Author Spotlight

Maitland McDonagh

Critic and author Maitland McDonagh writes and lectures on film and erotica. An editor at Riverdale Avenue Books, she founded its 120 Days Books imprint to republish vintage gay adult novels.

5 Results
The Comfort of Strangers: Significant Others

The sensibilities of three inimitable storytellers—Ian McEwan, Harold Pinter, and Paul Schrader—complement one another in this slow-burning erotic tale of two couples in Venice.

By Maitland McDonagh

The Innocents: Forbidden Games

In director Jack Clayton’s hands, Henry James’s tale of the sinister and sensual things hiding behind Victorian decorum becomes one of the screen’s great works of terror.

By Maitland McDonagh

Kuroneko: The Mark of the Cat
Scratch the surface of a contemporary J-horror classic like Ringu (1998) or any of the Ju-on films (2000–03) and you’ll glimpse Yabu no naka no kuroneko (Black Cat from the Grove), released in the U.S. as simply Kuroneko (1968). Shot in shimmerin…

By Maitland McDonagh

Cronos: Beautiful Dark Things
Guillermo del Toro understands the power of fairy tales. Not the prettified romances of Charles Perrault, who tamed the Brothers Grimm for French drawing rooms, or the charming animal fables of Aesop, or the reassuring moral lessons Disney made of…

By Maitland McDonagh

In Praise of Karloff the Uncanny
Forget the Beatles vs. Elvis: for me the world is divided into Karloff people and Lugosi people, and I’m in the Karloff clique. Bela Lugosi’s oversize mannerisms and thickly accented drawl have always seemed camp to me, while Boris Karloff’s re…

By Maitland McDonagh