Allied Artists, the scruffy B-picture studio which sprang from the lowly origins of Monogram, made a short-lived bid for major studio status during the 1960s with movies like this large scale 132 minute WW II epic based on an unlikely but inspiring true story.

Larry Cohen details the typically unorthodox story behind the hurry-up production of the sequel to his sleeper hit Black Caesar. Fred Williamson’s Black Godfather is resurrected from his semi-death to avenge himself on the Mafia. James Brown’s music was dumped by Larry in favor of Edwin Starr, and ended up on Brown’s album “The Payback.”

Having already suffered their share of fools at noisy multiplexes, movie-goers in 1987 were introduced to a different kind of pinhead in Clive Barker’s Hellraiser, an ultra-violent mythological thriller with a queasy emphasis on outré torture techniques. Barker’s Pinhead is the leather-clad leader of a group of supernatural sadomasochists called Cenobites who escape into the…

This trailer for the Beatles’ fantasy follow-up to A Hard Day’s Night takes pains to remind us that, unlike that transgressive black-and-white anomaly, this one’s in COLOR!

Trucker movies replaced the western as ozoner staples during the 70s, but this Canadian entry is no White Line Fever, or even a Great Smokey Roadblock. Once again the big biz interests are trying to put the squeeze on independent truckers and once more they’re driven off the highway by their vindictive 18-wheelers. One of…

Combining brilliant action sequences (filmed for the first time in sumptuous widescreen black and white Tohoscope) with fanciful characters out of a Japanese storybook, Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 “chambara” (sword fighting) comic-adventure deserves to be remembered for much more than simply its inspiration for the plot of Star Wars. Starring the irreplaceable Toshiro Mifune as the…

Any geek who understands movies or music more than they do romance will see themselves in Stephen Frears’ wonderfully smart anti-rom-com, High Fidelity. The head geek is played by John Cusack who holds court in his record store surrounded by the one thing he has an uncomplicated relationship with: records. He’s also surrounded by a…

As close to a horror film as Clint Eastwood ever made. The Man With No Name returns, sort of, in director Eastwood’s first western. Dedicated to Don Siegel and Sergio Leone. A bit of a dry run for the later Pale Rider. Not in the forefront of progressive portraits of women onscreen.

Every so often a TFH Guru comes along and requests to redo a title that someone else has already done. So it is that Josh Olson follows in Edgar Wright’s footsteps to give us his own take on Clint Eastwood’s supernatural western homage to Leone and Siegel, but without the man-crush.

1958’s High School Confidential is an exploitation natural made by two pros who knew the genre inside and out: producer Albert Zugsmith (Sex Kittens Go To College) and director Jack Arnold (The Incredible Shrinking Man). Jerry Lee Lewis kicks it off with some barn-burning rock n’ roll and then surrenders the stage to a cast made…

Director Alexander Mackendrick was unhappy with studio changes to his work, but this unsentimental critical and boxoffice failure remains a compelling adaptation of Richard Hughes’ disturbing Lord of the Flies-like novel about hapless pirates undone by their juvenile captives. Harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler’s symphonic score is first rate. Note James Coburn’s positioning in this trailer…

Pairing‌ ‌wine‌ ‌with‌ ‌movies!‌  ‌See‌ ‌the‌ ‌trailers‌ ‌and‌ ‌hear‌ ‌the‌ ‌fascinating‌ ‌commentary‌ ‌for‌ ‌these‌ ‌movies‌ ‌and‌ ‌many‌ ‌more‌ ‌at‌ ‌Trailers‌ ‌From‌ ‌Hell.‌ This week, Blood of the Vines comes up with wine pairings for three films directed by Hill, Walter Hill. It’s Hill Country. Hill is known as something of a cowboy, a rough-hewn writer…

Wes Craven’s version of Lawrence of Arabia? Ok, maybe not, but this is one of the best latter day uses of the metaphoric desert setting so familiar from 50s sci fi movies. The fan base it engendered resulted in a sequel and a 2006 remake which itself spawned a sequel. Originally rated X but cut…

Peter Fonda’s directorial debut is a leisurely, naturalistic western offset by ace cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond’s dreamy slow-dissolve images. Too quiet for mainstream success, it has garnered a strong following over the years. Bruce Langhorne’s score is memorable.

One of the greatest newspaper pictures ever (can there be many more in our future?), Howard Hawks’ gender-bending remake of The Front Page stands as a comedy classic. Its improvisational-sounding overlapping dialog still impresses as modernistic. Such stars as Ginger Rogers, Jean Arthur, Irene Dunne, Carole Lombard and Claudette Colbert turned down Rosalind Russell’s revamped…

Director Sidney J. Furie specialized in brainy action films and his 1973 revenge fantasy starring Billy Dee Williams and Richard Pryor is no different. The duo plays two former military men who go rogue with a plan to wipe out a drug-dealing kingpin and his gang. Furie assembled an eclectic cast and crew including Gwen…

Alvin Rakoff’s black comedy was almost banned – not by overzealous censors but by its own star Peter Sellers who felt the role of a lonely businessman blackmailing a young woman was too close to his own personality. Sinéad Cusack plays the object of Sellers’ misguided affections. Adapted from a play with the squirm-inducing title…

Ok, so there’s no ghost–but this is one of the best Abbott & Costello movies, with the boys mixed up with gangsters, haunted houses and stolen loot. Besides, what could be scarier than the Andrews Sisters?

Director Christine Hornisher’s film pushes all the grindhouse buttons in this mash-up of serial killers and sex workers. Christopher Augustine plays a Hollywood hopeful who dreams of being a cinematographer but can only find work shooting bottom of the barrel porn loops. Released in 1973 the film was re-released as The Hollywood Hillside Strangler. The…

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 have a trio of movies that expose the soft underbelly of Tinseltown, our own private Hollywood Babylon. And what Babylon would be complete without a wine to go with it?…

Producer Jon Davison takes us through the hurry-up production of one of the last of Roger Corman’s “three girls” drive-in exploitation pictures in which nubile nurses, teachers or in this case starlets have semi-clothed adventures around LA for 80 minutes or so. Enthusiastically narrated, to say the least, by The Real Don Steele.

Baker Street was never like this! Gene Wilder followed up his star turn in Young Frankenstein by writing, directing and starring in this well-researched period comedy featuring the great detective’s younger, envious brother, who is overmatched (to say the least) by Leo McKern’s Moriarty. Lots of hat-tips to Arthur Conan Doyle throughout for devout Holmes…

Dream logic rules the day in Leos Carax’ multi-layered film in which a mysterious shape-shifter is shepherded about Paris in a stretch limo where he assumes a different disguise at each stop. Released to enormous critical acclaim in 2012, the film stars Denis Lavant with legendary french actors Edith Scob (Eyes Without a Face) as…

John Wayne’s contemporaneous version of Shane, directed on Mexican locations by the underrated John Farrow from a Louis L’Amour novel. One of The Duke’s most archetypical performances, and in 3D yet!

John Sayles celebrates the moment the blues gave birth to rock ‘n’ roll with this affectionate musical drama set in the early fifties. The movie features a solid cast including Danny Glover, Stacy Keach, Mary Steenburgen and Gary Clark Jr. as Sonny Blake, the vagabond guitarist who shakes up the sleepy town of Harmony, Alabama.

An unlikely movie for John Schlesinger, the director of Midnight Cowboy and Sunday, Bloody Sunday, Honky Tonk Freeway, with its wildly disparate cast and surreal slapstick comedy, suggests another National Lampoon movie. It didn’t help that the production itself ran amuck; one scene cost one million dollars to shoot (Schlesinger’s own Apocalypse Now). The star-spangled cast,…