– Press Kit/ PRESS Page –

“Upbeat, articulate and with attitude to spare…” ~ Syfy.com, 2013

MovieCrypt.com has been reviewing films and generating original content since 1999 with listings on Rotten Tomatoes, accredited reviews with the Online Film Critics Society since 2002, and most recently since 2018 with the Houston Film Critics Society. Created around the same time as Ain’t It Cool, Dark Horizons, JoBlo, CHUD, Corona Coming Attractions, and NeedCoffee, MovieCrypt.com was registered as a new domain on June 5th, 1999.

Originally launched in October of 1998 as “The Crypt of the Crystal Lich” on AOL Hometown (didn’t know there’d be an Age Test, huh?) our little site has been around in one form or another since back in the old days of “handles” when the Wide Webbed World (points for recognizing the 4E reference: “Ack-ack!”) was a shiny new mess and Windows ME (Millennium Edition) hadn’t been scrapped yet.

The Wayback Machine shows the first recorded site capture April 18, 2000 with the slogan “Movie reviews for the undead” and the signature “This site is © 1999 Kevin A Ranson. They’re making me do this.”

Our Purpose(s): Reaping what Hollywood sows. A horror lover’s reviews of all genres of movies. Reaping and critiquing thrillers, chillers, and killers. What the Undead live for. The Undead are watching.
Our Mission: Film critique focused on storytelling, supernatural elements, and cult-classic potential. We don’t make or sell movies here — we appreciate them.

In 2001, MovieCrypt.com briefly joined the FanGEN network in an attempt to monetize. Movie Showtimes were provided by Zap2it, “Minion Mail” was a thing, and The Minion Boards were where fans of the page went to sound off. The host was still “The Crystal Lich.” Some of the original graphics still survive.

At the end of 2002, the “Fatal Blue” design gave way to the “Headstone Gray” theme as we joined the Online Film Critics Society. The slogan was “News. Reviews. Undead.” We used the living hell out of the Copperplate font and Outer Glow FX back in the day.

Death is His Middle Name

Our current host Grim D. Reaper took over in April 2006 — an infamous psychopomp cinephile — happily hitting theaters to distract from a dreary day job taking souls.

By 2008, Grim D. appeared across all social media. His hashtag #grmdrpr is simply his name without all those pesky vowels — think “license plate logic.”

MovieCrypt.com shifted to the “Dames Point Cemetery” theme featured in the header. We also began using the “Inverted Hollywood Star” logo and the WordPress CMS as our backbone.

Grim D. began his periodic video coverage of the site with “The Reaper Rants,” doing the best he could with the technology of the day. This was his first appearance taking over from The Crystal Lich.

Over the years, our brand name has been diluted by the appearance of other “movie crypt” sites and/or podcasts that did not have our domain name (or us, for that matter) but we remained.

By 2015, Grim D’s ever-evolving look received a much-needed upgrade along with a new logo, a symbol based upon the YinYang-Crossed-Scythes design on his chain mail mantle. Refined from dime-store costuming to an ensemble of crafted art pieces, Grim D. Reaper looks deader than ever… and more metal, obviously.

His videos have improved over time, too… sort of. This was his catch-all birthday message for 2019.

Twenty Years: 1999-2019

As a labor of love and a continuing commitment to film critique, we’re not slowing down. Grim D. is hitting conventions, annually haunting the Texas Renaissance Festival, and watching for new filmmakers… whenever he can pull himself away from his day job.

Note: if you’ve been to this page before, confession time: we had our originally posted inception date wrong by 366 days. According to our WhoIs info, MovieCrypt.com’s Creation Date was actually 1999-06-05T01:07:14Z. Hey, bookkeeping was bad in the pioneer days of the Internet, m’kay?