[Doc Faustus]

I don't think I've seen Spiral Staircase. I hear great things of course. Vampyr chilled me to the bone the first few times I saw it, but now I'm just spellbound and in a meditative state when I watch it. I think terrible vintage horror also has much more charm than terrible contemporary horror. As halfassed as Monogram and Republic movies were, I still love them. My upcoming book Jimmy Plush, Teddy Bear Detective has a lot of Monogram mystery elements and references. There's something wonderful about people with pretty much nothing but their imaginations and a need to put food in their bellies making movies. Any artist can identify with that. I only wish today's microbudget productions were as atmospheric and cool. But expectations and conventions came into play and though the conventions might have come from brilliant gamechanging indie features they're trotted out ad nauseum by derivative ignorami thinking they're in an easy genre.