When I was growing up and watching Doctor Who on PBS, I had a friend whose mother forbid him from watching the show because she thought that it promoted Satanism.
Her opinion was almost totally based on the cover of the novelization of one of the Third Doctor’s most popular adventures.
She took one look at that cover and decided that both the book and the show were promoting Satan. I warned him that would happen when he first bought the book but, back in the day, it was nearly impossible to resist the temptation of the shelf of Doctor Who novels at Walden Books. It was almost as if the books had been put there by you know who.
If my friend’s mother had read the book or even watched the serial when it eventually aired on PBS, she would have discovered that The Daemons did not feature the Devil. Instead, it features Azal (Stephen Thorne), an evil horned alien who had spent centuries experimenting on humans and who had inspired many ancient myths and religions. If my friend’s mother had watched the show, she would have seen that, rather than celebrate Satan, the show instead suggested that there was no Satan and that all of mankind’s Gods were actually visiting aliens. She would have also seen that while The Master (played by Roger Delgado) disguised himself as a vicar, it fell to a local white witch to warn everyone in a quaint British village that the local archeological dig was a mistake. Because of the Master’s religious disguise, everyone followed him when they should have been listening to the pagan…
In hindsight, it’s probably a good thing my friend’s mother never watched the show.
The Daemons has a reputation for being one of the best of the Third Doctor’s adventures and I’m inclined to agree. The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) and his latest companion, Jo Grant (Katy Manning), try to stop the dig and instead find themselves trapped by a heat shield that has suddenly sprung up over the village. One of the defining images of this episode was a helicopter busting into flame when it hit the invisible barrier. With the Brigadier and the majority of UNIT outside of the village, The Doctor, Jo, Sgt. Benton (John Levene), and Captain Yates (Richard Franklin) try to stop the plans of The Master and Azal. Unfortunately, the villagers themselves have fallen under the sway of evil and are planning a special maypole sacrifice.
So many different actors have played The Master (and the character has become so overused) that it is easy to forget just how good Roger Delgado, the first Master, was in the role. Delgado played the Master as being incredibly evil but he also played him as having a sense of humor and style about his evil, which is something that subsequent Masters have often failed to do. Delgado’s Master appeared in every serial of the eighth series and he proved to be more than a worthy opponent for Pertwee’s Doctor. Off-screen, Pertwee and Delgado were close friends and Pertwee later said that Delgado’s death in a traffic accident was one of the factors in Petwee’s decision to step away from the show. The Daemons featured Delgado at his best as the Master did his worst and tried to claim the powers of someone who humans considered to be Satan.
The Daemons is also remembered for one of the best lines in the history of Doctor Who. When confronted by Azal’s gargoyle servant, the Brigadier calls over a UNIT solider and orders, “Chap with wings there, five rounds rapid.” I can only imagine how tired Nicholas Courtney got of having that line repeated to him over the years but his delivery of it is perfect. The Brigadier was such a uniquely English character, imbued with the unflappable attitude of a country that had survived the collapse of an Empire, the Blitz, and the Suez Crisis. Nicholas Courtney took a line that sounds like something Graham Chapman would have said on MontyPython and instead made it into an iconic piece of dialogue that reminded those of us American watching on PBS that, in DoctorWho, the entire universe was British.
Though it led to the show being forever banned in my friend’s house, TheDaemons is a DoctorWho classic.
On the planet of Arous, Taura (Sandy Brooke) leads a group of dwarf miners in rebellion against the international empire. The empire sends Captain Bantor (Ross Hagen), Krago (Michael D. Sonye), and the Inquisitor (Aldo Ray) to capture Taura and put down the revolution. When Bantor attempts to attack Taura, he sticks his hand in a volcanic acid plume and screams as it dissolves. Taura is arrested. Judge John Carradine sentences her to a term on Vehemence, a spaceship that serves as an intergalactic women’s prison.
StarSlammer is a Women In Prison film that happens to be set in space. Taura makes an enemy of the sadistic warden (Marya Grant) and her henchwoman, Muffin (Dawn Wildsmith). Taura also befriend Mike (Susan Stokey) and the two of them plot to overthrow the guards and make their escape. When the now crazed Bantor boards the ship, Taura sees her chance. Meanwhile, the prisoners have to deal not only with pervy guards but mutant rats.
Legend has it that Fred Olen Ray had rented Roger Corman’s New World Pictures studio for four days so that he could shoot some extra scenes for his film Biohazard. Ray finished his Biohazard work in one day and then spent the other three days filming promotional footage for the film that would become StarSlammer. He used props that were left over from Galaxy of Terror and was able to get Aldo Ray to come in for a day so that the footage would feature “a name.” Producer Jack H. Harris looked at the footage and put up the money to shoot the rest of the film on the condition that Ray change the title from PrisonShip to Star Slammer.
Amazingly, the resulting film itself is not that bad. Ray used the outer space setting as a way to both indulge in and poke fun at the common tropes of the Women In Prison genre and Sandy Brooke and Susan Stokey both turn in committed performances. Ross Hagen laughs like a maniac and demands vengeance for his missing hand while trying to get his remaining hand on a mind control device. The prisoners are kept in check by promises of prizes and free trips in return for good behavior. A thoroughly deformed guard is promoted as a sex symbol and there’s a sharp wit to many of the scenes. Star Slammer is much more clever and fun than anyone would have any right to expect it to be.
Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Mondays, I will be reviewing Miami Vice, which ran on NBC from 1984 to 1989. The entire show can be purchased on Prime!
This week, we start the fifth and final season of Miami Vice.
Episode 5.1 “Hostile Takeover”
(Dir by Don Johnson, originally aired on November 4th, 1988)
The fifth and final season of Miami Vice gets off to a good start with this episode. After opening with some appropriately glitzy scenes of the drug-fueled Miami nightlife, the episode then shows us that Sonny Crockett is still convinced that he’s Sonny Burnett. He has now returned to Miami and, along with Cliff King (Matt Frewer), he is one of the key advisors to drug lord Oscar Carrera (Joe Santos).
Carrera is at war with El Gato (Jon Polito), the brother of Sonny Burnett’s former employer, Miguel Manolo. El Gato, who wears gold lamé, cries over the body of one of his henchmen, and flinches when forced to deal with direct sunlight, is a flamboyant figure. In fact, he’s so flamboyant that it’s initially easy to overlook how determined he is to get revenge for the death of his brother. That means taking down the Carreras family and Sonny Burnett as well.
The Vice Squad knows that Sonny is moving up in the drug underworld but Castillo is firm when asked what they should do about it. Sonny has an active warrant out for murdering a corrupt cop. “Sonny’s not Sonny anymore,” Tubbs says at one point and Castillo seems to agree.
Tubbs goes undercover, making contact with the Carreras cartel. When Sonny meets Tubbs, Tubbs introduces himself as “Ricardo Cooper” and starts speaking in his terribly unconvincing Jamaican accent and that was when I said, “Miami Vice is back!” Sonny doesn’t trust Cooper from the start. “Maybe you’re a cop,” Sonny says. “Not I, mon,” Tubbs replies.
People are dying and, while Sonny doesn’t have a problem with that, the show is also careful to show that Sonny only shoots in self-defense. (It appears the most of the cold-blooded murders are farmed out to Cliff King.) When Oscar Carreras dies, it’s because his poofy-haired son (Anthony Crivello) accidentally shot him when Oscar discovered him with his stepmother. When the son dies, it’s because he was about to shoot Sonny after he caught Sonny with …. his stepmother, again. The Carreras family is so dysfunctional that it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Sonny steps up to take it over.
After promising Castillo that he’ll take out Sonny if necessary, Tubbs meets up with Sonny at beach-side tower. Tubbs looks at Sonny and suddenly says, “Sonny, it’s me, Rico.” Sonny stare at Tubbs. “Do you remember me?” Tubbs asks.
“Sure,” Sonny suddenly says, “You’re Tubbs.”
Three gunshots ring out as the episode ends.
OH MY GOD, DID SONNY KILLS TUBBS!?
We’ll find out next week. For now, I’ll say that — after a disappointing fourth season — this was exactly how Miami Vice needed to start things off for Season 5. Seriously, if you’re going to have Sonny get hit with amnesia, you might as well just go for it and take things to their logical extreme.
I’ve always loved the interview with the chief of police in the original Night of the Living Dead. I love the delivery of that classic line. “….they’re all messed up.” Yes, they are. The chief doesn’t seem to be particularly perturbed by the fact that the dead are coming back to life. Instead, his attitude is very straight-forward. To quote Tommy Lee Jones in Rolling Thunder, “Let’s go clean ’em up.”
When we first see this interview, it’s easy to laugh at the sight of the chief’s posse and everyone’s odd confidence that the dead will somehow just go away. (Death, after all, is the one thing that is guaranteed to happen to everyone eventually.) Once you know how the story’s going to end, though, this scene becomes much more ominous.
Satoshi Kon’s 1998 psychological thriller Perfect Blue remains a striking and influential work nearly three decades after its release. Despite being an animated film, it evokes the unsettling style and tension found in the classic Italian giallo thrillers of the 1970s and ’80s—films by directors like Dario Argento and Mario Bava—and melds them admirably with elements of 1970s Eurotrash exploitation and arthouse psychological thriller reminiscent of Brian De Palma. Kon’s debut feature is a haunting exploration of fractured identity, blending show-business satire, Hitchcockian suspense, and surreal nightmare imagery into a profoundly relevant story in today’s age of parasocial fandom and digital voyeurism.
The film centers on Mima Kirigoe, a member of the bubblegum J-Pop group “CHAM!” who decides to leave the idol world to pursue a career in serious acting. This choice, rooted in her desire for personal growth and artistic expression, sets off devastating consequences. For her managers and many fans, Mima’s break from the manufactured idol persona is viewed as betrayal—a dissolution of a carefully crafted image designed for maximum market appeal. The pristine, innocent figure worshipped by fans begins to crumble, replaced by the complicated reality of adulthood and the harsh glare of fame.
To fully grasp the horror underpinning Perfect Blue, it’s important to understand the nature of Japanese idol culture. These idols are not merely singers or performers—they are highly managed brands. Every lyric, outfit, choreographed move, and public appearance is tightly controlled to project purity and accessibility. This system bears close resemblance to the meticulously produced Western pop acts of the late 1990s and early 2000s like Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys. Both rely on constructing polished, artificial personas that maximize commercial appeal, often at the expense of genuine selfhood. When an idol deviates from this script, it frequently provokes obsession, confusion, and even violent reactions from a subset of fans unable to reconcile the constructed image with evolving reality.
Mima’s transition from ingénue pop star to serious actress thrusts her into an intense psychological crucible. Her first major acting role requires her to perform a deeply disturbing rape scene, one that blurs lines between professional obligation and personal violation. Kon lingers on Mima’s shocked expression—a powerful mask of confusion and repressed trauma. This sequence sets the tone for the film: a world where performance, identity, and exploitation intertwine irrevocably, creating a landscape where self and roles imposed by society become indistinguishable.
As Mima’s public persona shifts, darker forces emerge. An eerie fan website titled “Mima’s Room” chronicles her life with disturbing accuracy but is clearly authored by an unknown party. Even more threatening is an obsessed fan fixated on the idol version of Mima, stalking her and insisting that the “real” Mima no longer exists. This duality—between reality and imitation, self and construct—becomes the film’s thematic centerpiece. The narrative loops and fractures, cutting between dreams, televised drama, and supposed reality until neither Mima nor the viewer can be sure what is authentic. This masterful ambiguity immerses us in the protagonist’s psychological collapse.
The horror in Perfect Blue operates on two deeply intertwined levels. First, it is a psychological portrait of a young woman’s unraveling, echoing themes explored in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan—films focused on fragile female psyches under immense pressure. While Aronofsky has publicly denied that Black Swan was directly inspired by Perfect Blue, the similarities in theme and specific visual motifs suggest otherwise. Both films explore the disintegration of identity in a young woman caught between innocence and adult roles, with dreamlike, unsettling sequences blurring reality and hallucination. The parallels in their portrayal of psychological breakdown, stalking, and the pressure of performance are striking, though Aronofsky’s work is set in the world of ballet rather than pop music and acting.
Second, Perfect Blue channels the lush, stylized dread characteristic of giallo cinema. Kon borrows Argento’s fascination with voyeuristic camera angles, saturated color palettes, and the interplay of beauty and violence. Like Argento’s heroines trapped in a hall of mirrors, Mima finds herself caught in a labyrinth where surreal horror becomes tangible and murder might be just another staged act in a disturbing performance.
Yet unlike Suspiria’s occult grotesques, Kon’s horror resides not in supernatural forces but within the mind and media itself. Animation becomes a revelatory choice—rather than softening violence, it frees Kon from physical constraints, allowing reality to fracture visually with startling fluidity. Identities shift from frame to frame, reflections move independently of their sources, and timelines collapse and fragment like psychic glitches. The medium’s flexibility intensifies the film’s psychological disorientation, blurring fact and fantasy in ways live-action cinema would struggle to capture so viscerally.
Kon’s prescient understanding of media obsession resonates more strongly than ever today. Long before social media reshaped how identity is constructed and perceived, Perfect Blue envisioned the internet as a distorting mirror that erases the line between self and performance. The “Mima’s Room” website serves both as diary and prison—a disturbing precursor to the carefully curated digital personas that dominate social media platforms now. As Mima reads falsified diary entries that resemble her life more “truthfully” than her own memory, she grows alienated from reality. The omnipresent gaze of fans, stalkers, and producers merges into an oppressive force she cannot escape.
This taps into a modern phenomenon: parasocial relationships. These one-sided emotional bonds fans develop with celebrities or fictional characters foster a dangerous illusion of intimacy and knowledge, often masking boundaries between admiration and entitlement. In Perfect Blue, the deranged fan believes he “knows” Mima in a way that justifies controlling her, even committing violence to preserve the image he idolizes. This mirrors the darker side of parasocial dynamics today, where fans demand absolute authenticity or control over public figures’ identities, sometimes leading to harassment or stalking. Kon’s film foreshadows how internet culture can exacerbate these fragile boundaries, blurring realities and fueling destructive obsession.
The film’s editing amplifies this psychological suffocation. Kon intercuts scenes from Mima’s TV drama—ironically titled Double Bind—with moments from her “real” life until one blurs imperceptibly into the other. Viewers are drawn deeper into uncertainty: are we witnessing actual events, staged fiction, or yet another deceptive layer? This deliberate manipulation creates unease without relying on cheap jump scares or graphic violence. The horror is existential—losing trust not only in others but in one’s own mind.
This theme has become exponentially more relevant with the rise of social media influencers and online streaming personalities. Today, countless individuals cultivate personal brands that blend their private lives with public personas online, often with blurred or deliberately ambiguous boundaries. The intense fan interaction, constant scrutiny, and expectation of accessibility echo the pressures Mima faces. As social media blurs the line between “real” self and online performance, the risks of losing grip on one’s identity—as Mima does—feel more immediate and widespread than ever.
It is extraordinary that Perfect Blue was Kon’s first feature film. His command of cinematic language is masterful—harnessing animation as a means to probe psychological depths rather than as mere escapism. His subsequent works—Millennium Actress, Tokyo Godfathers, Paprika—build on themes of identity, memory, and the fluid borders of reality, but Perfect Blue remains his rawest and most unsettling contribution. His untimely death from pancreatic cancer in 2010 at just 46 left the film community mourning a visionary whose full promise was tragically unfulfilled.
One of Perfect Blue’s greatest achievements is rejecting outsider stereotypes about anime. It is neither childish fantasy nor gratuitous erotica, though it fearlessly explores sexual anxiety, trauma, and performance under intense scrutiny. Kon’s film proves that animation can tackle mature themes—mental illness, societal pressure, gender identity—with subtlety and emotional gravitas usually reserved for live-action cinema. It challenges the misinformed Western association of adult anime with “hentai,” affirming animation’s capacity as a serious art form.
Kon’s film also critiques fandom’s darker impulses, asking difficult questions about ownership and identity. How much of a celebrity’s life belongs to the public? How much of one’s self must be sacrificed under the weight of expectation? In today’s hyperconnected online world, Kon’s portrayal of obsessive fans demanding idealized idols is uncannily relevant and urgent.
Ultimately, Perfect Blue transcends genre and era. It is not merely a psychological thriller or celebrity critique but a mirror held to an increasingly performative world. Long before social media dissolved the lines between private and public selves, Kon foresaw how image can consume reality. The result is a masterful fusion of paranoia, empathy, and stunning visual style—a giallo-inspired fever dream painted in blood-red and neon blue. For animation, it remains a landmark in artistic maturity; for cinema as a whole, it stands as one of the most chilling and insightful portraits of fame’s corrosive gaze and the dark side of parasocial obsession.
How dumb can one movie be without becoming unwatchable?
1985’s Evils of the Night is here to answer that question!
Three space alien vampires (John Carradine, Julie Newmar, and Tina Louise) have led an expedition to Earth. They’ve taken over a hospital and they’re stealing the blood of their patients so that it can be sent back to their dying planet. They especially want young blood, which is why they specifically came to a college town. Unfortunately, their intelligence was faulty and they arrived during the summer, when the campus was closed. (I guess this is one of those rare colleges that don’t offer a summer term.) There’s actually a very lengthy scene in which Carradine explains the faulty intelligence to Newmar and Louise and then Newmar complains about how the alien intelligence service just isn’t that good. What makes this scene so special is that Carradine delivers his lines with a straight face and Newmar actually seems to be sincerely annoyed. Aliens — they’re just like us!
Just because college is out of session, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any young people hanging out down at the lake. There’s actually quite a few, though all of them look to be a little bit too old for high school or college or whatever they’re supposed to be attending. Several of them are played by veterans of the adult film industry, including Amber Lynn and Jerry Butler. Everyone wants to get laid down at the lake, which is probably the most realistic thing about Evils of the Night. However, John Carradine needs their blood so he has Julie Newmar hire two slovenly mechanics, Kurt (Neville Brand) and Fred (Aldo Ray), and sends them out to kidnap any young people that they find. Kurt and Fred are very good at their job. Newman pays them and mocks them for caring so much about coins. Little do the mechanics realize that the aliens are planning on shooting them with their space laser as soon as they leave the planet.
Evils of the Night is a good example of a bad movie that is oddly watchable just because the viewer finds themselves curious as to just how stupid things can get. The answer here is very stupid and very nonsensical It never seems to occur to anyone just go to a different lake or maybe just do their skinny dipping in a pool somewhere. The plot has a “make it up as you along” feel to it and that, at the very least, keeps things vaguely interesting. The actors playing the “teen” victims are enthusiastic without being particularly good while most of the veterans in the cast are all obviously just there for the paycheck.
That said, John Carradine. Wow. What a career. A trained Shakespearean actor who made his stage debut in 1925 and went on to appear in a countless number of movie, Carradine was a favorite of both John Ford and Fred Olen Ray. Carradine appeared in hundreds of a theatrical films. In fact, his final film was released seven years after Carradine’s death. Carradine was one of the great actors, with that deep voice and that commanding stare. But he was also one of those actors who was apparently willing to appear in just about anything and that’s one reason why he’s still such a beloved icon. Playing an outer space vampire-turned-doctor was definitely not the strangest role that Carradine ever played. Carradine handles his scenes like a pro!
Evils of the Night is dumb but I dare you to look away.
This 1979 true crime drama opens in Los Angeles in 1963.
Rookie Detective Karl Hettinger (John Savage) has just joined the Felony Squad and met his new partner, Ian Campbell (Ted Danson, making his film debut). Ian is a tall, somewhat eccentric detective, the type who practices playing the bagpipes in the basement and who takes Hettinger under his wing.
Meanwhile, Jimmy Smith (Franklyn Seales) has just been released from prison. The nervous and easily-led Jimmy almost immediately runs into Gregory Powell (James Woods), a small-time hood with delusions of grandeur. Powell is the type who talks a big game but who really isn’t even that good of a thief. Smith and Powell form an uneasy criminal partnership. They are easily annoyed with each other but they also share an instant bond. Though the film doesn’t actually come out and say what most viewers will be thinking, there’s a lot of subtext to a brief scene where Powell appears to caress Smith’s shoulder.
One night, Hettinger and Campbell are kidnapped by Smith and Powell. Smith and Powell drive them out to an onion field. Because he’s misinterpreted the Federal Kidnapping Act and incorrectly believes that he and Smith are already eligible for the death penalty because they kidnapped two police officers, Powell shoots and kills Campbell. (The close-up image of Campbell falling dead is a disturbing one, not the least because he’s played by the instantly likable Ted Danson.) Hettinger runs and manages to escape. He saves his life but he’s now haunted by the feeling that he abandoned his partner.
The rest of the film deals with the years that follow that one terrible moment in the onion field. Treated as a pariah by his fellow cops, Hettinger sinks into alcoholism and eventually becomes a compulsive shoplifter. Smith and Powell, meanwhile, use a variety of tricks to continually escape the death penalty and to keep their case moving through the California justice system. Powell, for instance, defends himself and then later complains that he had incompetent counsel. Smith, meanwhile, is defended by the infamous Irving Karanek, a legendary California attorney who specialized in filing nuisances motions. (Later Karanek found a measure of fame as Charles Manson’s attorney. Eventually, he had a nervous breakdown in 1989, lived in his car, and was briefly suspended by practicing law.) While Smith and especially Powell quickly adjust to being imprisoned, Hettinger spends the next decade trapped in a mental prison of guilty and bitterness.
Based on a non-fiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, The Onion Field is a compelling look at a true crime case that continue to resonate today. The film can be a bit heavy-handed in its comparisons between the two partnerships that define the story. Both Hettinger and Smith are young and neurotic men who find themselves working with a more confident mentor. The difference is that Hettinger’s mentor is the cool, composed, and compassionate Ian Campbell while Smith’s sad fate is to be forever linked to the erratic Gregory Powell. While the film may have the flat look of something that was made for television, it’s elevated by the performances of its lead actors. James Woods give an especially strong performance as the cocky Powell, a loser in the streets who becomes a winner behind bars. Over the course of the film, he goes from being a joke to being the prisoner that others come to for legal advice. John Savage, meanwhile, poignantly captures Hettinger’s descent as the trauma from that night leaves him as shell of the man that he once was.
The film’s supporting cast is full of familiar faces. Christopher Lloyd and William Sanderson show up as prisoners. Ronny Cox plays the detective in charge of the onion field investigation. David Huffman plays a district attorney who is pushed to his breaking point by the obstructive tactics of Smith’s attorney. Priscilla Pointer play Ian Campbell’s haunted mother. All of them do their part to bring this sad story to life.
The Onion Field is a chillingly effective true crime drama and a look at a murder that was inspired by one man’s inability to understand federal law.
Today’s horror song comes the hypnotic soundtrack of Paul Schrader’s Cat People. This song was so good that it later showed up and was used to equally strong effect in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds.
This October, I’m going to be doing something a little bit different with my contribution to 4 Shots From 4 Films. I’m going to be taking a little chronological tour of the history of horror cinema, moving from decade to decade.
Is this a book about an island that is populated by the twenty or so people who actually refer to twitter by it’s “new” name of X?
No, actually, it’s not. X-Isle was published in 2002, in the days before social media and ever-present phones. X-Isle is a slasher story, one in which a group of good-looking teens end up hanging out at the exclusive Spinnaker Lodge, a luxury resort on an isolated island. It’s like that island that Kim Kardashian took all of her friends and employees to during the COVID epidemic? Remember that? Everyone else was locked inside or wandering around triple-masked while Kim went to an island and then scolded everyone else for not taking proper precautions.
(Sorry to get off topic there but seriously, the COVID era was messed up in ways that people are still struggling to full comprehend.)
Reading X-Isle, I found myself wandering if you really could write an effective, non-ironic, old school slasher story nowadays. The whole key to the slasher genre is that people have to be isolated and there has to be no way of reaching out for help. Every slasher movie now has to come up with some extended to reason to explain why no one can call the police. Whenever a horror movie starts with someone saying, “Give me your phone, you’ll get it back after the weekend,” I roll my eyes a little just because it’s become such a cliche. At this point, I imagine even Camp Crystal Lake has free wi-fi. It’s easy to imagine a camp counselor tweeting out, “Help! There’s a murderer at Crystal Lake!” and someone replying, “Whatever, Jussie.”
X-Isle gets off to a good start with a collection inner-office dossiers that introduce us to the main characters. What the memo reveals is that the main requirement to work at the resort is a handsome face or a good body. Once the story kicks in, we meet our group of potential victims and, unfortunately, none of them really live up to all the hype in the introduction. We spend a good deal of time with Carter, a womanizer who, at one point, feels the need to tell us that he’s not psychotic despite the fact that his behavior is often manipulative and narcissistic. When you actually have to tell people that you’re not a psycho, you probably are. Of course, in this book, Carter is one of the heroes.
Someone is killing guests and employees. It’s a YA book so we don’t actually see the kills but the aftermath is described in properly grisly fashion. The reveal of who the killer was doesn’t make much sense but, given that the book ends with a cliffhanger, that was perhaps deliberate.
Anyway, I’ve always kind of enjoyed the slasher genre, even with all of its cliches and its issues towards anyone who shows the slightest spark of independence. X-Isle was a fast and entertaining read. None of the characters were particularly likable which made it a lot less stressful to read about them being put in danger. In the end, the main lesson is to stay away from mysterious islands. That’s probably good advice.
When I was growing up and watching Doctor Who on PBS, I had a friend whose mother forbid him from watching the show because she thought that it promoted Satanism.
Through the Shattered Lens 