How Hitchcock Changed Horror: Psycho at Sixty-Six

|Clare Brownlee| Hitchcock is considered one of the enduring masters of the horror genre, and his 1960 film Psycho is no exception to that renowned filmography. It not only started a new kind of horror movie entirely, but maintains a legacy as one of the greatest in the genre. I’m not… Continue reading

Pretty Poison: An Anti-Lolita for the Post-Code Era

|Sophie Durbin| Let me set a scene for you. In a quaint little town in mid-century America, an emotionally stunted man with a suspicious past becomes fixated on a lovely young girl. In an attempt to incorporate her into an insidious plot, he whisks her away, lying about his identity and his intentions… Continue reading

Killer Smile

|MH Rowe| Nathaniel West’s The Day of the Locust (1939), which like Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays (1970) is a classically bleak “Hollywood novel,” ends as Didion’s later story never could: with a riot. No one could riot in Play It as It Lays. Although it is set in the unruly 1960s the violence of… Continue reading