Author Archives: JD DeLuzio

TV Review: Gen V, Season One (2023)

A young girl gets her first period. Her mother comes to check on her.

Her blood turns deadly and kills both her parents.

Years later, she attends a school for people with superpowers.

We’re at Godolkin University (“God U”), an elite college for aspiring superheroes. It’s run by Vought, the evil corporation behind metahuman mutation in the universe of the dark, deranged, and brilliant comic and TV series, The Boys. Along with Boysish shenanigans among the sidekick set, we have an incendiary suicide and a sinister secret lurking, literally, beneath the well-manicured campus lawns. Actually, God U has quite a few sinister secrets. Finding the truth behind the façade can be dangerous. To paraphrase Voltaire, it is dangerous to be right when powerful people are wrong.

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Movie Review: The Marvels (2023)

In the autumn of 2023, as the DC Movie Universe scrambles and regroups and the Marvel Cinematic Universe struggles to regain its prominence in pop culture, two movies hit the screen with far less fanfare than one might expect, and diminishing expectations. DC plunged the depths and brought up Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and Marvel took a Hail Mary shot into space and bet on The Marvels.

The results are, let us say, problematic.

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October Review: Last Night in Soho (2021)

This weekend features only one film in our eerie October Countdown, the dark and beguiling 2021 trip that is Last Night in Soho.

A quiet young artist, haunted by the death of her mother, heads to fashion school and finds herself time-traveling to her favorite era, the 1960s. Don’t think the Beatles and hippie hangouts; think Petula Clark, Carnaby Street and, of course, Soho, at its most stylish and sordid.

And don’t expect a fun nostalgic trip– because the past can be dark and oppressive, and young Eloise is about to encounter missing persons, manipulation, misogyny, mirrors, and murder.

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October Countdown: Hell Baby (2013)

Think of Young Frankenstein. Now, imagine that, instead of the old Universal Monster Movies, the target was every demonic possession or haunted house horror flick since the late 1960s. And, instead of the comic genius of Mel Brooks, imagine it was written and directed by, say, the guys from College Humor. Or, in fact, the guys behind Reno 911!

This 2013 bent offering plays pretty much like what you are imagining.
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October Countdown: Satan Wants You (2023)

“If you didn’t believe it, you were suspect. I mean, at best, of not being caring about children, and at worst, that you are a Satanist.”
–Debbie Nathan, investigative journalist.

With the shadows of the Satanic Panic falling again in the form of QAnon and online conspiracism, a documentary looks back to the 1980s and, in particular, the role played by that most improbable of bestsellers, Michelle Remembers. While the book’s claims have been debunked, the truth behind it may be even more deceptively sinister than we realize.

This October Offering isn’t a horror movie. It’s a documentary film about an actual horror.

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