A late career triumph for sleepy-eyed noir favorite Robert Mitchum, who excels as a two-time loser trying to avoid more jail time in 1973 Boston. Gritty, realistic and at times shockingly violent, Peter Yates’ crime drama never found the audience it deserves. Here’s a classic Rolling Stone article on the making of the movie: Robert Mitchum: The Last…
The great cartoonist/provocateur Robert Crumb disowned this 1972 film based on his comic strip about the low-down adventures of a randy tom-cat. Clearly a labor of love for director Ralph Bakshi, he spent years finding backing and several more years producing it. With the help of long-time Disney animator Edwin Aardal (Fantasia), Bakshi finds a…
Trailers From Hell Guru Stuart Gordon continued his tongue-in-cheek send-ups of classic horror and gore films in this follow-up to the game-changing Re-Animator. The director is dining out on Lovecraft again, this time with even gooier results. Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton return to tangle with yet another mad scientist, this time a loony known…
Probably the only movie to be based on a Captain Beefheart song, Ronald Bronstein’s film is as quirky and original as its inspiration. Dore Mann plays Keith, an angst-ridden door to door salesman whose life makes Eraserhead look like a Hallmark movie.
Monkeyshines aplenty. 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 go ape over some monkey movies. Escape from the Planet of the Apes was 1971’s sci-fi followup to Beneath the Planet of the Apes It was the third…
A movie so disturbing Michael Haneke made it twice, the director’s original is the gold standard for slow-burn sadism in film. In some ways the ultimate home invasion movie, Arno Frisch and Frank Giering play two torture-happy teens who take over an upper-middle-class home and systematically eliminate the inhabitants. The pointlessness of the violence is…
After the exploding head in Scanners everybody thought, okay, there’s nothing more we can do to the human body –WRONG! What Brian dePalma does to John Cassavetes in this picture, Hitler did to Poland!
Brian De Palma was set to direct this cop caper but ankled (as they say in Variety) over casting issues. Evan Hunter wrote it, based on one of the 87th Precinct novels he published under the name Ed McBain. Relocated from Manhattan to Boston, it’s an ensemble dramedy which was accused of engendering copycat behavior…
A parody of cult films that became a cult film itself, Galaxy Quest headlines Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver as the stars of a science fiction show who come face to face with real aliens. Alan Rickman and Sam Rockwell are amiable co-stars, and director Dean Parisot’s light-hearted approach is reminiscent of a kinder-gentler Mel…
One of the more popular of the later New World Pictures, this gory “worst fears” extravaganza builds on footage from previous Corman space operas and has engendered quite a cult following over the years. In fact, as much as director Bruce Clark’s movie has been accused of ripping off Alien, the later Event Horizon seems…
With the legendary sixth game of the 1986 World Series playing out in the background, playwright Nicky Logan decides to settle a different kind of score with his critics. Director Michael Hoffman based this 2006 drama on a screenplay by Don DeLillo. Co-produced by Griffin Dunne, the film was a passion project for its stellar…
Released five years after Bruce Lee’s death, this elaborate salvage job incorporates only 11 minutes of Lee footage from his original production, which he had put on hold to star in Enter the Dragon. The rest of the time his character is played by heavily disguised doubles, while the majority of the cast play auxiliary…
This is the original US trailer for this 1965 Godzilla imitation, released in the US in 1966 with the usual added scenes with American character actors who explain the plot, such as it is. This version, produced by Jack H. Harris, appears to be out of circulation.
From the era of oddly named anti-heroes (Quackser Fortune, Heironymus Merkin, Duddy Kravitz) comes the bed-hopping adventures of Stanley Sweetheart, a busy undergrad searching for love in all the wrong places. Directed by Leonard Horn and written by Robert T. Westbrook, this was the film debut of Don Johnson. The movie got hit with an…
Allison Anders’ film about the perils of small town romance premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1992 and became a touchstone for independent filmmakers. Brooke Adams plays a single mom raising two teens in a New Mexico trailer park. Ione Skye and Fairuza Balk play her daughters, each navigating their own rocky love affair…
This enduring model for the cads-driving-women-crazy genre is a classy Hollywood remake of the 1940 British version of Patrick Hamilton’s “Angel Street”, which was buried for decades by MGM. Ingrid Bergman is the unfortunate victim of oily hubby Charles Boyer’s homicidal scheming, and won an Oscar for her justifiably paranoid ravings.
Before Gregory Peck appeared in To Kill a Mockingbird as a small-town lawyer battling racial prejudice, he starred in this controversial (for 1947) film about an undercover journalist working to expose antisemitism in the big city. Directed by Elia Kazan, the film is thoughtfully cast with the angelic Dorothy McGuire as Peck’s not so angelic girlfriend…
Was there a movie genre that Howard Hawks could not master? His 1953 take on the 1949 stage musical has enough iconic moments (including a certain hot-pink dress) to fill several films. Starring Jane Russell and, of course, Marilyn Monroe, the comedy is typically Hawksian; fast-paced and full of double-entendres (courtesy of screenwriter Charles Lederer)….
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, three movies which show in stark detail how to be a cad, courtesy of George Sanders. We have wine pairings for each, of course. Cads don’t really come much caddier than…
Directed by Mike Hodges and starring Michael Caine, the shocking and stylish Get Carter is the crème de la crème of 70’s British gangster movies. As the vengeful mobster Jack Carter, Caine retains the cool, sardonic nature of his Harry Palmer character but with a distinctly ruthless violent streak. Roy Budd’s jazz-infused funk score has…
Director Mike Hodges’ Get Carter is the quintessential hard-boiled British crime film. Remarkably influential, it paved the way for like-minded fare such as The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa. Michael Caine plays Jack Carter, a ruthless London mobster who travels back to his Newcastle hometown to investigate the death of his brother… and woe betide anyone…
Director Allan Arkush gives us the lowdown behind his film maudit, an underappreciated and certainly underseen followup to Rock N’ Roll High School which seems to have been deliberately buried by its producers despite a hip and happening cast. The distributor’s attention to detail is amply demonstrated by this awful trailer which bills writer Danny Opatashu under the name of his actor father David.
One of Brian dePalma’s more obscure credits, this unappreciated attempt to turn Tommy Smothers into a movie star fizzled out. Filmed in 1970 after Hi Mom and before Sisters, it fell victim to a regime change at Warner Bros. and wasn’t released until 1972. But it’s still an offbeat anti-establishment spoof that’s now finally available…
1994’s Pulp Fiction rejuvenated John Travolta’s career and his winning streak continued with the following year’s Get Shorty, a two-pronged satire of mobsters and movie stars. Travolta plays Chili Palmer who travels to Tinseltown to collect on a gambling debt and ends up as a different kind of goodfella. Barry Sonnenfeld directed from Elmore Leonard’s novel and surrounds…
Steve McQueen romances Ali MacGraw out from underneath b.f. Robert Evans’ watchful eye. We at TFH aren’t against remakes–some of our favorite movies are remakes– but the 1992 redo of Walter Hill’s screenplay from a Jim Thompson novel found it hard to top this 1972 original. One of director Sam Peckinpah’s smoothest (and some say…
The third sequel continuing Universal’s Frankenstein saga firmly descends into B-picture territory, but it’s still a lot of fun and remarkably well produced with a classic cast. A fan favorite that set the tone for the next four sequels.