Compromised by a dwindling budget and production Euro-chaos, Peckinpah was not completely satisfied with this WW II story of a German unit at the Russian front in 1943. The climax was literally improvised by James Coburn and Maximillian Schell when the money ran out. But Peckinpah once claimed that “I had a telegram from Orson…
Ralph Macchio plays a Juilliard student on the trail of legendary blues guitarist Robert Johnson and Joe Seneca is a grizzled harpist who knows more about the near-mythical musician than he’s letting on. Walter Hill directed this trip to the crossroads from a script by John Fusco who wrote it as a class assignment at…
Only two years after starring in Joe Dante’s The Howling, Dee Wallace and Christopher Stone are face to snout with yet another snarling beast. This time it’s the rabies-infected St. Bernard of Lewis Teague’s Cujo. The film’s frantically suspenseful climax helped make it a modest success in 1983 (the fourth-highest grossing horror film of the year). Teague’s in-your-face action scenes were abetted by…
One of the strangest sequels ever, this offbeat psychological fantasy employs characters from the original Cat People but heads off in a completely unexpected direction. The lurid ads sold it as a horror film, but it’s more of an art film, unique and magical.
The international sleeper hit of 1957. Terence Fisher’s then-gorily shocking re-imagining of Mary Shelley’s novel jump-started Hammer Films into becoming the major supplier of genre fare for the next decade–and introduced Peter Cushing as the definitive Dr. Frankenstein as well as Christopher Lee in his first monster role. Followed by six sequels.
Often described as a Hitchcockian monster movie, Curse of the Demon is best remembered as the culmination of director Jacques Tourneur’s work—a shrewdly constructed and perfectly cast horror-noir, this 1958 chiller is the equal to Tourneur’s Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie. Dana Andrews gives one of his most incisive performances as a…
Oliver Reed scores in one of his early lead roles as the tormented hero of Hammer Films’ only foray into lycanthropy, set in 18th century Spain and shot on sets built for an Inquisition project that the censor forbid Hammer to make. Anthony Dawson is great as the depraved, syphilitic Marques Siniestro who sets the plot…
Director Richard Ciupka’s Canadian slasher updates the old dark house theme as a group of aspiring actresses convene in a spooky mansion while trying to avoid a masked figure armed with a sickle and a bad temper. The 1983 film benefits from the welcome presence of Animal House’s John Vernon, John Steed’s former partner Linda Thorson…
Caught in a studio‚ regime change, Ivan Passer’s offbeat filmization of Newton Thornberg’s novel Cutter and Bone was unceremoniously dumped into several Gotham theaters with little fanfare or ad budget. Rave notices in Time and Newsweek convinced United Artists to book it in a number of festivals, where it was warmly received, but it remains…
Giant monster specialist Bert I. Gordon’s only somewhat improved followup to “King Dinosaur” was shot in 1955 but didn’t make it to theaters til 1957, on a double bill with Ulmer’s “Daughter of Dr. Jekyll”, satisfying only the fans of pert starlet Gloria Talbott, who starred in both.
Though the seemingly ubiquitous Albert Pierrepoint doesn’t appear in Mike Newell’s 1985 film about the notorious Ruth Ellis, he’s there in spirit, responsible as he was for Ellis’ execution, the last woman in England to be hanged for murder. Miranda Richardson stars as the star-crossed Ellis and Rupert Everett plays her two-timing lover and eventual…
One of the great comic book movies of all time from the brilliant Italian director Mario Bava, whose visual dexterity was never widely appreciated during his lifetime. An uncharacteristically elaborate 1967 pop art production for which Bava nonetheless employed his usual lovingly hand-made in-camera tricks.
Elite commandos Rod Taylor and Jim Brown, mercenaries on a Congo strike mission, tangle with murderous rebels while seeking a fortune in hidden diamonds in Jack Cardiff’s ultra-violent action classic. A Tarantino favorite. For years this has been hard to see in its original form but is now available in a new widescreen transfer with…
Tim Burton’s luxurious film adaptation of the threadbare cult television show hits a lot of the right notes, particularly in the casting of Eva Green as the undead Angelique and Rick Heinrichs’ sumptuous production design. Johnny Depp has some inspired moments as the anti-heroic bloodsucker Barnabas while the Real McCoy, Jonathan Frid, makes a brief appearance along with Vampire Emeritus…
Bette Davis and a solid supporting cast including George Brent and Humphrey Bogart (in one of his last supporting roles) elevate this shameless melodrama about a carefree young socialite who discovers she’s not long for the party. Directed by Grand Hotel’s Edmund Goulding, Max Steiner provided the heavy-handed but plaintive score.
Todd Haynes’s Dark Waters is the latest in a line of David vs. Goliath thrillers like Silkwood and The China Syndrome. Mark Ruffalo plays Robert Bilott, a real-life environmental attorney who took corporate giant Dupont to court for poisoning a community with unregulated chemicals. These stories rarely have happy endings but Bilott triumphed, winning over…
Sam Raimi’s big-league breakthrough maintains the high-energy kick of his Evil Dead franchise while boasting a notably higher gloss—fortunately it doesn’t kill the fun. A mob hit leaves scientist Liam Neeson at death’s door but he finds salvation in an experimental drug—side effects include super-strength, Wile E. Coyote’s resilience, and accelerating psychosis. Call him Darkman….
Veteran western and serial director William Witney, a Tarantino favorite who began his career as a bit player in 1934, cashed in his Hollywood chips with this penultimate, extremely cartoony and uncharacteristic effort. New World picked it up from Roger Corman’s brother Gene who produced it with Tennessee financing but was unable to find a…
Low-budget auteur Edgar G. Ulmer, who gave us “Detour” and “Man from Planet X” proves you can’t win ’em all with this derivative and nonsensical second-feature set in the 1800s, but shot in a Hancock Park mansion through whose windows 1957 cars can be seen driving by.
Filmmaker “John Parker” has only a single (grubby) credit: this bizarre hour-long dream sequence that took years to see the light of a projector–and played only one theater in its original form under the title Dementia. A hint as to who was really responsible for this mind-altering, one-of-a-kind movie is in the photo above.
Belgian director Harry Kumel’s most accessible film is a measured, erotic Euro horror about “The Blood Countess” Elizabeth Bathory, a Hungarian serial killer who legendarily tortured hundreds of young girls and bathed in virgins’ blood to stay eternally young. The Dietrich-like Delphine Seyrig channels her performance in Last Year at Marienbad in the similarly dreamlike setting of…
Some call this first Living Dead sequel Romero’s masterpiece. Social satire alternates with gut-ripping gore to the strain’s of Goblin’s Argento-infuenced soundtrack. Exists in at least five different international versions. Currently being converted for reissue in 3-D .
Global warming in 1961! Is it a newspaper picture, or a disaster picture, or a political picture, or…well, it’s all of these and more. Former journalists Val Guest and Wolf Mankowitz bring a bracingly realistic slant to their persuasive end-of-the-world scenario through the use of real Fleet Street newspapermen, including non-actor Arthur Christiansen, editor of…
“Shooting a movie is like a stagecoach trip. At first you hope for a nice ride. Then you just hope to reach your destination.” Francois Truffaut’s warm, funny and knowing dramedy is one of the greatest movies about movies and the act of making them. The project in question, “Meet Pamela”, is obviously a potboiler,…
“I’ll never get sick of zombies. I just get sick of producers.” – R.I.P. George A. Romero – 1940-2017 By this time the Dead have triumphed and human beings are on the run. Cooly received at the time of its spotty unrated release in 1985, this third Dead movie has been staging something of a…
1973’s The Day of the Dolphin was based on a French sci-fi thriller about talking dolphins involved in a plot to assassinate the president. Its Greenpeace Meets James Bond storyline managed to attract directors as disparate as Roman Polanski and Franklin Schaffner but the task eventually fell to Mike Nichols who enlisted his Graduate scribe Buck Henry to…