‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’ on Criterion Channel

The title may sound like pure pulp but The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957), Jack Arnold’s screen adaptation of Richard Matheson’s novel The Shrinking Man, is compassionate, intelligent, and the most metaphysical American science fiction film until Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Scott Carey (Grant Williams), just a guy on a daylong boating excursion, drifts […]

Christopher Lee in the horror film by Terence Fisher

‘The Devil’s Bride’ – Christopher Lee versus the Devil on DVD

Christopher Lee, long the house villain of the horror films from England’s Hammer Films, takes a rare heroic turn in The Devil’s Bride (1968), also known in the U.S as The Devil Rides Out. Lee plays scholar and occultist Duc de Richleau, the kind of role that Peter Cushing had made his métier, as a […]

Peter Wyngarde and Janet Blair star in the adaptation of the Fritz Leiber novel from director Sidney Hayers

‘Burn, Witch, Burn!’ on Amazon Prime

Burn, Witch, Burn! (1962), also called Night of the Eagle, is a smartly-turned thriller about witchcraft, skepticism and dark magic adapted from the Fritz Leiber novel “Conjure Wife” by two of the masters of fantasy, horror and suspense: Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont (both veteran Twilight Zone scriptwriters). Peter Wyngarde stars as the college psychology […]