Westerns – the Great American Movie Genre.  Yes, the Italian cinema has its Spaghetti Western – Cameriere, more Sangiovese, please!  But we’re talking real, honest-to-John-Wayne American westerns here.  The kind with a big, wide-open-spaces theme by somebody like Elmer Bernstein, Alfred Newman, orLerner and Loewe.  Morricone magic is better served with the aforementioned grape of Chianti – and…

Here’s another installment featuring Joe Dante’s reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!   Zombies menace islanders in dull, inept black-and-white mini-budgeter. Properly duelled, it will get by in lower class ballyhoo markets and drive-ins. Rating: GP. It’s…

A former vaudevillian, the great comedian Fred Allen found his fame in radio but was unable to navigate a suitable transition to TV (“Television is a medium,” he once observed, “because it is neither rare nor well done.”). He made a few casual appearances in movies but only once, in 1945, did he take full…

Here’s another gem from the TFH Vault. From September 27, 2007, it’s Joe Dante on The Revenge of Frankenstein.   Terence Fisher returns to direct the first (and best?) of six sequels to the groundbreaking Curse of Frankenstein, bringing new complexity and plenty of gallows humor to the character of Baron Frankenstein, the alternately malevolent…

Here’s another installment featuring Joe Dante’s reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!   Atrocious horror‑sex item. No Rating. Typical sex‑horror stuff, this New York‑made JER Pictures release looks like a home movie from Bedlam and gives evidence…

Trailers From Hell welcomes all movies great and small but sometimes a particular trailer may not be up to the visual quality of the rest of our catalog or is simply too oddball to present in our usual format. Nevertheless, there’s such a wealth of exciting, strange and unusual films out there, we’d be remiss…

Here’s another gem from the TFH Vault. From January 24, 2008, it’s Joe Dante on Confessions of an Opium Eater.   Albert Zugsmith’s shining moment in an amiably disreputable career that nonetheless included producing pix by Sirk, Welles and Jack Arnold. Only Fu Manchu is missing from this hypnotically retrograde yellow peril hallucination starring Vincent…

Trailers From Hell welcomes all movies great and small but sometimes a particular trailer may not be up to the visual quality of the rest of our catalog or is simply too oddball to present in our usual format. Nevertheless, there’s such a wealth of exciting, strange and unusual films out there, we’d be remiss…

Here’s another gem from the TFH Vault. From August 28, 2007, it’s Sam Hamm on 13 Ghosts.   Aiming squarely at the allowances of moppet readers of Famous Monsters of Filmland, William Castle followed “Percepto” with a new gimmick in 1960, “Illusion-O”. Paul Frees’ scary narration probably got him the job as the voice of…

Trailers From Hell welcomes all movies great and small but sometimes a particular trailer may not be up to the visual quality of the rest of our catalog or is simply too oddball to present in our usual format. Nevertheless, there’s such a wealth of exciting, strange and unusual films out there, we’d be remiss…

Here’s another installment featuring Joe Dante’s reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!   Ghoulish horror shocker de‑fanged by last‑minute cutting of violence. Still wildly lurid, exploitably titled and has good potential for drive‑in and horror ballyhoo markets….

Today marks Trailers From Hell debut on FEARnet‘s On Demand service! Now you can tune into FEARnet and check out over 90 classic commentaries from directors like Joe Dante, John Landis, Edgar Wright, Eli Roth and Many More! Where can you find Trailers From Hell with FEARnet On Demand? Here’s the information for the menu…

Ok, The ‘Burbs is fairly maniacal in and of itself, but today especially so… it’s the 25th anniversary of Joe Dante’s surreal small-town comedy, which not only signifies its place in the cult classic pantheon but as a darn funny movie, too. Here’s Indiewire’s The Playlist on the 25th Anniversary. Here’s the Film School Rejects…

A group of scientists in the Antarctic rig an atomic blast that releases a dinosaur from its icy hibernation. Only one of the explorers, Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian, Ne, Paul Hubschmid) gets a good look at the beast and he spends thirty or so minutes of the film trying to convince everyone that he’s not…

Here’s another gem from the TFH Vault. From August 28, 2007, it’s Allan Arkush on The Trip.   Writer Jack Nicholson and star Peter Fonda told Roger Corman he couldn’t make a movie about LSD without trying it at least once. So Roger took a caravan of pals to Big Sur, where he dutifully dropped…

Trailers From Hell welcomes all movies great and small but sometimes a particular trailer may not be up to the visual quality of the rest of our catalog or is simply too oddball to present in our usual format. Nevertheless, there’s such a wealth of exciting, strange and unusual films out there, we’d be remiss…

Here’s another gem from the TFH Vault. From July 4, 2008, it’s Eli Roth on The Birds.   Another marathon Hitchcock cult-of-personality trailer with not a single shot from the actual movie. Drolly scripted by Hitch’s tv series intro-writer James Allardice.

Have you ever been riding your chopper down a southern U.S. highway, lookin’ for America and unable to find it?  If so, “Easy Rider” is the movie is for you.  I’ll call a spoiler alert here in order to mention that in between the moment you see that shotgun barrel stickin’ out of the pickup…

Trailers From Hell welcomes all movies great and small but sometimes a particular trailer may not be up to the visual quality of the rest of our catalog or is simply too oddball to present in our usual format. Nevertheless, there’s such a wealth of exciting, strange and unusual films out there, we’d be remiss…

Help!, the 1965 musical comedy directed by Richard Lester, stars Leo McKern as the venal Clang, a deranged cult leader and Victor Spinetti as the underhanded Professor Foot, a mad scientist who’s both Clang’s soulmate and adversary. Each of these crooks subscribe to different credos but they’re after the same thing, power, and they can…

The Fastest Guitar Alive” is one of those rock’n’roll movies that rock’n’roll would probably like to disown.  In fact, it may have driven rock’n’roll to drink – and it was doing all right in that department before this film came along in 1967. It’s Roy Orbison’s only acting role – for a clue as to…

Here’s another installment featuring Joe Dante’s reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!   Cornball penal potboiler has Jim Brown and some gore to sell it in urban, especially black‑dominated action markets, drive‑ins. Response depends on whether audiences…

The current BBC production of Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch is a lifetime away from director Terence Fisher’s take on the great detective, The Hound of the Baskervilles. But no matter how transformative is the new Sherlock, Fisher’s blood and thunder interpretation felt no less transgressive in 1958. By remaking the classic Universal monster films with Curse…

In “The Beast With Five Fingers,”  the severed hand of a dead piano player comes back from the grave to… play the piano some more!  There’s plenty of melody in those ghostly tunes, even though the hand appears to be a left hand. If that were true, wouldn’t it just be playing the bass notes?  Aah, I…

Here’s another installment featuring Joe Dante’s reviews from his stint as a critic for Film Bulletin circa 1969-1974. Our thanks to Video Watchdog and Tim Lucas for his editorial embellishments!   Chinese Kung Fu pugilists fly through the air, decimate each other in action‑laden dubbed import with enough novelty and acrobatic excitement to perform well…

Mr. Hillary, meet Mount Everest. Mr. Kubrick, let me introduce you to Lolita. There are some challenges that will test an adventurer to their fullest mettle but Stanley Kubrick’s gutsy decision to film Vladimir Nabokov’s scandalous masterpiece in 1962 invites awe even today. Published by Olympia Press in 1955 in two softcover volumes sporting the…