Month: October 2018

Haunted Houses around the U.S.

Ah, October. Second only to summer in general, October is my favorite month of the year. I am indifferent to pumpkin spice everything, but what I like about October is the fall colors, the end of stink bug season, and the abundance of horror movies and haunted houses. I have posted before about the former but never about the latter.

I suppose this post could have come earlier in the month, as we are just three days away from Halloween-proper as I write this. Still…better late than never.

Below is a selection of three haunted attractions from around the country that I have had the opportunity to visit. Keep reading to learn more…if you dare. Continue reading “Haunted Houses around the U.S.”

Photo Locale of the Month – October 2018

Although it has been awhile, I have written before of my love affair with Germany, arguably Europe’s most dynamic country…and certainly the continent’s contemporary economic powerhouse. From the picturesque crags of the Alps in the south to the liberal port cities of Hamburg and Bremen in the north, Deutschland has something on offer for nearly everyone.

The most famous river in Germany, the Rhine, is lined with a series of factory towns that contribute to the country’s robust economy. It is along the southern banks of a different river. the Moselle, that one of my favorite cities resides…just far enough off the beaten touristic path to feel perfectly undiscovered. Trier, the oldest city in Germany, is home to a cluster of Roman ruins, the northernmost collection in mainland Europe.

Continue reading “Photo Locale of the Month – October 2018”

A Moving Experience

This past weekend, Morristown, TN, midway between Knoxville and Johnson City, played host to the Vietnam Moving Wall. A half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, the Moving Wall has been traveling around the U.S. since 1984.

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And Yet Still Another Ten Good Horror Movies (#41-50)

I noticed something weird when re-reading last year’s blog post on this subject. I was ranking the 31st – 40th-best horror movies when I realized that some of my rankings were way off. “Get Out,” which I ranked as #32, went on to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay – a first for the genre. Surely it deserved a higher slot than #32. The film before it on this list, “It Follows,” though just three years old, remains wholly re-watchable, and its stylistic and tonal similarities to 1978’s “Halloween” make it, like “Get Out,” a high-water mark in horror cinema during the genre’s recent quality resurgence.

In hindsight, surely both of these movies should rank higher on this first-part list than, say, “The Cabin in the Woods,” a meta-horror comedy from 2012 that, while equally original, likely won’t age as well. I will posit that they should even rank higher than “A Nightmare on Elm Street,” which I enjoyed in the 1980’s but which rarely comes up anymore in discussions about great horror movies. And yet I ranked “Cabin” at #10 and “Nightmare” at #18. Of course, I hadn’t seen “It Follows” when I compiled the first two posts on the subject; and “Get Out” hadn’t even been made at that point.

What can I say? Like every other post on my site, I leave the written content as is (grammatical corrections notwithstanding). The content is what it is, and I’m certainly not the only critic – amateur or otherwise – to rethink a movie’s rank or rating after voicing his or her initial opinion about the film. With that being said, below is my latest list – the fifth in a series – of great horror movies:

Continue reading “And Yet Still Another Ten Good Horror Movies (#41-50)”