The Dead Walk — and accuse!  One of the best non-classic horror films of the ’30s is a polished production: Michael Curtiz and cameraman Hal Mohr give star Boris Karloff a spooky spotlight for a macabre tale of justice from beyond the grave. Karloff is brilliant as an executed convict resurrected by science, who becomes…

Barbra Streisand’s movie debut takes a slot in the Criterion Collection, and jumps to 4K Ultra HD. Opened up from Broadway and slimmed down to focus on its incandescent star, it persists as a superior musical, alternately funny and touching. Streisand showed can’t-lose intuition when it came to the big decisions: knowing that her emotional…

The Vampire/The Vampire’s Coffin Blu-ray – Import/Region Free Powerhouse 1957, 1958 / 84, 82 min Starring Germán Robles, Abel Salazar, Ariadne Welter Written by Ramón Obón Photographed by Rosalío Solano, Víctor Herrera Directed by Fernando Mendez Early American horror films usually favored human monsters over the supernatural variety, and it wasn’t till the arrival of…

Deborah Kerr shines as an emotionally troubled war widow who volunteers to do Red Cross work in the Pacific Theater of WW2. William Holden is the he-bull Marine colonel who claims her almost as a right of rank. Not a combat film, it’s nevertheless a polished production with a gallery of fine acting support —…

Behold a ‘world cinema classic’ that needs no defending, no way, no how … a review isn’t really necessary, just see it!  This new 4K remaster is a real beauty, doing additional cleanup and brighten-up work. Otherwise it’s still the same fantastic epic, with marvelous characters, a gripping storyline and spectacular battles. Toshiro Mifune’s flea-bitten…

22 is a lucky number for noir:  D.A. Humphrey Bogart defies Murder Incorporated in The Enforcer. Sexpot Carol Ohmart lures Tom Tryon into a web of crime in the VistaVision The Scarlet Hour. And thieves try to slip through interstate roadblocks carrying millions in gold bullion in the fascinating Plunder Road, in Regalscope. It’s a…

🎶 Let’s all get up and dance to a song movie that was a hit before your mother was born 🎶 … or your grandmother, maybe. Does anybody under 50 know who Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye were?  1954’s biggest hit may not be today’s current fashion, but it’s got fine music and some great choreography: Rosemary…

We think these two silent comedies are fantastic examples of Buster Keaton’s directorial genius. Seven Chances exaggerates the dilemma of a fellow who must marry on a deadline to inherit a fortune. An onslaught of women in wedding dresses becomes a (comic) nightmare horde. Sherlock Jr. can almost be described as experimental. The story involves…

The original Japanese super-dragon is back, for the first time in the USA in an improved Toho remaster that restores the awesome majesty of Ishiro Honda and Eiji Tsuburaya’s overachieving Kaiju fantasy. The 500-foot leviathan’s debut feature will be a surprise for folk expecting him to scrap with Mothra or dance a jig on the…

This fourth remake for Jack Finney’s mind-bending Sci-fi horror tale didn’t click at the box office, but our Pandemic experience has made it more relevant. Nicole Kidman and a good cast can’t be faulted, but if a powerful thriller with something big to say was intended, it didn’t come off. As a tense chase picture,…

This ’50s cult monster double bill was produced by the Corman brothers Roger and Gene. The first re-plays ideas from several Sci-fi classics on a shoestring budget, and squeaks by with a novel wrinkle of its own. Using some of the same crew and actors, the second item is even cheaper. It hasn’t a single…

Creature with the Blue Hand/Web of the Spider Blu-ray Film Masters 1967, 1971 / 87, 110 min Starring Klaus Kinski, Anthony Franciosa, Michelle Mercier Written by Herbert Reinecker, Bruno Corbucci, Giovanni Grimaldi Photographed by Sandro Mancori, Memmo Mancori Directed by Alfred Vohrer, Antonio Margheriti More ticking time-bomb than actor, Klaus Kinski was born to prowl…

Dr. Rossiter will give you something to scream about!  Sidney Hayers’ Big Top terror flick is luridly oversexed, excessively gruesome — and great fun. Mad plastic surgeon Anton Diffring creates his own harem of facially-restored women who also happen to be criminals. Circus acts provide the ‘accidents’ to remove any that become a liability. It’s…

Taken from a story by Patricia Highsmith, director Claude Autant-Lara’s murder thriller can boast an attractive cast: Maurice Ronet, Gert Fröbe, Robert Hossein, Marina Vlady and Yvonne Furneaux. The slick production, good music and committed performances can’t be faulted, but the point gets lost amid a lot of yelling. Just the same, Hossein and Fröbe…

David Hinton’s documentary celebration of the ‘Archers’ team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is a feature-length rumination filtered through Martin Scorsese’s narration, emphasizing his first awakening to the Power of Film. The collaboration was so rich and the films so impressive that it takes over two hours just for a cursory pass through the…

George Stevens’ back-from-the-war masterpiece honors family vaues and stability with the near-reverent story of a Norwegian immigrant family subsisting in San Francisco of 1910. The filmmaking is fastidious and the performances exemplary — Irene Dunne is the Hanson matriarch, young Barbara Bel Geddes the teenager who wants to write, and Oscar Homolka the overbearing Uncle…

Roman Polanski’s twisted ‘apartment horror’ creepshow melds supernatural and psychological possession — a meek clerk finds himself being possessed by the previous occupant of his apartment: a woman who committed suicide. It might be all in his mind, but the spook-show trimmings are compelling too: the new tenant plays his cross-dressing new role to the…

The Bat Blu-ray Undercrank Productions 1926 / 86 min Starring Emily Fitzroy, Jack Pickford, Louise Fazenda Written by Roland West Photographed by Arthur Edeson and Gregg Toland Directed by Roland West Films produced in the silent era were triumphs of artistic ingenuity—though they lacked even the rudimentary tools of contemporary filmmaking, no Steadicam or drone…

This collector’s box of Columbia odds ‘n’ ends has a couple of movies that are only marginal horror, but all have at least one or two horror elements. A gangster picture with Boris Karloff dips into mad doctor territory, and the mad scientist in an aviation thriller has cooked up an anti-aircraft death ray. Peter…

Director G.W. Pabst imported the notorious Hollywood showgirl Louise Brooks to Germany, to star in one of the greatest of Weimar-Era films. Brooks’ Lulu is the equivalent of catching lightning in a bottle, a revelatory performance in a play adaptation that upends Victorian conventions: female sexuality is for once not demonized for ‘loosing evils on…

Repo Man 4K ULTRA HD + Blu-ray Criterion 1984 / 91 min Starring Emilio Estevez, Harry Dean Stanton, Tracy Walter Written by Alex Cox Photographed by Robbie Muller Directed by Alex Cox Repo Man is the work of a bartender with a metaphysical bent, conjuring up strange brews and even stranger stories. Alex Cox is…

Keeping relations good with the U.S. and NATO may have doomed Helmut Käutner’s grim tale of trouble on an American air base in West Germany. The story is a sordid swirl of romantic, political and criminal complications — all of them down & dirty. A tiny burg that serves as a brothel for U.S. airmen…

It’s the WW2 spy thriller that everyone once assumed Orson Welles directed without credit. Director Norman Foster does good things with Eric Ambler’s tale of an American cornered by Nazi killers; Joseph Cotten co-wrote as well as starred and Dolores Del Río and Orson provide fine supporting performances. Welles’ problems at RKO surely contributed to…

How can a silent film seem such a modern conception?  Kino reissues the 2014 restoration of Robert Weine’s horror landmark in 4K Ultra HD, with a choice of music soundtracks. The sleepwalking Cesare’s hypnotic abduction of Lil Dagover is still a grabber, and the nightmarish images don’t diminish in impact. It’s an incredible kickoff to…

Two of legendary Val Lewton’s greatest achievements make it to 4K Ultra HD. In Jacques Tourneur’s film the Gothic romance goes Voodoo on a West Indies plantation, with a side tragedy of slave misery. Scandal can’t hide, especially when the cheating wife falls into a catatonic ‘zombie’ state. It’s guilt, duty, and ‘shame and sorrow…

Halloween ’24 is looking good, as we chalk another genre landmark onto the list of excellent special edition discs. Riccardo Freda and Mario Bava’s thriller is the initial foray into Italo horror, a meeting of Gothic notions and modern medical chills. Gianna Maria Canale is the ravishing Duchess whose beauty is preserved through sordid science;…