Alec Worley's Blog, page 3

Make Camelot Weird Again

A24

Bearing the seal of bleeding-edge studio A24, The Green Knight was trailered in 2021 as a dank, horror-tinged adaptation of a bygone fantasy text. Heads caught fire like they did in the studio’s 2018 shocker Hereditary. Gujarati-heritage heartthrob Dev Patel was daringly cast as King Arthur’s nephew Gawain, while the head-lopping Green Knight was recast as some sort of murderous Treebeard.

But fantasy fans recovering from the double-disaster of Covid and Season Eight of Game of Thrones, found ...

Review: The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021)

A24

Bearing the seal of bleeding-edge studio A24, The Green Knight was trailered in 2021 as a dank, horror-tinged adaptation of a bygone fantasy text. Heads caught fire like they did in the studio’s 2018 shocker Hereditary. Gujarati-heritage heartthrob Dev Patel was daringly cast as King Arthur’s nephew Gawain, while the head-lopping Green Knight was recast as some sort of murderous Treebeard.

But fantasy fans recovering from the double-disaster of Covid and Season Eight of Game of Thrones, found ...

Aces of Weird: The Green Knight (David Lowery, 2021)

A24

Bearing the seal of bleeding-edge studio A24, The Green Knight was trailered in 2021 as a dank, horror-tinged adaptation of a bygone fantasy text. Heads caught fire like they did in the studio’s 2018 shocker Hereditary. Gujarati-heritage heartthrob Dev Patel was daringly cast as King Arthur’s nephew Gawain, while the head-lopping Green Knight was recast as some sort of murderous Treebeard.

But fantasy fans recovering from the double-disaster of Covid and Season Eight of Game of Thrones, found ...

The Furry Folk Horror of Watership Down (1978)

Presented with what was ostensibly a cartoon about talking bunny rabbits, the British Board of Film Classification declared in 1978, “Animation removes the realistic gory horror in the occasional scenes of violence and bloodshed… while the film may move children emotionally during the film’s duration, it could not seriously trouble them.”

Watership Down was duly awarded a ‘U’ certificate – suitable for all – and a cult movie was born.

Released in the October half-term of 1978 and first aired on th...

Review: Watership Down (Martin Rosen, 1978)

Presented with what was ostensibly a cartoon about talking bunny rabbits, the British Board of Film Classification declared in 1978, “Animation removes the realistic gory horror in the occasional scenes of violence and bloodshed… while the film may move children emotionally during the film’s duration, it could not seriously trouble them.”

Watership Down was duly awarded a ‘U’ certificate – suitable for all – and a cult movie was born.

Released in the October half-term of 1978 and first aired on th...

Aces of Weird: Watership Down (Martin Rosen, 1978)

Presented with what was ostensibly a cartoon about talking bunny rabbits, the British Board of Film Classification declared in 1978, “Animation removes the realistic gory horror in the occasional scenes of violence and bloodshed… while the film may move children emotionally during the film’s duration, it could not seriously trouble them.”

Watership Down was duly awarded a ‘U’ certificate – suitable for all – and a cult movie was born.

Released in the October half-term of 1978 and first aired on th...

What Hawk the Slayer Got Right

Art by Les Edwards, image sourced from Film on Paper

There can surely be no rational defence of Terry Marcel’s ramshackle British sword and sorcery movie Hawk the Slayer (1980). By no sane definition can it be considered great cinema. It falters too often, its ambitions too clearly out of range of its meagre budget. Why then is it so greatly loved? Why are its devotees happy to accept the wayward acting, the threadbare production values, the Silly String special effects, and invest so deeply in i...

Science Fiction Double Feature: The Crow (comic book vs. movie)

Cover art by James O’Barr; movie poster © Paramount Pictures / Miramax

Fantasy, according to Ursula K. Le Guin, “is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence.”1 The genre speaks the timeless language of symbols and metaphor, of strange transformations and grail quests and Big Bad Wolves. Such allegory lends form to the ineffable, speaks the unspeakable, wrings meaning out of meaningless chaos. No wonder the genre has proved so adept at pr...

Science Fiction Double Feature: The Crow

Cover art by James O’Barr; movie poster © Paramount Pictures / Miramax

Fantasy, according to Ursula K. Le Guin, “is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence.”1 The genre speaks the timeless language of symbols and metaphor, of strange transformations and grail quests and Big Bad Wolves. Such allegory lends form to the ineffable, speaks the unspeakable, wrings meaning out of meaningless chaos. No wonder the genre has proved so adept at pr...

Aces of Weird: Starve Acre (Andrew Michael Hurley, 2019)

Cover illustration © Celia Hart

Somewhen in the 1970s, Richard and Juliette Willoughby moved to the Yorkshire countryside seeking a land of greenery and pleasantries in which to raise Ewan, their young son. Instead, Ewan dies and the land inherited by his grieving parents yields nothing but ghosts. The dour farmhouse and adjoining field – a mysteriously barren plot known hereabouts as ‘Starve Acre’ – becomes, like Shirley Jackson’s Hill House, a haunting symbol of shared psychosis.

“Another bend, ...