Crifearion: The Scary Side of The Criterion Channel

A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.

Crime reporter John Jones (Joel McCrea) is turning in nothing but dull copy. His editor, unhappy with his work, hopes a change of scenery will be the thing Jones needs to get back on track. Re-assigned to Europe as a foreign correspondent, Jones is very much out of his element. When he stumbles on a spy ring, he feels ill-equipped to unravel the truth alone and he seeks help from a beautiful politician's daughter (Laraine Day) and an urbane English journalist (George Sanders).

Greed and class discrimination threaten the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan.

In a world where zombies form the majority of the population, the remaining humans build a feudal society away from the undead. Ruthless Paul Kaufman (Dennis Hopper) rules and protects this microcosm but enforces painful class distinctions. Second-in-command Cholo DeMora (John Leguizamo) attempts to lead a secret rebellion against Kaufman's tyranny, but when the zombies begin to evolve, the survivors must discover a way to protect themselves from a zombie hoard that can learn and adapt.

 To conduct his humanitarian research, a doctor in Edinburgh needs a constant supply of fresh corpses—provided by his evil henchman (Karloff), who steals bodies from the graveyard. But when the cemetery runs short, the grave robber turns to murder.

 ISLE OF THE DEAD conjures a mood of steadily rising claustrophobic dread as it circles around one of producer Val Lewton’s favorite themes: the relentless human drive toward death.

The first of the horror films producer Val Lewton made for RKO Pictures redefined the genre by leaving its most frightening terrors to its audience’s imagination.

OHHH buddy was this one different...but in a GREAT WAY!!! If you wanna watch a movie where you like but dont trust a soul! The Grifters has you covered fam!

Brian De Palma’s first foray into horror voyeurism is a stunning amalgam of split-screen effects, bloody birthday cakes, and a chilling score by frequent Alfred Hitchcock collaborator Bernard Herrmann.

That's OK. I didn't expect thanks. -- Tom Ripley, wiping spit from his face Tom Ripley is fascinating in the sense that a snake is fascinating. He can kill you, but he will not take it personally and neither should you.   - Roger Ebert

This one gets too real too quick! It also delivers some of the hardest laughs from a film we have seen in a long time! 

George has been saying its his fave for years.....and now that I have seen it! Its def one of the best! 

What is The Game? Its.....a game? I'll humor you with specifics later ;) 

We like talking about older films....so how about a new film set back when they made those films! We loved this movie so much were both seeing it again tonight. Instant classic! 

On this week's episode of Crifearion we discuss a film that is part Full Metal Jacket and part Stand By Me.    Bernhard Wicki’s astonishing The Bridge was the first major antiwar film to come out of Germany after World War II, as well as the nation’s first postwar film to be widely shown internationally, even securing an Oscar nomination.    Are you ready to find out what happens when the most important struggle of your life takes place in the least important place you can imagine? This is Crifearion.

In this elegantly unsettling murder mystery, Stellan Skarsgård plays an enigmatic Swedish detective with a checkered past who arrives in a small town in northern Norway to investigate the death of a teenage girl. 

Jabez Stone is a hard-working farmer trying to make an honest living, but a streak of bad luck tempts him to do the unthinkable: bargain with the Devil himself. 

Are you ready for a movie as disturbing as it is funny, as laid back as it is intense? Are you ready to meet a femme fatale who only wears white, see Julia Roberts in an electric chair and hear a pitch for The Graduate Part 2? We didn't have your address so we couldn't send you a postcard... accept instead this episode of Crifearion where we watch Robert Altman's comeback masterpiece, The Player

Chuck Tatum, an amoral newspaper reporter who washes up in dead-end Albuquerque, happens upon the scoop of a lifetime, and will do anything to keep getting the lurid headlines. Wilder’s follow-up to Sunset Boulevard is an even darker vision, a no-holds-barred exposé of the American media’s appetite for sensation that has gotten only more relevant with time.

One of the best and most literate movies from the great days of horror, The Most Dangerous Game stars Leslie Banks as a big-game hunter with a taste for the world's most exotic prey, his houseguests, played by Fay Wray and Joel McCrea. Before making history with 1933's King Kong, filmmakers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack wowed audiences with their chilling adaptation of this Richard Connell short story.

It's monster fighting time! Crifearion takes on Gojira (Godzilla 1954) in The Criterion Channel's amazing presentation, along with the not-quite amazing Godzilla King Of The Monsters (2019), Shin Godzilla (2016) and more. https://www.criterion.com/films/27755-godzilla

Tatsuya Nakadai and Toshiro Mifune star in the story of a wandering samurai who exists in a maelstrom of violence. A gifted swordsman plying his craft during the turbulent final days of shogunate rule in Japan, Ryunosuke (Nakadai) kills without remorse or mercy. It is a way of life that ultimately leads to madness   Horror Connections: Evil Dead 2, Zodiac, Throne Of Blood

In a squalid South American oil town, four desperate men sign on for a suicide mission to drive trucks loaded with nitroglycerin over a treacherous mountain route. As they ferry their explosive cargo to a faraway oil fire, each bump and jolt tests their courage, their friendship, and their nerves. The result is one of the greatest thrillers ever committed to celluloid, a white-knuckle ride from France’s legendary master of suspense, Henri-Georges Clouzot.   Horror Connections: Diabolique, Duel, The Hills Have Eyes

Vengeance Is Mine   A thief, a murderer, and a charming lady-killer, Iwao Enokizu (Ken Ogata) is on the run from the police. Director Shohei Imamura turns this fact-based story—about the seventy-eight-day killing spree of a remorseless man from a devoutly Catholic family—into a cold, perverse, and at times diabolically funny examination of the primitive coexisting with the modern.   Horror Connections: Seven, Phantasm, The Devils

Writer/ director Blake Edwards followed up the enormous success of the chic and sophisticated Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) with a decided change-of-pace: Experiment in Terror (1962), a Neo-Noir character-driven thriller featuring non-clichéd, nuanced performances from Lee Remick, Glenn Ford, and Ross Martin as a calculating psychopath. The film also boasts one of the most memorable opening scenes of any thriller.   Horror Connections: The Strangers, Red Dragon, Psycho