John Kenneth Muir's Reflections on Cult Movies and Classic TV
Creator of the award-winning web series, Abnormal Fixation. One of the horror genre's "most widely read critics" (Rue Morgue # 68), "an accomplished film journalist" (Comic Buyer's Guide #1535), and the award-winning author of Horror Films of the 1980s (2007) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002), John Kenneth Muir, presents his blog on film, television and nostalgia, named one of the Top 100 Film Studies Blog on the Net.
Monday, January 13, 2025
John talks AF (Abnormal Fixation) on Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner!
Friday, January 10, 2025
Soon AF! Two Weeks to Launch!
Wednesday, January 08, 2025
AF (Abnormal Fixation) on Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner This Weekend!
I am thrilled to announce I'll be appearing on Roy's Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner this Sunday, at 7:00 pm (1/12/25) to discuss our award-winning web series, AF (Abnormal Fixation).
Please join us if you can!
Tuesday, January 07, 2025
Abnormal Fixation Wins Two Awards at Portland New Alternative Voices Film Festival
Our little indie show, Abnormal Fixation -- which premieres in just over two weeks -- picked up two awards at the prestigious Portland New Alternative Voices Film Festival.
Tony Mercer won for Best Sound Design, and Kathryn Muir won for Best Producer! Congratulations to both, as these awards are well-deserved. The show wouldn't be what it is without their amazing dedication and contributions.
Friday, January 03, 2025
Sci-Fi Pulse Reviews Abnormal Fixation's first episode, "The Contest"
Sci-Fi Pulse just reviewed an advance copy of our first Abnormal Fixation episode, "The Contest!"
Here's a quote:
Muir has written a warm-hearted and engaging opener. The characters are established with wit and clarity. Additionally, Muir has deftly balanced the real stakes with the comedic tone. The episode is worth it for the world-building alone. Muir gives the audience an animated sequence. Moreover, we’re treated to the delightfully earnest backstory for the family heirloom serving as Elvis’ collateral...I'm hooked."
"The Contest" drops on YouTube on January 23!
Tuesday, December 31, 2024
In 2025: Twenty Years of Reflections
As difficult as it is for me to believe, this blog turns twenty-years-old in 2025, in April 2025, to be specific.
That's a long time for a blog to live!
But I've never been able to close it down, and I've posted more than 11,000 times in 20 years. And, the blog has been visited by readers more than 11 million times in that span.
And, to my delight, advertising on the blog is still making money. Whoo-hoo!
Granted, this blog's heyday was likely between 2011 - 2019, a span when I was posting thousands (!) of times a year, but it is still going strong today, even if at a less vigorous pace.
When I started blogging twenty years ago, in 2005, I had just attended the Toronto Film Festival, and was hawking my two new books The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004) and Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest (2004), and Revenge of the Sith (2005) was just premiering in theaters.
The year 2006 brought the arrival of my web series The House Between, and 2025 will bring my new (award-winning) show, Abnormal Fixation, so twenty-years brings a weird kind of synchronicity.
But to help celebrate 2025 and twenty years of blogging, I'll be highlighting here my most-read posts (reviews and otherwise), and counting down (or is it up?) to the blog's most-read post of all time.
Tuesday, December 24, 2024
A Merry AF (Abnormal Fixation) Christmas Eve Trailer
Sunday, December 22, 2024
60 Years Ago: Goldfinger (1964) and the Perfect Bond Movie Model
Saturday, December 21, 2024
50 Years Ago: The Island at the Top of the World (1974)
Fifty years ago, I was five years old, and at that tender young age I dreamed of "lost worlds of fantasy," as I call them as a critic now. In particular, I loved movies and TV shows about discovering lost worlds like Skull Island, Caprona, Pellucidar, and the like.
For my fifth birthday, I believe, my parents took me to see the newest entry in this fantasy sub-genre, The Island at the Top of the World. Then, and now, I love this film, whatever its perceived failings may be.
The film's story commence in 1907 as an archaeologist, Professor Ivarsson (David Hartman) is unexpectedly recruited for an unusual expedition. Sir Anthony Ross’s son Donald has disappeared in the Arctic, near a mythological island that is reputedly a burial ground for whales.
Ivarsson accepts the invitation, and along with Ross travels to that distant destination in a technologically-advanced dirigible, the Hyperion, commanded by eccentric French captain, Brieux. The group also teams up with an Eskimo and friend of Donald’s, Oomiak (Mako).
The expedition soon finds a lost world separated from the rest of modernity, known as Astragard. It is peopled by primitive Vikings, who view the visitors as intruders and plan to execute them.
Donald and his Viking lover, Freyja, are rescued by the expedition, but Ivarsson wants to learn more about the lost world of Astragard…
As noted above, he “lost world” premise (or trope) was one frequently depicted in the disco-decade fantasy cinema, in films like The Land That Time Forgot (1975), King Kong (1976) and At The Earth's Core (1976).
This type of film often expresses the desire to experience something new, natural or different in the increasingly mechanized/computerized, buttoned-down era of the 1970s, an age when it felt like the whole world was explored and known. The discovery of a lost world meant a return to excitement, an opportunity for adventure, and the opportunity to interface with creatures, peoples and lands one forgotten.
One of the decade’s early variations on this format was The Island at The Top of the World, a Disney film which depicts the story of a fantastically-advanced dirigible, the Hyperion, as it heads north to a forgotten world of dangerous and martial Vikings.
Roughly the first half of the film involves the trip to this lost world -- which is quite dangerous since the Hyperion is untested -- and the second half involves the twentieth-century crew interfacing with a culture that is a relic from an era long gone. Escape is not easy, and the film throws in an active volcano for good measure.
Seeking to appeal to the same audience that loved 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), with the wondrous Hyperion filling in for the wondrous Nautilus, The Island at the Top of the World features solid miniature work as the Hyperion navigates through the clouds, and between jagged, craggy cliff-faces. The volcanic island, which boasts a hidden, green valley at its center, is also well-depicted in 1970s movie terms, with evocative matte paintings and the so on.
As for the story, it is definitely pitched to children, but nonetheless features a strong emotional pull since it revolves around the efforts of a father to rescue his son. The characters are all colorful and memorable, particularly the French captain, though it is perhaps unusual that a newscaster, David Hartman, plays the film’s lead role. I remember him from Good Morning America!
Although The Island at the Top of the World lacks the overt story appeal of a monstrous nemesis like a giant ape (Kong), dinosaurs (The Land That Time Forgot), or even ancient statues come to life (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad) it is nonetheless a lost world film of startling and impressive vistas. The Astragard lands feature ice caves, a graveyard of giant whale carcasses, volcanic lava flows and other wonders, and then pits a wonder of modernity, the Hyperion, against all of them.
Although the Hyperion is seen as a sanctuary in the film, as well as a “modern marvel” (of the year 1907), the land of Astragard is also contextualized in positive terms. “The day may come when this land is man’s last refuge,” one character importantly notes, and that observation ties-in directly to a primary fear of the 1970s, that pollution and environmental rape would render man extinct in short order. The Viking land here is an unspoiled “time capsule” of a time before technology, when man could live off the land, but not harm it. Again, it seems no coincidence that this tale of exploration is set right before first "technological war," World War I, a time seen by many as the dawn of the Anthropocene, man's technological age.
Although it won my heart as a would-be adventurer and five year old, this "lost world" film failed at the box office and the intended sequel, The Lost Ones was never produced, The Island at the Top of the World is a solid and inoffensive family adventure film, and today seems very innocent compared to fantasies of the modern era. Now, as fifty years ago, I would have loved to see the Hyperion soar once more.
Thursday, December 19, 2024
50 Years Ago: The Man with the Golden Gun (1974)
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Last year at around this time (or a month earlier, perhaps), I posted galleries of cinematic and TV spaceships from the 1970s, 1980s, 1...
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The robots of the 1950s cinema were generally imposing, huge, terrifying, and of humanoid build. If you encountered these metal men,...