Point Pleasant is a sleepy little town straight out of a Steven King novel. Set within the sprawling forests of West Virginia and with a population of just 4,000, not much goes on around these parts. Except, that is, for repeated sightings of a terrifying demon — a seven-foot tall, half-man, half-bird creature with red…
From North America to Scandinavia, from southern Europe to the Middle East, from the Himalayas to Australia, local myths are a common cultural feature. From the Jersey Devil to the Loch Ness Monster, from the Bunyip to the Yeti, people in particular areas perpetuate tales of mysterious creatures that appear and disappear. While never fully…
The title, GoatSucker, may sound like a disturbingly niche adult movie, but it actually refers to the Puerto Rican myth of El Chupacabra, a bear-like carnivore believed to feed on livestock and humans. Made in 2009, this seminal monster movie is brought to the small screen by Steve Hudgins, who most recently authored the woeful…
Mahal (Kelly Lou Dennis, “Three Tutus and a Gun”) is an aswang, an ancient race of vampires derived from Philippine folklore. But that aspect of her being is deeply repressed, and her role in present-day San Francisco is to be a member of an elite vampire-hunter squad. Mahal’s mission is to track down and kill…
It feels like an exercise that is an illustration that looks like a transmutation passing for an adaptation in drag while clothing itself with cues of sensuality where there’s little more than a holographic reflection of flesh come true with some make belief bleeding. In reality, though, Christophe Honoré’s Metamorphoses uses its original more as…
As Arthurian films have gone in recent years, the most epic in my opinion is probably “Excalibur” from 1981; the most interesting one is the 1995 Richard Gere vehicle, “First Knight”; the most fun was the 1963 animated “The Sword in the Stone”; while the best is easily 1975’s classic, “Monty Python and the Holy…
In an effort to recognize every genre and cultural sub-group, Walt Disney Animation Studios has scored again with Moana, a tale recounting how Pacific Islanders traversed the South Seas in search of lands to inhabit. Here, a few archaeological facts are mixed with the Legend of Maui, a demigod/shape-shifter/adventurer who, with his trusty ivory fish…
