Oscar Horrors: Japan's Ghost Story "Kwaidan"

Boo! It's "Oscar Horrors". Each evening we'll look back on a horror-connected nomination until Halloween. Here's Dancin' Dan on a spooky Japanese beauty...

Have any of you ever seen Masaki Kobayashi's Kwaidan? I wouldn't be surprised if you hadn't. Even among Japanese films, it's not much talked about today, though it deserves to be. Kwaidan is a rarity in so many ways - an omnibus film made by one director, a truly artful horror film, a groundbreaking work of art. It was nominated for the Best Foreign Language Film in 1965 (losing to the heartrending The Shop on Main Street from Czechoslovakia), and it's a bit hard to imagine it getting that far today, even with its arthouse bona fides like a Special Jury Prize at Cannes...

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Oscar Horrors: "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?"

Boo! It's "Oscar Horrors". Each evening 'til Halloween we look back on a horror-connected Oscar nomination. Here's David on the cinematography of a camp classic...

What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? is hardly remembered as a horror classic; its camp reputation precedes it, as its recent appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race: All Stars attests. (Only the finest for that crop of drag queens!) While the film is not what we might traditionally think of as a horror film, it has the same elements of lost souls, grotesque faces and physical cruelty that you might expect from any product of the genre. Just one year after Alfred Hitchcock changed the genre forever with Psycho, Baby Jane features a close-up of Joan Crawford’s face mushed against the floor - an eerie recall of Janet Leigh’s glassy-eyed demise.

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Oscar Horrors: "Dr Jekyll and Mr Mouse"

Boo! It's time for "Oscar Horrors". Each night at 7 through Halloween we look back on a horror film or horror-adjacent film's Oscar nomination until Halloween. Here's Nathaniel R...

Here's an odd statistic to consider. Did you know that Tom & Jerry was Oscar's favorite character-based cartoon franchise? The MGM cat and mouse team won seven Oscars in the Best Animated Short category, more than any other series but for Disney's "Silly Symphonies" which also won seven times. Tom & Jerry's very first short was nominated and they won for four consecutive years from 1943-1946 at the peak of their fame.

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Beauty vs Beast: My Best Friend is a Vampire

Jason from MNPP here wishing everyone a happy week's worth of Halloween fun & spooky frivolity. Now that the New York Film Festival's behind us I feel as if I can properly focus in on the reason for the season - horror movies! So let's devote this week's "Beauty vs Beast" to one of the finest examples of the genre from our young new millenium - Tomas Alfredson's 2008 Swedish stunner Let the Right One In, which tells the tale of young Oskar and the strange "girl" named Eli who moves in next door. Eli puts the "bad dream" into the term "Manic Pixie Dream Girl," but Oskar, bullied though he may be, ain't no saint himself...

PREVIOUSLY Last week we wandered into the woods with Into the Woods and the battle between the Baker's Wife and The Witch was quite the doozy, but in the end (unlike the film) it was Emily Blunt who came out singing with 52% of the vite. Said PoliVamp:

"Baker's Wife easily. I was very unhappy with Streep's nomination, as she was only the 5th best performance in the movie (and Blunt is in that top 4 group). Also, Moments is my favorite song from the musical, give or take Agony, so this was an easy pick for me."

Oscar Horrors: The Sixth Sense (1999)

Boo! It's time for "Oscar Horrors". Each night at 7 we'll look back on a horror-connected Oscar nomination until Halloween. Here's Deborah Lipp on Best Picture nominee The Sixth Sense.

In 1999, I started going to the movies by myself. My marriage had ended, and there were visitation weekends when my ex had the kid, I was alone, out of sorts, and determined to do something with that time that felt good. 

Going to the movies alone is great. You always get the seat you want, because there’s always a singleton somewhere, and you don’t have to engage in long discussions about what to see. You just…go.  That’s how I saw The Sixth Sense...

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