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Good and evil are depicted to some degree in almost every movie.  I tend to view any character drinking wine as “good,” which leads to some confusion when screening “Rosemary’s Baby.” In “The Nutty Professor,” Jerry Lewis portrays both good and evil in his dual role as the goofy chemistry prof and his suave, slick…

“You all know me… You know how I make my livin’…”  Quint (Robert Shaw), Jaws Well, the truth is, you probably don’t know me, although you may have an idea that I don’t earn my keep by sharkin’, like our very quotable friend above. I just like his dialogue, and the line seemed like a…

  On August 20, 2017, Jerry Lewis took a pratfall off this mortal coil, presumably knocking an unwitting dowager on her keister and sending a surprised cop into an open manhole on his way out. The durable enfant terrible was all of 91 years when he finally left the building though he had been making spirited…

Fritz Lang applies rigorous realism and excellent science in the first half of his final silent film, a treat for fantasy fans and those impressed by a NASA-like moon rocket forty years before the reality. The action on the moon is pure green-cheese fantasy, with breathable air, deposits of gold and evidence of a human…

Robot roll call! This also-ran robotic fantasy from the 1950s is precisely the kind of movie one would expect from Republic, a two-fisted anti-Commie tract for juveniles. The studio comes up with an impressive robo-hero, but short-changes us when it come time for action thrills. Still, as pointed out in Richard Harland Smith’s new commentary,…

Fritz Lang and Nunnally Johnson take a deep dive into Psych 101 and come up with a winner: a milquetoast-meets-murderous-femme tale that pays off marvelously, even with its trick ending. Entranced more by his own gentle dreams than the allure of Joan Bennett, Edward G. Robinson imagines a perfect dalliance, and follows it up with…

  It’s pretty scary to think that as late as 1940 both Washington and the American public were sharply divided over Nazi Germany. Poland had been overrun and France was about to fall, but MGM waited until June of that year to release this softened adaptation of a novel written as a warning to the…

  There’s one ironclad rule for mad scientist movies:  if you show a monstrous caged ape-creature in the first act, that ape-creature must absolutely break loose and wreak havoc before the end of Act III.  It makes no difference if the film is being made on Gower Gulch, or at Germany’s prestigious UfA Studios. Just ask George Zucco or…

That’s how things ought to work — give this reviewer EXACTLY the great disc he wants to see and wait for the flood of praise. This Italian-French gothic gem can hold its own in the Eurohorror Renaissance of 1960, with fine direction, an attractive cast, a seductive heroine/villainess, and lush color cinematography that turns a…