regan, Max von Sydow as Father Merrin.
1960sRudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
May 19, 2026
Billie Mae Richards voices Rudolph. The special is technically stop-motion puppet animation instead of claymation, executed by Tadahito Mochinaga's animation team at MOM Production in Tokyo.
1980sThe Fly (1986)
May 19, 2026
David Cronenberg's body horror about a scientist whose teleportation experiment merges his DNA with a housefly. The Fly is David Cronenberg's 1986 American body-horror film, a substantial remake of the 1958 Kurt Neumann original, depicting a scientist whose teleportation experiment…
1980sBeetlejuice (1988)
May 19, 2026
Tim Burton's comedy about a deceased couple haunting their old house and hiring a deranged bio-exorcist to scare out the living family. Alec Baldwin plays Adam Maitland.