Tag: 2010s

Looking at its cover art, Machete Joe seems like just another cheapo slasher movie, but a couple of things set this film apart from the pack. First, the cast -- including the killer -- is primarily black (not that you can tell from the light-skinned victim and the shadowy...

As I've pointed out previously, haunted house movies (especially major releases) rarely feature black families because, well, black families are rarely shown as embodying the suburban ideal that is inevitably shattered by a haunting. Home bucks that trend...to an extent. The family in question is half black -- that...

The Mortician is an odd duck that defies easy classification. Like Apartment 4E, its cover art seems to paint it as a conventional horror film or thriller, with the titular character looking like he could be a Jack the Ripper-era serial killer. But despite his three-piece suit, bowler hat...

If you blinked, you probably missed the black guy in the original Rosemary's Baby: D'Urville Martin (later a Blaxploitation regular in films like Dolemite, Hell Up in Harlem, Hammer and Five on the Black Hand Side) as Diego, the hotel operator in the notorious apartment building The Bramford. The...

It should go without saying that portrayals of black characters in horror movies can stand to improve, but on the bright side, they aren't as bad as they've been in the past. Compare the original King Kong to 2017's Kong: Skull Island, for instance (acknowledging that films like these...

I'm no expert on UK culture, but it seems that for the first decade or so of the 21st century, there was a (real or perceived) increase in adolescent crime attributed to youths dressed in hoodies who seemingly adopted what they saw as the dangerous elements of hip-hop culture,...

Boo! A Madea Halloween is a movie that shouldn't exist. It was conceived as a joke by Chris Rock for his movie Top Five, and Tyler Perry, apparently unfamiliar with the concept of parody, took it as a challenge. Thus, less than two years after Top Five opened, Tyler...

Michael Jai White never achieved the level of action stardom I thought he deserved. He had a great shot 20 years ago with the titular role in Spawn, but unfortunately for him, that movie kind of sucked. He had featured roles in high-profile films like Universal Soldier and Exit...

I know what you're thinking: not another zombie movie. Well, Not Another Zombie Movie beat you to the punch. Yes, it's another zombie movie, and more specifically, it's another zombie comedy ("zom com"). But here's a twist: it's an "urban" (read: black) zom com, which helps make it stand out...

NOTE: POSSIBLE (MINOR, NON-SPECIFIC) SPOILERS BELOW Having watched the movie It Comes At Night in its entirety, I can honestly say that I don't know what the hell comes at night. And as much as I like the film, this fact reflects the misleading nature of its marketing. Between the...