Creature Feature Preacher: The Spirituality of Recent Releases from Kino, Severin, Masters of Cinema

Sometimes the Creature Feature Preacher finds himself in conversation with filmmakers via interview. Sometimes the dialogue is with the films themselves via thought pieces or even simple reviews.

Since the heart of this column is teasing out the spiritual threads from filmmakers and their work, it moves boundaries. I'm not just looking at specifically or overtly religious work, i.e. Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973) or Scorsese’s Little Buddha (1993). I believe there are spiritual themes and questions raised by any attempt at storytelling.

Of course, it’s possible to miss the forest for the trees (or even the trees for the forest). To make mountains out of molehills or misjudge the distance between two points. The trick is a balanced view.

As a person of spiritual interests, I never want to co-opt a film by reading into what it has to say rather than grappling with what is really there. Please accept this humble first effort at combining my love of collecting film, dialoguing with its metaphysics and simply celebrating its simple existential joys. I request titles for review specifically because they interest me personally.

This time, I’m examining June releases from Kino, including the Blu-ray debut of Rustler’s Rhapsody (1985); the startling and effective tribute to pulp horror and the power of the human imagination I, Madman (1989); and the glorious Rube Goldberg-style slapstick of Gore Verbinski’s feature film debut, Mousehunt (1997).

Next are several releases from Severin Films that made me jump for joy when they arrived. Marina De Van’s hard to watch but most rewarding examination of self-cannibalism, In My Skin (2002); the pitch-black comedy and deeply insightful Entertaining Mr. Sloane (1970); the visually and audio-logically (I made a word up) upgraded box set of Hemisphere schlockola Fear in the Philippines: The Complete Blood Island Films; and last but not least, something I was so happy to see I shrieked into the night, the Masters of Cinema boxset, Terror in the Fog; The Wallace Krimi at CCC.

So enjoy these mini-stabs at what genre cinema looks like to a spiritually-minded fellow film enthusiast.

This article first appeared on Screen Anarchy.