Despite their dissimilar filmographies, I have great affection for both the arthouse friendly A24 and the drive-in exploitation of American International Pictures. That’s why I’m such a sucker for the story behind the making of A24’s Pearl, which follows AIP’s old philosophy that if you’re going to go to the trouble of hauling a cast and crew out to a remote location, you might as well make two pictures while you’re there. Pearl began life in a New Zealand hotel room in October of 2020. While in a government-mandated two-week quarantine ahead of making the 1970s-set horror film X, writer/director […]

“The story can’t just change midway through,” exclaims a pretentious adult film director incredulously in X.  It certainly can in a Ti West horror film, where one of the joys is often the shift from the methodical pace of the opening to the blood-drenched mania of the finale. Set in 1979, X finds a group of ambitious but inexperienced filmmakers heading to a remote Texas farm with dreams of making the next Debbie Does Dallas. However, the troupe fails to inform their hosts – an elderly couple who rent the crew their bunkhouse – about the purpose of their visit, […]