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By Ryan Fleming. Villa Diodati, the birthplace of both Frankenstein and Polidori's The Vampyre. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. As...

By Ryan Fleming. A publicity poster for On The Waterfront. It could equally have been used for The Hook. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Sometimes, a film can be made at the wrong time. It can come either too early or too late to resonate properly with audiences than it might have done had it been made at a more appropriate time. This might be frustrating to the writers of those scripts. Imagine how frustrating it must be, however, to have an idea seemingly not appropriat

By Ryan Fleming. Going viral - The Blair Witch Project. It could only have been made in the early Internet period. Picture courtesy...

By Ryan Fleming Cross. Holy Water. Garlic. Stakes. Cheese Sandwiches. Just another day at the office for Van Helsing. Picture courtesy...

By Ryan Fleming Idris Elba looking out of place. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. As film development drags into the dreaded development hell, there usually comes a point of no return. The point at which, no matter what, a film must be made, because so much effort (and, more importantly, money) has been sunk into the project. This is especially true in the modern days where news, rumours, and filmmakers are so readily accessible, and interactive, to the potential audience.

By Ryan Fleming. Onryō; Japan's spirits of vengeance. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. This is, I am given to understand, the...

By Ryan Fleming. It's that man again. We'll see a lot of him. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. In which Ryan Fleming imagines a 1970s...

By Ryan Fleming. No. Not this alien. Not quite. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Too often in the West, success or impact in film is couched purely in terms of the American film industry based in Hollywood. Despite most nations having their own native film industry, many of them since the earliest days of film and some of them actually predating Hollywood. Such was the success of Satyajit Ray, whose films produced in his native India had earned major awards in Europe throu

Marooned guest: Ryan Fleming Tradition. Plus it saves searching out a new picture each time. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Once...

By Ryan Fleming. Zombie Hunters in New Orleans. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The feeling of fear in horror fiction is usually felt...

By Ryan Fleming Everyone loves a Styracosaurus. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. In any industry, advances in technology can alter the trajectory of companies, people’s careers, and projects in a very rapid fashion. The film industry is no exception, and the fleeting nature of fame and fortune perhaps is even more susceptible to these changes than other more staid industries. Advances in technology can include the move from silent to talkie pictures, from back-and-white to

By Ryan Fleming This is not a good sofa to hide behind. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Since age restrictions were introduced to...

By Ryan Fleming HP Lovecraft. Unfilmable? Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Unfilmable is mostly spoken about as a certitude, that certain works cannot be adapted into a filmed medium. It is in fact an inconclusive state. We know this because many works that were previously deemed unfilmable have already been filmed. William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch was adapted in 1991, Bret Easton Ellis’ American Psycho in 2000, and JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings from 2011 to 2003. T

By Ryan Fleming. The grandmother of slasher films. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. An oversaturated marketplace caused by innumerable...

By Ryan Fleming Inevitably, it was also made into a Musical. Bodyguards don't normally burst into song. Trust me on that. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. There are many measures by which the success of a film can be graded. Probably the most important to those that control the production of films is getting a return on the budget they put up. It is why they are more willing to bet money on something that is likely to be a success than take a risk on something completely n

By Ryan Fleming. Frankenstein at work in his laboratory. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. Modern horror fiction was born in novels....

By Ryan Fleming Sales of chainsaws rose after the film. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. As the 1960s became the 1970s, US horror...

By Ryan Fleming Four out of five; a series long in the production. Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. 2023 will see the release of a film sequel. Not an unsurprising development, since almost all major releases for most of the 21st Century have been sequels. Or prequels. Or remakes. Or reboots. Or seqoots. Or spin-offs. Or midquels. Or any number of ways Hollywood has connived to trade on past nostalgia to make up for a dearth of ideas. This one stands out for two reasons: f

By Ryan Fleming Who else? Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons. The success or failure of a film often comes down to its script. There are myriad other factors that can make or break a film, but the script is the component that a production is sold on. Most cases of development hell involve the script being constantly rewritten. Even in a successful film, however, the script is largely provisional right up to filming. So, whilst a script can often take the blame, or praise, for

By Ryan Fleming Sammy is preparing for a big event, due on June 6th. Set your calendars. On the Sea Lion Press Forums, we run a monthly...