Monthly Archives: July 2011

Mark Pellington takes a visit to Texas in The Last Picture Show. 

The ghosts of Howard Hawks and John Ford hover over film buff/historian Peter Bogdanovich’s first studio movie after the impressive indie Targets. Orson Welles persuaded him to insist on shooting his Oscar winning adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s semi-autobiographical novel in black and white, unusual for the period. He followed it in 1990 with a sequel, Texasville, featuring many of the same cast. In 1992 Bogdanovich issued a “director’s cut” adding seven minutes of material deleted by Columbia, which had insisted on a two hour running time. 

Click here to watch the trailer.

Read More… New at TFH: Mark Pellington on THE LAST PICTURE SHOW

Joe Dante is The Last Man On Earth.

It’s Vincent Price vs. plague-ridden zombie/vampires in what is in retrospect a surprisingly influential US-Italian coproduction. Despite falling into the public domain in the US it’s now available on video from multiple sources in a good quality TotalScope transfer pirated from the 1980s laserdisc release, although the MGM dvd version remains the preferred option.

 

Click here to watch the trailer.

Read More… New at TFH: Joe Dante on THE LAST MAN ON EARTH

Dan Ireland talks about all the things worth talking about in Suddenly, Last Summer. 

Katharine Hepburn wants niece Elizabeth Taylor to get a lobotomy to protect the reputation of her dead son. A troubled production denounced by screenwriter Gore Vidal and author of the original one-act play Tennessee Williams, Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s baroque Southern Gothic was a surprisingly potent boxoffice attraction due to the stars and a somewhat salacious ad campaign. Working with the production code, the Catholic Church gave a surprising pass to inferences of                                             homosexuality.

Click here to watch the trailer.

Read More… New at TFH: Dan Ireland on SUDDENLY, LAST SUMMER