One of the most brutal and controversial horror films of all time, Ruggero Deodato’s fake snuff movie is heavily influenced by the makers of Mondo Cane. Banned in many countries due to inexcusable animal cruelty and all-too-realistic-looking gore scenes, it has been hailed as an anti-imperialist media expose and condemned as racist torture porn. Shot…
South Park‘s Trey Parker and Matt Stone collaborated on this typically dark satire, a musical comedy based on the true story of a man known as The Colorado Cannibal. The movie began life as a prankish trailer and morphed into a full-length film. Still in college, Parker and Stone shot the movie on weekends and,…
As traveling con man Larson E. Whipsnade, W.C. Fields battles with radio sensation Edgar Bergen and his acerbic wooden pal Charlie McCarthy in this jumbled but funny hodgepodge of vaudeville and circus gags which would forever redefine the Fields image, much to his dismay.
Robert Mitchum plays one of his scariest, most fascinating villains in this surprisingly tough suspense thriller from John D. MacDonald’s novel. Bernard Herrmann’s score is so good Martin Scorsese recycled it for his 1991 remake, re-orchestrated by Elmer Bernstein.
This 1991 remake of the unsettling 1962 thriller starring Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum takes on an even more disturbing dimension under the direction of Martin Scorsese. Robert De Niro assumes Mitchum’s role as the grinning sociopath Max Cady and Nick Nolte takes over for Peck as the milquetoast lawyer trapped in a deadly game…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, we have a trio of films directed by the late, great Frank Capra. There is also a trio of wines for pairing. Mr. Deeds Goes to Town is a 1936 romantic…
As conspiracy theories go, the idea that the Apollo moon landing was faked (with supposed the assistance of Stanley Kubrick no less!) has gained ground even beyond this overlong 1978 extrapolation by writer-director Peter Hyams that posits a phony Mars landing instigated by corrupt officials via re-enacted tv coverage. A hit in its day, it…
A real outlier in Hammer’s history, Brian Clemen’s gothic swashbuckler is one of the studio’s most purely enjoyable efforts. Horst Janson plays the Robin Hood-like vampire hunter and John Cater is his stake-wielding sidekick, Professor Hieronymus Grost. Caroline Munro plays a sultry gypsy girl and Laurie Johnson (composer for TV’s The Avengers) provides the rousing score.
Rudyard Kipling’s 1897 novel about the redemption of a spoiled rich kid aboard a New England cod boat gets the MGM treatment and becomes a parable of fatherly responsibility, full of director Victor Fleming’s trademark Christian symbolism. Spencer Tracy gets his first solo shot at stardom as Portuguese fisherman Manuel, a minor character in the…
A circus ape transforms into doe-eyed sex-bomb Acquanetta via a brain swap performed by mad doctor John Carradine. A sci-fi twist on Universal’s popular Wolfman cycle, this was the first in a trio of ‘Paula the Ape-woman’ movies (including Jungle Woman and Jungle Captive). Resourcefully directed by former editor Edward Dmytryk, who structures his low…
Director Michael Schultz’s 1976 comedy about a typical day in an L.A. car wash is energized by a loose-limbed band of comedians and eccentrics including Bill Duke, George Carlin, Irwin Corey and Antonio Fargas. Richard Pryor makes a memorable cameo as the mercenary bible thumper “Daddy Rich” and The Pointer Sisters are on hand as…
Caravaggio was director Derek Jarman’s imaginative take on the 16th century street hustler whose exquisite yet provocative paintings found favor with the Vatican. Nigel Terry plays the vagabond artist and Tilda Swinton, in her film debut, plays Lena, Caravaggio’s lover. Michael Gough plays a man of the cloth whose support keeps Caravaggio off the street…
This is the international export trailer for Mario Bava’s trend-setting 1971 murder spree, presented entirely in solarized images. This film has had so many titles over the years that we don’t have room to list them, but the one that stuck was the brilliant US reissue title Twitch of the Death Nerve.
Kansas industrial filmmaker Herk Harvey’s barely-distributed 1962 ghost story languished in obscurity for years, but has now taken its place as one of the most influential indie productions of the sixties.
This week’s Trailers From Hell movies are about cars, in one fashion or another. We do not recommend drinking and driving – of course – but, once you are home, unscrew the cap on something mechanical for your viewing pleasure. You can take it out of the brown paper bag first, but don’t bother with…
Stephen King’s potboiler about a troubled teen with psychic powers was all the inspiration Brian De Palma needed to create a modern classic combining bloody exploitation shocks with brilliantly played dysfunctional family drama. Audiences were beguiled by Sissy Spacek’s heartbreaking portrayal of the ultimate wallflower while terrified by Piper Laurie’s hilarious and horrifying mom-from-hell. Both…
The movie that cemented Bogart and Bergman’s star status remains a miracle of studio filmmaking over 70 years later. Troubled behind the scenes, yet every element coalesced into a stirring, satisfying entertainment that still merits its status as one of the top Hollywood pictures ever. We can only imagine the impact it had on wartime…
The celebrated RKO B-picture that started producer Val Lewton’s five year run of poetic competition to Universal’s more earthbound ’40s horror pix. Clever use of the power of suggestion allowed audiences to transfer their own internal fears to the characters onscreen, a technique too seldom used today.
Widely considered a disaster at the time, Mike Nichols’ elaborate film version of Joseph Heller’s absurdist anti-war novel has since recaptured a bit of cult heat. Heller himself was enthusiastic about Buck Henry’s adaptation of his complex work. The four-month shoot (in San Carlos, Mexico on a specially constructed air base) was reportedly a tense…
Patrick McGoohan had already starred in All Night Long, a well-received rethinking of Othello set in Piccadilly’s jazz clubs—so why not try again? And so was born Catch My Soul, the Othello story moved to a dusty New Mexico commune with Woodstock sensation Richie Havens as the doomed moor. It was McGoohan’s first and only feature length…
The mid-50s French Riviera provides an attractive backdrop to one of Hitchcock’s lightest thrillers, with reformed cat burglar Cary Grant romancing a dazzling Grace Kelly, a spoiled rich girl whose Edith Head-designed clothes budget could bankroll several small countries for a year. Pure escapism. Won Robert Burks a best cinematography Oscar.
Held just one month after the Woodstock festival in 1969, the Big Sur Folk Festival featured standard bearers like Joan Baez while inviting new kids on the block like Joni Mitchell and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young. Baird Bryant and Johanna Demetrakas’s film was released in 1971, a year after Michael Wadleigh’s historic Woodstock. Sadly…
Jacques Rivette’s 1974 film is a playful puzzle-box fantasy about two women and their adventures in a time-traveling mystery house. Starring Dominique Labourier and Juliet Berto, Rivette’s riff on Alice in Wonderland won critical raves though its convoluted construction kept it off the drive-in circuit.
Michael Soavi’s 1994 film begins as a stylish goof on the zombie genre but expands into an hallucinatory meditation on love, death and the cosmos. Lockstep admirers of horror films were not happy (not enough zombies) and art-house denizens were appalled by the no-holds-barred sex and violence. It’s a genuinely visionary effort and, not for…
Well, to be brutally honest… there are really only two women on display here, neither of whom are convicts. But hey, it’s a kick-ass title, isn’t it? The full movie can be downloaded <I><B><font style=”color: #D72508;”><a href=”http://alturl.com/c2ay7″> here</font></a></I></B>.
At the tail end of his “commercial period” France’s Claude Chabrol tried one those international coproductions with a US studio, only to see the result land with a resounding thud. From then on it was one acclaimed arthouse hit after another and this one remains an interesting footnote in a distinguished career.