This is this week’s Saturday night pizza and bad movie offering. And, oh, brother, was this puppy a stinker. Plot: The opening credits roll over various shots of the weirder scenes from Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych altarpiece, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Bosch even gets a mention in those credits. The viewer is treated to aContinue reading “Review of “The Devil’s Rain” (1975)”
Tag Archives: fiction
Review of “Alien Species” (1996)
Plot: This opens with a white blob approaching earth from space and a voiceover about a prophecy about a mighty armada dominating the earth in the year 1999. A whole lot of trouble happens. The destruction of all mankind, blah, blah, blah… Max Poindexter (Aaron Jettleson) (good character name) and Holly Capers (Barbara Fierentino) areContinue reading “Review of “Alien Species” (1996)”
Review of “Blood of Dracula” (1957)
This week’s Saturday pizza and bad movie offering is a black and white vampire tale set in a girls’ school that involves not even a whiff of Dracula. Forbidden topics include cigarette smoking. The trailer hints at lesbianism, but the movie was made in 1957—you know, before such things existed. An interesting ploy. Plot: Eighteen-year-oldContinue reading “Review of “Blood of Dracula” (1957)”
Review of “History of the World: Part 1” (1981)
This is our Saturday pizza and bad movie offering, one we’d both seen before but not for many years. We’d tried a new wine, something called a Malbec. To my (*cough*) discriminating palate, it tasted a lot like a cab and was quite yummy. Plot: This Mel Brooks farce is told in five historical vignettesContinue reading “Review of “History of the World: Part 1” (1981)”
Review of “The Iron Woman” by Margaret Deland
Plot: Set some decades before the turn of the twentieth century, this follows the lives of four children who grow up in fictional Mercer, Ohio-ish, a stand-in for the author’s own hometown of Pittsburgh, PA, then an ironworks hub. The iron woman of the title is Sarah Maitland, mother and stepmother of two of theContinue reading “Review of “The Iron Woman” by Margaret Deland”
Review of “My Country is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou
Plot:At first, Niovi tries to smuggle her mother’s ghost into the new country in a necklace. It doesn’t work. Foreign ghosts are not needed in the new land. “The only things [the ghosts] had to offer were stories and memories,” the reader is told. She has a choice. She can go back to Greece. SheContinue reading “Review of “My Country is a Ghost” by Eugenia Triantafyllou”
Review of “The Sandman” by E. T. A. Hoffmann
This is a classic horror story, first published in 1816 in a collection titled “Nachtstücke” (“Night Pieces”) by E. T. A. Hoffmann, a writer, composer, and caricaturist with a day job as a jurist. It remains one of his most often anthologized works in English—and little wonder. Even if the language is a bit thickContinue reading “Review of “The Sandman” by E. T. A. Hoffmann”
Review of “8-Bit Free Will” by John Wiswell
Plot:The Hollow Knight and HealBlob form a video game duo, one an attacker and the other a healer. Together, they fight players and usually die a quick death before they have a chance to become aware of themselves or each other. The player Trent flips back and forth between the game, IMs with his sort-of-not-reallyContinue reading “Review of “8-Bit Free Will” by John Wiswell”
Review of “Eyespots” by Shannon Fay
Plot:Aurea the alien is taking Entomology 101. To everyone else, she looks like a beautiful human. The guys all move in, but she rebuffs them. She only has time for Clara, a creative writing major. Aurea’s persona as an alien, while cute, begins to wear thin. Thoughts: This is an extremely short piece, with everythingContinue reading “Review of “Eyespots” by Shannon Fay”
Review of “Honeybee and the Blot” by Logan Thrasher Collin
Plot:Honeybee remembers first meeting the Blot when he told her she was the most beautiful insect he’d ever seen. He stroked her antennae with a tendril of darkness. He said they belonged together. A machine built to serve humanity, Honeybee never thought of belonging with anyone. The Blot convinced her she is more than aContinue reading “Review of “Honeybee and the Blot” by Logan Thrasher Collin”
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 