Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on March 7, 2022

Although the story really comes from H.P. Lovecraft's The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, Roger Corman's The Haunted Palace (1963) bills itself as one of the director's Edgar Allan Poe films and features all of the familiar trappings of those Gothic horror tales. Vincent Price is, as usual, in the...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on February 16, 2022

Note: This post contains plot spoilers for the Deep Space Nine episode, "Necessary Evil" I'm currently making my way through the entirety of the Star Trek TV series, Deep Space Nine, which I never got to watch regularly during its first run, and so far it has been a richly...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on January 23, 2022

Some years ago my dear friend and fellow popular culture scholar Anissa Graham and I co-edited two books about the works of Jim Henson. They're essay anthologies featuring scholarly discussions by a wide variety of authors, including us, and they were a lot of fun to create. Both of the...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on January 20, 2022

Earlier this month I celebrated my 50th birthday, one of those milestone events that feels important even if the pandemic kept me from doing much to mark the occasion. Several years ago, when I was 42, I wrote a post about 42 year old classic movie actresses and the films...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on January 10, 2022

It's that time again, when I post my my movie log in review for the previous year and reflect on another year's worth of movie watching. 2021 continued to be dominated by the pandemic, which affected my movie viewing in several ways. I saw exactly one new release in an...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on December 15, 2021

Here's another one of those moments where my literary, cinematic, and LEGO obsessions collide. In August I watched The Green Knight (2021), a modern revision of the iconic chivalric romance, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a story I've loved since I first read it as a student and then...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on December 9, 2021

Every Christmas brings new holiday movies, especially with streaming services like Netflix cooking up batches of them like trays of cinematic sugar cookies, but the classics are those we return to year after year. They become beloved traditions in many families, and ours is no different. I know ther   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on November 18, 2021

Recently I've seen both of the newest MCU movies, Shang-Chi and The Legend of the Ten Rings (2021) and The Eternals (2021), and that inspired me to reflect on the MCU pictures as a group and my favorites among them. There are already more than 25 movies to choose from,...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on October 25, 2021

Long before Uma Thurman's relentless Bride swore to kill Bill in the Quentin Tarantino movies, Jan in the Pan killed her own treacherous Bill in the low-budget horror classic, The Brain That Wouldn't Die (1962). Despite its B-horror status and sleazy male gaze, The Brain That Wouldn't Die turns out   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on October 18, 2021

Even people who don't care for classic horror movies have probably heard of Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Vincent Price, but behind every horror classic there's also a director asking for heavier fog, more menacing closeups, and louder screams. Alfred Hitchcock, although not primarily a horror dir   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on October 8, 2021

Halloween is my favorite holiday, even though I'm too old for trick-or-treating and don't have a little one now to take around the neighborhood. It's an especially good time of year to revisit the movie monsters and film phantoms of Golden Age Hollywood, but there's a lot more to enjoy...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on September 20, 2021

It's really difficult for me to pick only five films for Bette Davis. She's one of my favorite stars, and her career spanned decades, with juicy, memorable roles from her early years right up to her death in 1989 at the age of 81. She was nominated for 11 Best...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on September 16, 2021

I wouldn't normally think about making a five favorite films list for a producer, but Val Lewton is special. Born Vladimir Leventon in what is now Ukraine, Lewton headed the horror unit for RKO in the 1940s and made brilliant, moody horror pictures on shoestring budgets. He eschewed gimmicks and...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on September 9, 2021

English actor Leslie Howard is best remembered today for his role as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind (1939), but Howard himself was not a fan of the part or his own casting in it. He said of the role, "I hate the damn part. I'm not nearly beautiful...   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on September 7, 2021

We finally got to watch Disney's latest entry in the live action treatments of 101 Dalmatians characters, which this time moves the focus off the dogs entirely and charts the early misadventures of its title anti-heroine, Cruella de Vil. Early reviews of Cruella (2021) were mixed enough that we chos   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on April 30, 2021

What happens when a modern American girl enters the London debutante season? That's the question posed by The Reluctant Debutante (1958), a romantic comedy from director Vincente Minnelli with more than a few outdated notions hiding under the hem of its ballgown. Set during the final year of the old   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on March 17, 2021

Thanks to Disney Plus, viewers can finally enjoy all five seasons of The Muppet Show, and at my house we've been delighted to have access to the long-awaited fourth and fifth seasons, which were never available on DVD. The release has created some controversy about Disney's decision to include conte   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on February 19, 2021

Adapted from the thrilling tales penned by Baroness Orczy in the first years of the twentieth century, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) is an essential part of the swashbuckler genre even though it's not exactly an action picture. Instead, Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon, its stars, are primarily involve   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on February 11, 2021

The notorious Edinburgh murderers Burke and Hare supplied the insatiable cadaver market with "made to order" corpses in the early 19th century, and they've been nightmare fuel for popular culture ever since, with multiple horror films revisiting their crimes. Among these is The Flesh and the Fiends   read more

Virtual Virago Posted by Jennifer Garlen on January 29, 2021

As we all know, 2020 was a year unlike any other. With the pandemic raging and constant political crises unfolding, we needed movies to comfort us more than ever but couldn't leave the house to enjoy them. My 2020 movie log reflects the fact that I usually had company on...   read more