Last December when I was revisiting all the MATRIX movies I started thinking about the trivia that Lana Wachowski had written some comic books before becoming a filmmaker. It caught my attention not only because I’m interested in the evolution of her interests and ideas, but because all of the comics she wrote were based on characters created by Clive Barker, and I’m into that shit.
Other than a little bit of HELLRAISER in the battery farm I never made much of a connection between THE MATRIX and Barker until watching for it this time through. I noted some connections in the reviews, but stayed fascinated enough with the subject that I tracked down and read all 17 Barker comics credited to Lana Wachowski (under her previous name). I thought I could write about it for a Patreon bonus, but I was slow to capitalize on interest in THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS.
But hey, now there’s a new HELLRAISER! It’s timely again! So check out my findings on each of the comics, in approximate publication order.
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The piece explores all of Lana Wachowski’s Hellraiser, Nightbreed, and (my favorite) EctoKid comics. To unlock it you just have to sign up for any amount of money, and then you can also read all my reviews of the TWILIGHT series, other exclusive pieces about TV specials and books, some early reviews, and most importantly your contribution keeps me only working part time at the day job so I can keep doing all the good shit here. Thank you, I have such sights to show you because there is no spoon, etc.
ACCIDENT MAN: HITMAN’S HOLIDAY is the latest real-deal Scott Adkins movie (like, he’s the star, not just a guest appearance), and joins the first 
There’s this slasher sequel 
HELLRAISER (2022) is the new straight-to-Hulu HELLRAISER movie. It’s a genuine, bonafide reboot, by the original definition of the term – it doesn’t seem to work as a sequel, but it’s certainly not a remake, it’s just starting over, I guess. And it’s certainly a new start in that it’s getting more attention and being treated more like a real, existing movie than the DTV sequels that came out in 2018, 2011, 2005, 2002 and 2000. That’s partly because it’s a polished, well-directed movie with plenty of production value, and it was intentionally written to be the new HELLRAISER. Much of the series, as you may know, was just a perpetual rights retention machine – the Weinsteins ramming Pinhead into an unrelated horror script and dumping one out so they could retain the rights to dump another one out to retain the rights further down the road. Now, at last, the rights have escaped Miramax Hell and are sheltering at Spyglass Media Group (who also got 
I don’t know why it took me this long, but I finally decided to catch up with the two Mike Flanagan joints I hadn’t seen yet (not counting the dramas he made during and immediately after college, or the TV series The Firefighter Combat Challenge). He made his entry into horror in 2006, with a shot-on-video-in-one-room short called Oculus: Chapter 3 – The Man with the Plan. Like George Lucas with 
I just made my second appearance on “‘I Must Break’ This Podcast,” where I seem to go to discuss movies that Dolph Lundgren is briefly in. 
After having a great time with Rob Zombie’s new DTV movie 
MUNSTER, GO HOME! came out in the summer of 1966, a few months after the series ended, and the same day as THE ENDLESS SUMMER. (I hope somebody made that a double feature. I don’t know why.) Like the show, it was released by Universal Pictures, which is why Herman (Fred Gwynne, 
Every once in a while the streaming service Shudder does a “secret screening” – a one time only showing on their live feed of a movie they’re not gonna have available until later. I think this is a really cool idea, and something they can do specifically because they’re one of the more lovingly put together services, run by actual programmers trying to curate horror movies they think their subscribers will be excited about.
It seems like a fluke that PEARL even exists. It’s director Ti West’s prequel to his previous movie 
Well whaddya know, Rob Zombie made a PG-rated movie version of The Munsters. It’s a Universal direct-to-DVD-and-blu-ray movie, also released to Netflix on the same day, and to be honest the trailer looked pretty cheesy to me. Pre-release word I’d seen had been dire, and a pretty dull opening stretch had me worried, despite it immediately capturing a strong classic horror look.
