Yes, sometimes a producer could earn ‘auteur’ status making B pictures. A name that’s never going to be uttered in the same breath as Val Lewton is Sam Katzman, who for the 1950s settled into a profitable tenure making Columbia program pictures. They pretty much stayed in the category of ‘obvious junk’ yet include a…
Any WW2 action adventure involving the Norwegian resistance is OK in my book, and this big-star saga about sabotage efforts to stop the Nazis’ atom research is a natural — much of what happens in the story is true. The show can boast marvelous locations and excellent action scenes but the script and characters aren’t…
The Little Rascals Volume 2 Blu ray – The ClassicFlix Restorations ClassicFlix 1930 / 1.37:1 / 225 Min. Starring Jackie Cooper, June Marlowe, Margaret Mann Written by H.W. Walker Directed by Robert F. McGowan Religion may be the opiate of the masses but nostalgia runs it a close second. And there’s no narcotic more soothing…
Every once in a while a movie makes me think, ‘this one’s too good to review, just tell them to see it and they’ll understand.’ John Cusack is a penny-ante small stakes cheat, his girlfriend Annette Bening hooks on the side while seeking a partner for ‘long cons,’ and his mother is an operative for…
It’s yet another masterpiece from the Italian director Francesco Rosi, adapting a fiction novel about a political murder conspiracy that is altogether too much of a good fit for the troubled Italy of 1975. Crime star Lino Ventura is the incorruptible detective investigating a series of killings of high-level judges, who begins to intuit that…
It’s low-rent Noir A Go-Go: Angela Lansbury is a double-crossing femme fatale in this independent cheapie with modest charms. You can’t trust anyone these days, especially real estate developers with plans to collect YOUR life insurance. Lansbury is the seductive ‘motivator’ with a preference for late-night rendezvous in the high mountains, where everything is a…
Ignored, maligned and hammered out into an ‘Alan Smithee’ extended cut for TV, David Lynch’s outstanding Sci-fi epic arrives on 4K Ultra HD, finally achieving the visual opulence on home video that it had in 70mm prints at the end of 1984. The fractured, de-Lynched storyline can be argued over, but the amazing design and…
Surreal delirium in cinema! Gary Cooper and Ann Harding are a tragic romantic pair, but even when separated by space, time and the law they manage to live a full life together as virtual dream lovers. The odd art film out in Henry Hathaway’s career, this unabashed spiritualist fantasy was adopted by French surrealists as…
Hammer Horror: Four Gothic Horror Films Blu ray – All Region Imprint 1971-72 Starring Ingrid Pitt, Peter Cushing, Eric Porter Cinematography by Kenneth Talbot, Dick Bush Directed by Peter Sasdy, John Hough, Robert Young In December of 1959, Hammer Studios released a bit of Yuletide cheer called The Stranglers from Bombay, a censor-baiting melodrama highlighted…
Foreseeing a relaxation of censorship on the horizon, England’s Titan Films filmed this mad surgery opus with far more gore and cruelty than was the norm in 1967-68, and their gambit paid off. Horror favorite Peter Cushing stars with Sue Lloyd, a pair nobody expected to show up in a shocker with such a high…
Cecil B. DeMille delivers a satisfying western epic starring Barbara Stanwyck, Joel McCrea, Robert Preston, Brian Donlevy & Akim Tamiroff; the story of the building of a railroad is historically bogus but highly entertaining and action-filled. Joel McCrea is our favorite ethical frontier lawman; here he’s a troubleshooter keeping crooks, Indians and proto-Bolsheviks from delaying…
Another unexpected comic treasure from the mid ’70s! Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston make an irresistible pair of would-be outlaws in a tale of the modern West — high-country Montana, actually — where a gentleman rancher from New Jersey owns all the land and making an honest living is just too boring. Thomas McGuane’s hilariously…
Yasuzo Masumura takes horror into kinky territory in an Edogawa Ranpo shocker about obsession, namely, mixing sex and death. Michio is the tactile-fixated blind sculptor who imprisons model Aki to serve as an ultimate objectified ‘body’ — but she eventually joins him, taking the lead on a delirious suicidal journey of discovery. Probably once considered…
It’s a collection of 6 — count ’em Six — horror and sci-fi curiosities from the ’40s and ’50s, aimed straight at covetous fantasy film addicts. Wacky scripts, strange characterizations and poverty row production values are on view, but the fine transfers reveal professional cinematography and occasional impressive direction. The films are definitely of their…
Guest reviewer Lee Broughton returns with an assessment of Sammo Hung’s groundbreaking Hong Kong hit wherein comedy, horror and martial arts elements are brought together in a wholly successful way. This show has it all: kung fu action, duelling mystics, hopping vampires, hungry zombies, haunted mirrors and a sympathetic everyman whose danger-fraught narrative trajectory is…
The Daimajin Trilogy Blu ray – All Region Arrow Films 1966 Starring Miwa Takada, Kojiro Hongo, Hideki Ninomiya Cinematography by Fujio Morita, Shozo Tanaka, Hiroshi Imai Directed by Kimiyoshi Yasuda, Kenji Misumi, Kazuo Mori Japanese monsters seem to bring out the best in home video companies—Arrow Films’ The Daimajin Trilogy is the most beautifully wrought…
Andrzej Wajda’s most celebrated film in the West is a serious thriller about doubt and corruption in a Poland ‘liberated’ by the Soviet Union. It has a cerebral script and a hero with a hipster attitude befitting a window of relative freedom briefly given to Polish filmmakers. Touted as the James Dean of the Eastern…
The Last Man on Earth Blu ray Kino Lorber 1964 Starring Vincent Price Cinematography by Franco Delli Colli Directed by Sidney Salkow, Ubaldo Ragona The Last Man on Earth is the very definition of a one-man show—Vincent Price stars as a lonesome medico who isn’t lacking for company—it’s just the wrong kind: each night he’s…
“Es ist eine schwimmende Plattform!” Here’s something for committed Sci-fi followers, a lavish German production with big drama, big emotions, and impressive, ambitious special effects. Hans Albers makes sure his pal Paul Hartmann’s artificial mid-Atlantic airport becomes reality, only to lose his new girlfriend Sybille Schmitz to him. The Murnau Foundation’s superb restoration makes the…
The Raven/The Comedy of Terrors Blu ray Kino Lorber 1963-64 Starring Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff Cinematography by Floyd Crosby Directed by Roger Corman, Jacques Tourneur Roger Corman helped Vincent Price create his reputation as a horror movie star and in 1962 he helped him to dismantle it—already tiring of the gothic grind, the…
A review for a movie not on video disc. CineSavant bears down hard on a now-obscure UK thriller that proves a crossroads for several key themes of modern terror: Nazis, bacteriological warfare and paranoid conspiracies. ‘007’– associated writer Jack Whittingham scripted a tale that connects old-school espionage to visionary super-crimes against humanity, the thriller genre…
Claude Chabrol’s ‘minor’ wartime drama is one of the best movies of its kind I’ve seen. A French town under German rule lies on a river straddling occupied and Vichy territories, and becomes a hotbed of intrigues. Yes, there’s resistance activity, but we also see that most people avoid involvement — and some find ways…
Errol Flynn goes to war! One of the last major direct-combat pictures to come out of Hollywood during the war, Raoul Walsh’s finely-crafted ode to the jungle fighters in Burma lets loose a powerful, almost frightening blast of anti-Japanese rage. Errol Flynn earned his pay slugging it out through the swamps, George Tobias provides the…
This ‘dawn of sound’ classic from Josef Sternberg is an important early entry in the gangster genre, a romanticized tale of urban crime with little violence but a full measure of romantic revenge. Star George Bancroft is the title underworld kingpin, who risks everything to hold his girlfriend Fay Wray the way he holds onto…
More or less ignored for 75 years, this curious ‘B’ program picture now finds its way directly to a Warner Archive Blu-ray release. Cult actor Lawrence Tierney has an atypical ‘swell guy’ role as a Marine veteran thrust into a murder mystery and made the fall guy for nefarious foreign spies. Anne Jeffreys becomes his…
One of Jules Verne’s most popular sci-fi fantasies got the big screen treatment from American-International, which hopped on the Verne bandwagon that raked in big $$ for Disney and others. A production challenge given a minimum of resources, the colorful show is still admired for Vincent Price’s performance as Robur the Conqueror, a mad terrorist….