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Horror has had a rough year in 2011, both in cinemas and on our DVD shelves. As late into the year as October (the month in which horror is god) the only effective genre films have been those that merged together horror with comedy (Attack the Block and Tucker & Dale versus Evil for instance). Everything else has been shown on the festival circuit, which means they won’t see the light of public consumption until 2012. Failing that the peak of horror has potentially been saved for the final months of the year. Now instead of picking fault with the poor films that have been released thus far this year, let us travel back to the origins of the genre and to Germany where three select films were made that proved to be intrinsic in the development of the genre. Those three films are Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari,...

“Black Francis’s Golem” a Starving Art world premiere art and film event in collaboration with Alamo Drafthouse Rolling Roadshow.

Black Francis, the musical-genius frontman of highly influential alt-rock band The Pixies, has created a new score for the German Expressionist silent masterpiece Der Golem. A recording of this new film score will be spun along with the movie at the Starving Art Drive-in. Accompanying the music/film presentation, Francis’s related art work will be on display at the Starving Art Gallery.

“A silent classic and an exemplary specimen of German expressionist cinema, Der Golem is set in 16th century Prague. A rabbi fashions a proto–Frankenstein’s monster, sculpted from rough clay and brought to life through sorcery, to protect the Jewish ghetto from a Christian emperor’s decree that it be dissolved. Through means both surprising and charming, the creature manages to stave off the wrath of the emperor and his court.

By Scott Essman

In the history of the modern American cinema, there are but few legacies of makeup artists. While the legendary Burman and Dawn names each include three generations of makeup artists, there is but one lasting family that features four working generations: the Westmores of Hollywood. With ties to virtually every studio in the annals cinema, the Westmores have created classic makeups in top contemporary film and TV shows back to the earliest years of silent film.

George Westmore, the patriarch of the Westmore clan at the turn of the century, worked as a wigmaker in his native England — where he was born in 1879 — and gave birth to sons Mont (born in 1902), twins Perc and Ern (born in 1904), Wally (born in 1906), and a daughter, Dorothy (born in 1907). The young family traveled to the U.S. to seek better opportunities and maintained a wig-making and beauty salon business which floated amongst various cities,...