J_Carls

I almost didn't watch this, although I was on a rabbit hole binge set up by needing to confirm how bad "Forbidden Zone" really was. Eventually, I arrived at this absolute corker of a bad but hilarious movie suitable for a group watch-a group not repulsed by special effects involving zombies, large parasitic worms and just the right amount of crap. They should probably be a little drunk. My rating is a combination of 5 stars for the actual movie quality and 8 stars for the experience of watching it with the right group of friends. You know: people who enjoy screaming in disgusted laughter together.

If you've looked into the history of this movie, you will know that Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur tried very hard to resist the studio's insistence that they show a "monster," (i.e., a black panther at large) to provide a more mainstream audience-friendly explanation for what the main character is going through.

However, they were able to minimize the overt "monster of the week" approach, and the movie reveals a woman whose problem isn't the folk tale on the surface but instead a struggle with her lack of physical attraction to a man. Thus, the true monster in this movie is the suffocating social norms of the 20th century and how it devours those whose identity clashes with them. If there is any doubt of this, one only need wait until the restaurant scene where Irina meets another "of her kind," who calls her "sister."

Lewton and Tourneur not only created one of early Hollywood's most atmospheric horror films (but not the horror audiences believed) but slipped one of the most subversive past the moral busybodies of that era.

One of the most fun things that a series can do after dozens of episodes is to let its writers get creative with a "meta" episode. Here, the interplay between the "fictionalized" version of a fictional character creates great character comedy while it comments on the whole idea of acting versus reality.