The great supporting cast alone (Sam Levene, Jeff Corey,Jay C. Flippen, Sir Lancelot and the first of many pairings of John Hoyt and Whit Bissell) would make Jules Dassin’s prison pic a keeper, but as written by Richard Brooks it’s a tough, incisive and influential genre piece. Hume Cronyn’s career highlight as the sadistic Warden…
TFH Guru Don Coscarelli’s whacked-out comedy/horror version of Joe R. Lansdale’s novella never had a conventional release. Instead 32 prints were “roadshowed” around the country (including various film festivals) to build up anticipation for its appearance on DVD. Since then it’s generated enough of a cult following to propel a proposed sequel, Bubba Nosferatu, which…
The peacetime draft in pre-Pearl Harbor America forms the background for Abbott & Costello’s breakthrough movie, full of their best vaudeville material flawlessly performed. Its blockbuster success paved the way for Bud and Lou to reign as film and radio’s top funnymen throughout the war years. They ended up competing with themselves when their earlier…
Director Bertrand Blier’s son Bernard plays a key character in his father’s picture, a surreal farce about murder and mistaken identities. Gérard Depardieu finds a bloodied corpse on the métro, Jean Carmet is the man who put it there, and Blier is the inspector who tries, not very hard, to make sense of it all….
Alan Parker’s 1976 film (his first) is the definition of ambitious: a depression-era musical based on the exploits of Al Capone and Bugs Moran with an all-child cast. Starring Jodie Foster (as a moll named “Tallulah”), the squeaky-clean, G-rated mobster flick boasted a score from Paul Williams and period-friendly cinematography from Peter Biziou and Michael…
Director/writer Ron Shelton’s super-smart script fuels this terrific baseball comedy and Shelton knew whereof he spoke; he was a minor league player with the Baltimore Orioles organization. Tim Robbins plays “Nuke” LaLoosh, a green pitcher in need of some pointers and Susan Sarandon plays the baseball groupie who provides a few of those pointers off-field. In a…
Hot on the heels of his theme for Mission Impossible, Lalo Schifrin turned to more high-powered rhythms for Peter Yates’ supercharged detective thriller—even though its most famous scene, the car chase, went without music. The film was a transitional film for Hollywood, introducing the concept of kinetic action into the gumshoe mix and making a…
In Andrea Bianchi’s inept but idiotically entertaining thriller, vacationers find themselves barricaded in a remote villa against a never-ending parade of zombies pouring out of a nearby cemetery. Lurching from one gross-out scene to the next, the movie is wildly predictable but it does feature an over-the-top mother and child reunion that must have had grindhouse…
Director Gillo Pontecorvo followed up his neorealist masterpiece The Battle of Algiers with another complex anti-colonial film, this one involving a slave rebellion on the fictional Caribbean island of Queimada circa 1845. Although his relationship with Pontecorvo was a rocky one (what else is new?), Marlon Brando considered this one of his finest performances. The…
Originally shot as Night of the Eagle, this clever supernatural thriller is the second adaptation of Fritz Leiber’s 1943 occult novel Conjure Wife, filmed again in 1980 as Witches’ Brew. Although the screenplay is credited to vet sci fi scribes Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont, British writer George Baxt has long claimed he was responsible…
TV horror king Dan Curtis moved to the big screen with this Amityville-like adaptation of Robert Morasco’s 1973 haunted house novel. Oliver Reed and Karen Black (now there’s a couple you don’t want to be trapped in an elevator with) move their family into a foreboding mansion that sucks the life out of its tenants….
Who can resist “A Howling Hellcat Humping a Hot Steel Hog on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge!” ? Busy ’70s indie trailer editor Ken Dixon set the bar pretty high (or low) with this seminal early New World trailer which established the template for hawking impoverished production values and making them sound pretty cool. The…
Joe Dante’s latest film is a self-described “zom-com” starring Anton Yelchin as the unluckiest lucky guy on the planet; he has two beautiful women in love with him but, and here’s the (literally) sticky part, one of them is dead. Alexandra Daddario plays Yelchin’s effervescent new girlfriend and Ashley Greene is the gorgeous undead ex who…
Marilyn Monroe’s first screen performance after studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actor’s Studio finally convinced critics that she was indeed an accomplished actress (in a role originated onstage by Kim Stanley). Director Joshua Logan filmed Marilyn’s live rendition of “That Old Black Magic” with two cameras and an offscreen orchestra, eliminating the need for…
A teenaged melodrama set in a tiny Georgia town in the late forties, Daniel Petrie’s 1974 sleeper stars Jan-Michael Vincent as Buster and Pamela Sue Martin as his sometime girlfriend Margie. Joan Goodfellow plays the tragic Billie whose awful fate turns the movie, and Buster, on their heads. Making his film debut ten years before…
Directed by William Asher (Bewitched, Muscle Beach Party), Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker lifts key elements of Oedipus and Psycho and runs them through a grindhouse blender—the result is both sleazy and cathartic. Susan Tyrrell plays an over-the-hill sex bomb way too interested in her nephew, played by the baby-faced Jimmy McNichol. The supporting cast (including…
George Sidney’s 1963 musical satire takes on all comers, including Elvis Presley, television and the rise of the American Teenager but the film is most memorable for the super-charged performance of the redheaded bump-and-grinder who personified that All-American teen, Ann-Margret. On a less combustible note, Dick Van Dyke’s affable everyman persona is always welcome and…
They say tense sets often make for good movies and Cabaret is no exception. Desperate for a hit after the flop of Sweet Charity, director Bob Fosse rode herd on the cast, especially Joel Grey, who originated the role of the creepy Kit Kat Klub emcee on Broadway but almost lost his Oscar-winning part in the movie to Fosse’s initial choice….Ruth…
The hit 1940 Broadway musical version of the Faust legend made it to the screen three years later, with original stars Ethel Waters and Rex Ingram heading an all-star African-American cast and first-time director Vincente Minnelli behind the camera. Jack Benny foil Eddie Anderson replaced Casablanca pianist Dooley Wilson in the lead because “Rochester” was popular enough to allay objections…
TFH guru Joe Dante, whose father was a golf pro, can attest that Harold Ramis’s low comic hit about the crazily rarified country club world is uncannily accurate down to the last Izod shirt and Titleist golf ball. Standup comic Rodney Dangerfield became a movie star in this loosely made, heavily improvised fan favorite. Said to…
Having produced several biker and Filipino women-in-cages pix for Roger Corman, Jonathan Demme got his chance to direct with this sleazy 1974 drive-in special replete with socially-committed prison-abuse trappings, costarring Russ Meyer starlet Erica Gavin and the indelible Barbara Steele. Joe Dante’s first (overlong and way too expensive) trailer for New World. NSFW.
The success of Annie Get Your Gun prompted Warner Bros. to follow up with another musical western based on the popular stage show about Wild Bill Hickock and Calamity Jane. Paul Francis Webster and Sammy Fain’s Oscar-winning song “Secret Love” became one of star Doris Day’s signature hits. Here is a great primer on Day…
Made at the height of his ’70s hot streak, California Split is one of Robert Altman’s wittiest films. The story of two jokers riding their own hot streak, Elliot Gould and George Segal play a pair of compulsive gamblers who split their time between casinos and pawn shops. The Altmanesque supporting cast, including Ann Prentiss,…
Distributed under several titles including Thriller: A Cruel Picture and Hooker’s Revenge, this violent 1974 Swedish female revenge fantasy included hardcore inserts in some versions, but AIP’s R-rated cut got the most play. Star Christina Lindberg is mute throughout.
Described in ads as a “Slimy Glob of Doom”, this large economy-size micro-organism found in a Mayan temple out-slithers The Blob. Directed by Italy’s Riccardo Freda, in collaboration with DP-turned-first time director Mario Bava. Formerly a staple of late-nite TV Creature Features, this one has been hard to see in recent years but is now…
The top half of one of the seminal 50’s Saturday matinee double features (co-feature: Creature with the Atom Brain), Sam Katzman’s sci-fi monsterfest petrified a pre-Jaws generation of kids into avoiding the ocean altogether. Atomic subs, on-location San Francisco photography and giant tentacles courtesy of Ray Harryhausen make this one a memorable part of any…