Join us every week for a trip into the weird and wonderful world of trailers. Whether it’s the first teaser for the latest instalment in your favourite franchise, an obscure preview for a strange indie darling, whether it’s good, bad, ugly or just plain weird – your favourite pop culture baristas are there to tell you what they think.
This year, the United States of America are celebrating their 250th birthday. What better time to watch Netflix’s Death by Lightning, about the murder of President James A. Garfield by a delusional weasel of a man?
Meanwhile, Alan argues in this week’s Six Damn Fine Degrees, there’s never a good time to watch a Technicolor remake of a classic black-and-white movie.
And returning to the anniversary of the USA: our Summer of Genre continued on Saturday with a podcast episode dedicated to the Western, from the classics of John Ford to the Coens’ dark neo-Western No Country for Old Men. Featuring filmmaker and friend of A Damn Fine Cup of Culture, Daniel Thron!
And now, be very afraid. Because more trailers await.
Matt: I’ve enjoyed the idiosyncratic films of Robert Eggers, from The Witch to Nosferatu. Werwulf looks to continue his streak of odd, compelling takes on older stories and films, and it certainly looks atmospheric and strange. But, watching it, I can’t shake the impression that there is a tendency in him to veer towards something akin to self-parody, albeit very deadpan self-parody. In a film like The Lighthouse, I think that this is on purpose: there is a streak of absurdist comedy to that film. But since The Northman, I wonder how much of this is actually done knowingly. At what point does the ultra-grim Eggers style become exactly what we expect of him?
Sam: There’s something weirdly comforting and cozy about watching protagonists stuck in the snow during the current heatwave, as I’ve discovered on recent rewatches of the original Airport and The Thing. Hammer‘s 4K restoration of their early black-and-white monster terror The Abominable Snowman (1957) looks awfully moody and foreboding, especially due to the absence of any actual horror or titular snowman. Staple star Peter Cushing is already shouldering the dread with his signature raised eyebrows, cold stares and occasional frowns, but this seems far away from the colourful gore era soon to erupt under Terence Fisher‘s direction and adding Christopher Lee as Cushing‘s eternal arch-nemesis Dracula (or Frankenstein‘s creature, or the Mummy, or that swamp thing…). It might still be worth a watch, especially as these widescreen snowy compositions (filmed in the French Pyrenees) look so abominably pristine!
A Damn Fine Cup of Culture 