One of the best literary adaptions in many a moon, director Terry Zwigoff finds just the right tone for Daniel Clowes’s sweet and sour graphic novel about two teenage misfits (deftly inhabited by Thora Birch and Scarlett Johansson) and their oddball friendship with a misanthropic record collector played to a T by Steve Buscemi. The parade of oddballs who…
Adapted from the book The Ghost by Robert Harris, this unnerving mystery is a return to form for Roman Polanski, thanks mainly to the cagey cat-and-mouse plot which plays into the director’s strongest suit. Ewan McGregor plays the titular scribe whose creeping paranoia turns out to be completely justified and Pierce Brosnan is the man…
Columbia’s big budget horror comedy lumbers to the finish line thanks to the low budget charms of counter-culture comics Harold Ramis, Dan Aykroyd and, especially, Bill Murray, who confronts each ghoulish manifestation with unflappable aplomb and devastating put-down lines. Quirky co-stars Rick Moranis and Annie Potts help keep the atmosphere loose and the climatic showdown…
Hapless supporting players flee from yet another B-picture monster on the loose. The only real legacy of this fairly obscure 1958 drive-in staple was forged by numerous tv showings as part of various regional Creature Feature programs.
Candy manufacturers go to war in Yasuzo Masumura’s not-too-sweet satire set in Japan’s version of Madison Avenue. Hiroshi Kawaguchi plays an upstart ad man who mixes business with pleasure and Hitomi Nozoe is his company’s spokesmodel, a spaced-out teen sporting space-age gear and a plastic ray gun. Sound wild? The “uncategorizable” Masumura had a long…
Scaly Toho superstar Godzilla plays his most challenging role as his distant cousin Gigantis. Original director Shiro Honda was away making Half Human, so the reins for this second Godzilla film were handed to the less inspired Motoyoshi Oda. Toho intended to provide their original monster suits for extensive US reshoots, which never materialized. This US cut has been supplanted in recent…
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…
After the twin successes of Dr. No and From Russia with Love suggested a cash cow in the making, the third James Bond film was manufactured to dominate the market and succeeded beyond any producer’s wildest dreams. Sean Connery is back as Bond and is nearly overshadowed by his high-profile cast-mates including Gert Frobe as the…
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.