Author Archive: Jason Coffman
Jason Coffman is a film writer living in Chicago. He writes reviews for Film Monthly and is a regular contributor to Fine Print Magazine (www.fineprintmag.net).
The Ghostmaker
Lionsgate’s horror slate hasn’t been all that impressive lately, and unfortunately this trend continues with The Ghostmaker. Originally titled Box of Shadows, the film was picked up by Lionsgate for distribution directly to DVD, and it does feature an intriguing concept. This automatically puts it on a higher level than previous releases from this year [...]
Movieside brings The Massacre to the Portage Theater, October 20-21
It’s that time of year again, Chicago– time to spend a lot of time in dark rooms watching horror movies to prep for Halloween! And this year, the various theaters and film groups around Chicago certainly aren’t disappointing with a ton of great programming. One of the longest-running current traditions, however, has a new home: [...]
The Sorcerers (1967)
Boris Karloff is best known to many film fans as the iconic monster in Universal’s Frankenstein, but he had a long career in film well after that hugely popular and influential film. Karloff worked constantly all his life, and he gave a few of his other most famous performances in the years leading up to [...]
Chillers (1987)
Troma recently teamed with Anchor Bay to reissue their early hit Mother’s Day (full review here), and around the same time they released a chunk of their back catalog onto Youtube for free viewing. Fans will be happy to have such immediate access to old favorites, but Troma saved another one of their 80s hits [...]
Werewolf: The Beast Among Us
Universal’s remake of The Wolf Man suffered from two major problems: its CG-heavy wolfman transformation scenes came up short, and it was so dull even the cast seemed constantly on the edge of falling asleep. However, a franchise is a franchise, and there’s more money to be made, so someone at Universal decided the best [...]
Hypothermia
Larry Fessenden has been a godsend to American independent horror. Through his work with Glass Eye Pix and Scareflix, he has helped many interesting new talents find a place in the crowded indie horror scene. One of the most interesting of these is James Felix McKenney, writer/director of the modern lo-fi sci-fi classic Automatons and [...]
Strippers vs. Werewolves
The immortal rivalry between strippers and werewolves finally comes to the screen in the astonishingly unimaginatively-titled Strippers vs. Werewolves. Or something like that. Despite its similarly utilitarian title, this film has no relation to Charles Band’s recent production Zombies vs. Strippers, or Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!: Zombies vs. Strippers, or even Zombie Strippers, may God have [...]
Klown
The influence of Kevin Smith’s brand of sweet but foul-mouthed comedy has been wide-ranging and occasionally very popular. Judd Apatow took the formula and turned it into a series of hit comedies, and in America this has transformed into a series of female-centric comedies such as Bridesmaids, Bachelorette and For a Good Time, Call…. However, [...]
Mother’s Day (1980)
Anyone who’s spent much time trolling the depths of low-budget exploitation film history is sure to be familiar with the name “Troma.” The company, founded in the early 1970s, is still a force in independent cinema to this day, recently releasing over a hundred films to be viewed for free on Youtube. However, Troma’s heyday [...]
Piranha 3DD
Alexandre Aja’s Piranha 3D managed to be one of the few remakes of recent years to stand on its own merits as a great new take on the original film’s premise, mostly by ditching everything but the basic concept of Joe Dante’s original film and applying it to a modern-day college spring break setting. Aja [...]
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