Wolfgang Petersen’s 1985 science fiction film was initially given a cool reception by critics and crowds alike but found a perennial home on cable thereby cementing its place in the minds of a generation raised on HBO. Echoing Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune’s grudging relationship in 1968’s Hell in the Pacific, Dennis Quaid and Lou Gossett…
A huge international hit, this first Chinese martial arts movie produced by a major Hollywood studio was released a month or so after the demise of charismatic star Bruce Lee and became, more so than any of his previous Hong Kong films, the one that made him a mainstream legend. Its success led to an…
A huge international hit, this first Chinese martial arts movie produced by a major Hollywood studio was released a month or so after the demise of charismatic star Bruce Lee and became, more so than any of his previous Hong Kong films, the one that made him a mainstream legend. Its success led to an…
Barbara Hershey is raped and ravaged by an invisible force in Sidney Furie’s allegedly “true” shocker. Filmed in 1981 but not released until two years later. As with The Exorcist, unexplainable events reportedly occurred off camera during production. Martin Scorsese put this one on his list of 11 scariest horror films.
David Lynch’s visionary black comedy was shot in sunny California but the bleakly surreal black and white imagery, full of smoking chimneys and dilapidated walk-ups, suggests a nightmare factory town by way of Diane Arbus. The film has such a uniquely grungy beauty (courtesy of Frederick Elmes’ photography) and featured such eccentrically empathetic characters (in…
Don Taylor directed this third film in the original Apes series and screenwriter Paul Dehn concocted the imaginative storyline. Roddy McDowell and Kim Hunter return as simian sweethearts Cornelius and Zira who survive the earth’s destruction but are thrown back in time to 1973—all the better to score satirical points about the Me Decade and…
John Carpenter’s 1981 film was conceived as a political parable in the mid-seventies (with Watergate as his inspiration) but the resulting movie dropped most of the social commentary and focused instead on tongue-in-cheek sci-fi thrills with a comically taciturn Kurt Russell (doing his best Clint Eastwood impression) as grizzled anti-hero Snake Plissken. Boosted by its…
Director Paul W. S. Anderson’s Alien-flavored sci-fi film had a troubled production history and an even harder time with the critics and the box office once it was released. Once again home video came to a film’s rescue and turned the movie into an eventual success. Sleekly produced, the movie boasted a nifty cast including Laurence Fishburne,…
Sam Raimi’s comic tendencies get a work-out in his follow-up to the low, low budget thrills of The Evil Dead. Bruce Campbell returns as Ash the zombie-killer and all of Raimi’s tricks return too—he parodies his own original with the gusto of a Mel Brooks.
The president of a sprawling business empire has just died and an all-star back-stabbing party is being held by the surviving members—each one aiming for a shot at the crown. Directed by Robert Wise, the film stars a who’s who of Hollywood including William Holden, Barbara Stanwyck, and Fredric March. Nominated for several Oscars, screenwriter…
Talk about a Trailer from Hell!! William Friedkin and William Peter Blatty’s seminal embellishment on an actual 1949 case of exorcism is one of the most disturbing horror films of all time (particularly effective on lapsed Catholics). Its unprecedented success spawned a mini-genre of demonic possession movies the world over, as well as a couple…
Eli Roth loves the trailer, hates the movie – although some of us at TFH regard John Boorman’s ill-fated sequel as one of the most prodigiously imaginative and intellectually audacious, if dramatically inert, studio movies of the decade. Mangled after its disastrous opening, it’s since been restored on DVD.
Often cited as one of the finest movies about World War II, John Ford’s first film after his Navy discharge is a powerful study of the PT boat squadron in the Philippines. Ford, who made the film at the behest of the government, broke a leg on the picture and star Robert Montgomery filled in…
Comic director Blake Edwards revisits his noir roots in this 1962 suspense classic cannily filmed on San Francisco locations. One of the biggest hits of the early 60s. And one of the most unusual trailers.
Joe Dante’s bittersweet ode to endless summers and the boys who lived them was bullied by the studio into a rushed release date — nevertheless the movie’s soul is undiminished thanks to the director and the open-hearted appeal of his young actors. Each making their feature film debuts, Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix play inventive…
A Generation Gap horror film, Eye of the Devil pits old pros Deborah Kerr and David Niven against proto-hippies David Hemmings and Sharon Tate, who may or may not be members of an ancient devil cult. J. Lee Thompson directed this under this radar thriller and assembled a fine supporting cast including Donald Pleasence and…
This dream-like treatise on sexual politics was Stanley Kubrick’s final film (he died just days after previewing his final cut). Perplexed audiences are still arguing about this one, but it nonetheless exerts the usual hypnotic Kubrickian aura. The elaborate production features a not-quite-real recreation of Greenwich Village at Pinewood’s UK studios, further intensifying the distancing factor. Tom Cruise…
French documentarian and co-founder of the Cinematheque Francais Georges Franju’s second fiction feature remains one of the most influential horror films of its decade, a nightmarishly poetic dreamscape that elevates a Monogram Pictures-level conceit to the realm of expressive exotica. Surgeon Pierre Brasseur’s Lugosi-like commitment to restoring his disfigured daughter’s face provides some of the…
One of Orson Welles’s most overtly playful films, F for Fake is a portrait of the film director as prestidigitator; the everyday techniques of movie making—particularly editing—are presented as the most powerful of magic tricks. Ostensibly a documentary about the art forger Elmyr de Hory, in Welles’s hands, it’s so much more, a multi-layered performance…
In 1972, Jane Fonda—the Silent Majority’s primary bête noire—and Donald Sutherland organized a traveling comedy show as an anti-war alternative to the distinctly establishment vibe of Bob Hope’s USO tours. Filmmaker Francine Parker directed this low budget documentary featuring some remarkably unfunny skits and some compelling behind the scenes interviews.
The imaginative films of Czech animator/director Karel Zeman were poorly served in the West, usually presented if at all in heavily Americanized recuts. This brilliantly designed 1957 gem wasn’t released in the US until four years later and in the wrong screen ratio (the trailer obviously cuts off the top and bottom of the 1:33…
Dennis Christopher, the wholesome small town bicyclist of Breaking Away, goes Psycho in this 1980 thriller about a film fan who acts out his murderous fantasies in the guise of classic movie monsters. If director Vernon Zimmerman had cult status in mind for this quirky black comedy, he was helped considerably by the film’s heavy…
Lumet’s minimalist adaptation of the doomsday best seller is one of the director’s most unappreciated works, overshadowed then and now by the comically apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove. Lumet creates an atmosphere of claustrophobic dread that intensified the jitters of its anxious post-Cuban Missile Crisis audience.
Live television director John Frankenheimer’s third theatrical feature is based on James Leo Herlihy’s dysfunctional family novel. This led directly into Frankenheimer’s amazing run of five consecutive ’60s masterpieces beginning with Birdman of Alcatraz and ending with Seconds. Warren Beatty, only five roles away from Bonnie and Clyde, makes a strong impression.
They don’t make ’em like this anymore: those huge sets and cast of thousands aren’t computer-generated but absolutely real, and those 1964-era actors are a darn sight more interesting than a lot of those we have on hand today.
Although Alfred Hitchcock was working with Ernest Lehman on the script for a project titled The Short Night at the time of Hitch’s death, this light-hearted suspense thriller proved to be his final outing. In retrospect it’s not viewed as equal to his best efforts, but he was 77 when he made it and it’s…