A labor of love for director Jim Jarmusch, 2016’s Gimme Danger charts the ascension of punk pioneers The Stooges. The film is a playful mix of animation, found footage, and newly filmed material giving equal weight to all the band members—still, lead singer Iggy Pop maintains his foothold as the group’s charismatic leader.
The Dark Side of Woodstock? The death knell of ’60s counterculture? The End of peace and love? Pretty much. Maysles-Zwerin’s now-classic documentary about the 1969 Rolling Stones American concert tour inadvertently captures the darkest side of the American psyche as a murder takes place during a free performance at Altamont Raceway, CA. Essential, but let’s…
Director John Fawcett and screenwriter Karen Walton prove you can teach an old werewolf new tricks in this inventive B thriller satirizing the miseries of high school life. Brigitte and Ginger Fitzgerald are two rebellious siblings who really take this goth business seriously, particularly Ginger, whose growing pains include turning into a werewolf. Emily Perkins and…
Former animator Frank Tashlin sums up the 1950s in this hilarious live-action cartoon, a Mad Magazine parody come to life. The first major studio picture to showcase breakout rock & roll stars. For Tashlin completists, the go-to tome is Ethan de Seife’s Tashlinesque, which can be ordered here.
This dark British‚ psycho drama didn’t get much attention in the states, or really much of anywhere else. It’s a kind of off-broadway conceit with a dysfunctional “family” of deranged people who play murderous “games” with luckless outsiders in an old manor house. Not‚ quite a horror film or really a black comedy, it fell between…
Director James Foley’s adaptation of David Mamet’s Pulitzer Prize winning play was a box office flop but has gained in stature due to its remarkable cast and viciously funny set-pieces (Alec Baldwin’s “Always Be Closing” is kissing cousin to Gordon Gecko’s “Greed is Good”). The pressure cooker plot about four real estate agents fighting for their jobs in…
A rock n’ roll time capsule and quintessential teenagers-in-love movie circa 1959. Two jukebox icons, guitar genius Chuck Berry and top dog DJ Alan Freed introduce the story of “Johnny Melody”, a former choir boy (!) who finds the road to rock and roll stardom fraught with peril. Along with the typical teen angst the…
In 1964 America’s role in Vietnam was still “advisory”, and this bracing, straightforward account of one Major’s battlefied disillusionment is in no way as well known as later titles like Platoon, Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter, but its relative obscurity is undeserved, as Josh Olson explains.
Shot guerilla-style all over New York City by celebrated maverick and TFH contributor Larry Cohen, this is one crazy movie! A homicide spree hits town and the perps have only one thing in common: they all say “God told me to!” Apocalyptic to say the least!
We know, we’ve already posted a commentary about this one, but it seemed like once we got its director, Larry Cohen, in the Trailers from Hell chair we’d be remiss if we didn’t ask him to talk about it as well… so here’s the first TFH commentary by the Director of the actual movie!
Inoshiro Honda’s 1954 classic spawned a virtual industry of Japanese monster movies when it was released overseas in 1956 in a reworked‚ English version with added scenes featuring Raymond Burr as a US reporter. Even this tampering (more carefully done than subsequent efforts) couldn’t erase the bleak atomic age metaphor that makes both incarnations the…
When AIP released the US version they retitled it Godzilla Vs. The Thing, which was represented on the poster by a giant question mark with tentacles! Apparently Mothra was considered too wussy to be a credible adversary for Big G, who had just come off a grudge match with a ratty-looking gorilla billed as (but…
Two louts commit various acts of black comedy mayhem in the kind of edgy material that exemplifies how unique a period the 1970s were culturally. French director Bertrand Blier was once better known Stateside in an era when “foreign films” were routinely imported and shown instead of bought and remade.
Such a happy movie for having been made in the middle of the Great Depression and thankful audiences lapped it up, not only because of the silly/surreal sight of choreographer Busby Berkeley’s outlandishly outsized song and dance spectacles but the dazzling display of a half-naked Ginger Rogers singing “We’re in the Money”. Dick Powell, Ruby…
The fourth in the popular Gold Diggers musicals, Gold Diggers of 1935 is glossier than previous entries and, since it was produced nearer to the depression’s end, pointedly free of the heavy dramaturgy that made the earlier entries so compelling. It’s a strong entry nonetheless with Busby Berkeley taking over both direction chores and, not for nothing, coming…
Director Larry Peerce’s 1969 adaptation of Philip Roth’s 1959 debut novella stars Richard Benjamin as the librarian lucky/unlucky enough to fall into an affair with nouveau riche Ali McGraw (also her debut in a lead role). With the help of Arnold Schulman’s (Oscar-nominated) script and a solid supporting cast (including Jack Klugman) the film offers up…
Those Mondo Cane guys are back with an astoundingly non-P.C. farrago purporting to expose the history of black subjugation in pre-Civil War America. Gorgeously mounted but stunningly exploitative, it was rated X when first released in the States in a considerably reworked version. NSFW!
Martin Scorsese’s most acclaimed film after Raging Bull was considered a return to form but in fact showed the director stretching himself toward new cinematic heights. Alongside The Godfather it is now regarded as the definitive gangster movie. Scorsese envisioned the style of the piece, based on Nick Pileggi’s true crime best seller, as lightning-paced, “almost…
George Clooney directed and acts in this period drama that documents newsman Edward R. Murrow’s nightly clashes with Wisconsin’s demagogic senator Joe McCarthy. Set in 1953, Robert Elswit’s potent black and white cinematography recalls 60’s political thrillers like Seven Days in May and Fail Safe.
The third time’s the charm for production designer turned director Eugene Lourie’s final entry in his dinosaur trilogy, which benefitted from a massive MGM ad campaign that made it a must-see for the moppet trade in 1960. Unlike The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms and The Giant Behemoth, this is a man-in-suit Godzilla style epic with…
Talk about descriptive titles! This generic little indie, set in a Long Beach amusement park terrorized by an escaped gorilla, was one of only three 3-D productions released by 20th Century-Fox in the fifties. It benefits from an unusually good cast including Oscar nominee Lee J. Cobb (the same year he made On the Waterfront!)…
Jean Renoir’s humanism is on full display in this 1937 film about a World War and a class war. French POWs and the Germans that imprison them are treated with equal compassion, an approach that would be unthinkable just a few years later. Jean Gabin, Pierre Fresnay, and Marcel Dalio are memorable brothers-in-arms, and Erich…
Ron Howard’s smashing, crashing directorial debut is a family affair with relatives, friends and co-workers pitching in to provide producer Roger Corman with one of his most successful car crash drive-in movies ever. Allan and Joe worked behind the camera on this one, along with a lot of other New World regulars both on and…
James Whale escapes Frankenstein’s lab for a jaunt in the jungle with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Joan Bennett, all in search of Incan treasures in South America. The supporting cast included George Sanders and Vincent Price, who called it “one of the funniest films ever shot.” The actors may have struggled to keep a straight…
Perhaps to save on dubbing costs, this tacky Japanese-produced space opera features an entirely non-Asian cast (it certainly wasn’t Occidental). Most of the background players are US military personnel. Opinions on its not-very-slimy jello monsters vary, but one thing everybody agrees on: the funky title song is Outta This World! G-R-E-E-E-E-N-S-L-I-I-I-I-I-M-E!!!!!!!
John Ford replaced William Wyler as director of this multi-Oscar nominated‚ saga about a turn of the century Welsh coal mining family‚ which walked home with five awards and beat out The Maltese Falcon, Sergeant York, Suspicion, and Citizen Kane for Best Picture. Nathan Juran’s reconstruction of a Welsh mining town built in the Malibu…