Alex Pagliuca

Laurie Strode has been a part of pop culture, and an icon within the section of that culture most interested in horror, for almost 50 years. As Halloween is seen as the film that introduces mass audiences to the slasher sub genre, popularizing it through it’s runaway success, Laurie is also consider

On October 14, 2007, Paranormal Activity ends a long, circuitous journey to theaters, dethroning the Saw franchise from the position of Halloween season box office champion. The Saw franchise had dominated the October box office for five previous installments, and generated mountains of money. A fil

Having gone through John Marshall's sense of his masculinity, its foundations, and the personal issues it's causing him in Part 1 of this series, then the way the film presents the spectrum of masculinity in the town of Snow Hollow in Part 2, it's time to take a look at the way the film presents an

In Part 1 of this series, I went through the ways The Wolf of Snow Hollow depicts its protagonist, John Marshall, in how his inability to see beyond his conception of masculinity was creating havoc and conflict in every area of his life, including getting in the way of the murder investigation he's

From the first time I saw it, the thing that impressed me most about The Wolf of Snow Hollow was the combination of incisiveness, honesty and accuracy with which it's protagonist John Marshall is portrayed. It is accurate and little too plain to say, The Wolf of Snow Hollow treats John Marshall as a

[NOTE: Since this film was released in 1968, I'm not going to attempt to avoid spoilers. It's a great film, worth the time, so go watch it before you read this.] In 1966, Charles Whitman climbed to the top of the clock tower at University of Texas Austin with a bevy of firearms. In the ninety-six mi

I had a troubling experience today. I rode my bicycle to the convenience store a few minutes away. It's on a busy thoroughfare near where I live, so there was a line to the check out counter. I got in the line, because it's better than a shoplifting arrest, and this is what we do. The line was movin

NOTE: There will be spoilers for the original 1978 Halloween. There will be no attempt to avoid them. This is written with the assumption the reader has seen the film. The original Halloween is an achievement in independent filmmaking. It spawned three characters who have become part of the pop cult

I had some of the very standard problems as I was going through school, the growing up stuff most of us run into at some point. The kind of stuff where you're attempting to learn how to navigate the social environment. I got along with most people, and I can honestly say I don't think I was ever a b

I'm currently working a piece which has expanded in scope and breadth far beyond what the initial idea was, but I think I have something good, and something useful. In the meantime, there's something connected to it which seems worth bringing up. A good deal of our current political climate is awash

We're going to argue about gun control. Chances anything actually gets done are slim. We're going to argue about white supremacy. Chances anything actually gets done about that aren't even slim. They're basically non-existent. We're not even going to argue about the connection between masculinity an