A comedy-drama about the fraught relationship between a homeless man and the paparazzi who inadvertently turns him into a Hollywood star. Written and directed by Tom DiCillo, the odd couple relationship takes an unexpectedly poignant turn thanks to the performances of Steve Buscemi as the photographer and Michael Pitt as the rising star. Alison Lohman…
James Dickey’s acclaimed Southern gothic novel becomes a landmark experience in suspense with John Boorman’s resonant, disturbing picturization of a river rafting trip that ends in horror and disaster. As desolate a slice of Americana as has ever been put onscreen.
Though relegated to the sidelines for much of her time at A.I.P., Luana Anders could at least point to her starring role in Francis Ford Coppola’s first legitimate feature, Dementia 13. It was after hearing his pitch about a mysterious psycho killer that producer Roger Corman gave Coppola the funds to proceed—and though an unhappy…
Less pompously reverent than its predecessor (the history-making first CinemaScope production The Robe), Delmer Daves’ expansive sequel is an action-packed gladiator spectacle, anticipating DeMille’s upcoming Ten Commandments as well as years of Euro sword-and-sandal offshoots.
Directed by TFH Guru Ernest Dickerson, Demon Knight is a story of good and evil and some fabulously gory special effects. William Sadler plays the guardian of a key with the power to unlock the forces of darkness and Billy Zane is the “Collector”, a big-league demon ready to ride his zombie army into battle….
French director Olivier Assayas, usually more disposed to lyrically ambiguous meditations like The Clouds of Sils Maria and Personal Shopper, lets it all hang out in this movie mind game embracing high tech conspiracies and torture porn. Connie Nielsen, Chloë Sevigny and the always game Gina Gershon star as duplicitous jet-setters in a paranoid world of…
Or to be completely accurate, Demonoid, Messenger of Death (aka Macabro)! This trailer was prepared by the New World Pictures crew, but for whatever reason the picture ended up going out through another distributor. It’s director Alfredo Zacharias’s somewhat less impoverished follow up to The Bees, his earlier US-Mexican co-production for New World. This one’s…
Demons comes with quite a pedigree—directed by Mario Bava’s son Lamberto and produced by Dario Argento, the 1985 release is the ne plus ultra of heavy metal horror films with contributions from Motley Crue and Billy Idol. The extremely simple and very gory plot revolves around possessed moviegoers transforming into bloodthirsty zombies. The film’s success…
Mother-fixated serial killer Ed Gein, who inspired Psycho and The‚ Texas Chainsaw Massacre, is the subject of this‚ grungy low-budget Canadian horror about a crazy old coot who stuffs his mom and eviscerates any woman unlucky enough to come near him. Also known as Confessions of a Necrophile. Bob Clark produced under a pseudonym.
An all-star monster rally featuring a planetload of Toho monsters from previous films, many of whom were virtually unrecognizable to worldwide audiences who hadn’t followed these movies religiously. The 1969 AIP US‚ release sported a superior English dub by Titra Sound which has since been supplanted by an inferior export version.
At the time of its release Devdas was the most expensive Hindi film ever produced and it more than paid off. Admired worldwide, director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s film is a bonafide epic equal parts romance and tragedy with a marathon running time of 185 minutes, typical for Bollywood extravaganzas.
The old chestnut of the the crazed ventriloquist possessed by his dummy dates back at least to the early talkie The Great Gabbo, and probably reached its apogee in the Michael Redgrave episode of Dead of Night. But director Lindsay Shonteff’s underrated (partly because it was lampooned on MST3K) chiller has merits of its own,…
Like its predecessor The Pirates of Blood River, Hammer’s second pirate saga overcomes its budget restraints by setting most of the action on dry land. As usual with the studio’s forays into historical material, the innate cruelty of those unforgiving eras is given its head, leading to more than a little blood being spilled on all the…
Alfred Hitchcock coveted the film rights to the novel She Who Was No More by Boileau & Narcejac but Henri-Georges Clouzot got there first (by hours, apparently). Soon afterward Hitch snapped up one of the duo’s other novels, which became Vertigo. A worldwide suspense sensation, Les Diaboliques was widely influential and has been remade for…
Hitchcock’s only 3-D film is a sturdy and cleverly cast adaptation of a popular stage play which came at the tail end of the craze and played virtually all its bookings in 2-D. A particular tragedy in that it remains one of the finest examples of the dramatic use of 3-D in film history.
The feel-bad feminist film of 1970, Carrie Snodgress—in an award-winning performance—plays a housewife who can’t catch a break, especially from the aggressively misogynistic men she keeps running into. The usually affable Richard Benjamin plays against type as one of the most horrible husbands in movie history but Frank Langella runs him a close second as…
The notorious criminal John Dillinger is played by the notorious actor Lawrence Tierney in Max Nosseck’s efficient programmer from 1945. Written by Philip Yordan and an uncredited William Castle, it’s a boilerplate cops and robber story that takes advantage of Dillinger’s Bonnie and Clyde-like notoriety. Dimitri Tiomkin, at the threshold of a great career, composed…
An offbeat B-picture that slipped through the cracks. This Tijuana-set street urchin saga was the debut feature of prolific TV director Boris Sagal. After several Dr. Kildare episodes, MGM assigned him to this as a test run before handing him the bigger budget Richard Chamberlain vehicle Twilight of Honor.
The biggest boxoffice hit of 1967 led to scores of imitations, remakes and sequels. Robert Aldrich’s brutal action film was highly criticized at the time for its excessive violence and general air of nihilism, but has remained an audience favorite through the decades. Yet Roger Corman got there first with a more modest version of…
A satirical labor of love from animator Charles Swenson that ended up vying with “Fritz the Cat” for X-rated grindhouse playing time. There’s a lot of wit and imagination on view, but hardly anyone ever saw the picture.
Alan Spencer supplies his trailer commentary for the inaugural Harry Callahan adventure Dirty Harry. The odd conglomeration of names involved in the inception of what became Clint Eastwood’s signature movie include John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Irvin Kershner, Terence Malick and John Milius. The first two, along with Robert Mitchum and Steve McQueen and Paul Newman,…
Lalo Schifrin scored five of director Don Siegel’s films including one of his most popular and controversial, Dirty Harry (no matter what they thought of the movie, critics raved about Schifrin’s score.) The odd conglomeration of names involved in the inception of what became Clint Eastwood’s signature movie include John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Irvin Kershner,…
A kind of Bonnie and Clyde for the Nascar crowd, director John Hough (The Legend of Hell House) puts together an eccentric and original premise with an equally quirky cast including Vic Morrow, Kenneth Tobey and Roddy McDowall in support of stars Peter Fonda and Susan George, two misfits on the lam from the law after a…
Director John Hough made this eccentrically plotted action flick at the height of the American moviegoer’s passion for rowdy car chase movies. A Nascar take on Bonnie and Clyde, Peter Fonda stars as a hot-rodder who knocks over a supermarket in order to fund his racing team. Susan George plays the good-time girl who goes along for…
The story of shipwrecked extraterrestrials confined to a South African internment camp, Neill Blomkamp’s 2009 film is in the tradition of The Day the Earth Stood Still—a science fiction film with more on its mind than just special effects. Mostly shot in found footage style, Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell based their script on the notorious…
Although it made almost no impact in the American market, Sergio Corbucci’s violent entry in Europe’s Sergio Leone copycat western sweepstakes made the charismatic Franco Nero into an international star and led to over 30 unofficial “sequels”, most of which simply appropriated the name and don’t even feature a character named Django. Nero repeated the…