Ulu Grosbard’s whimsical psycho-drama is a Manhattan-set 8 1/2 with Dustin Hoffman as a rock star taking stock of his success while the line between reality and fantasy becomes increasingly blurry—for himself as well as the audience. The movie received mixed reviews with a lot of praise for the great supporting cast, Barbara Harris, Jack…
One of James Stewart’s most memorable performances anchors a comedy classic that’s enriched by the seriousness of its basic premise. Funny, sad and captivating, it’s that rare example of a well-loved movie that plumbs deeper depths than it’s given credit for. It’s been restaged often for television and there’s always talk of a theatrical remake,…
Screenwriter Leigh Brackett checks all the boxes in the Howard Hawks formula: a gruff adventurer tangles with an equally determined woman, sparks fly and so do kisses. John Wayne stars as a game-catcher in Tanganyika, Elsa Martinelli is a fearless photojournalist and Red Buttons provides the tongue-in-cheek play by play. Henry Mancini’s insanely catchy Baby…
A surrealist take on Mommie Dearest, Finnish director Hanna Berghol’s 2022 horror film stars Siiri Solalinna as Tinja, a gymnast who turns the tables on her abusive stage mother with the help of a monstrous bird creature. Despite its off the wall concept the movie was well received, thanks in part to Solalinna’s transformative performance…
The subtle terror techniques that Robert Wise learned from his mentor Val Lewton are on uncanny display in the creepiest haunted house movie of them all. (The trailer’s not too subtle, though.) Compare the original to the lamentable remake to see the difference between art and CGI junk.
Nobuhiko Obayashi’s 1977 film flew under the radar for years until the recent interest in Japanese horror films shined a light on its peculiar charms. Best viewed as The Haunting meets Hellzapoppin’, Hausu, at its gonzo best, works as a reminder of the staid and conservative state of current American horror films. The film, while…
This cheap but popular sci-fi spoof was the first Columbia feature for the Stooges, who had contemplated retirement until the galvanic response to the release of the Stooges shorts on nationwide TV in 1958 brought them back into the limelight. The boys accidentally travel to Venus and encounter a giant fire-belching spider and a talkative…
Thanks to the good folks at Warner Archive, pre-code movies unavailable for decades are being dusted off and put back into circulation on dvd and on Turner Classic Movies. This forgotten item has an audacious trailer that engages the audience in finding the killer. Allan Arkush puts it in perspective as an early stab at…
The original Mean Girls, this acerbic black comedy from director and TFH guru Michael Lehmann gave the complacent moviegoers of 1988 a much-needed hot foot. Winona Ryder stars as the only member of a four-girl clique who is not named “Heather” and whose ruthless clannishness just might be taking a murderous turn. Co-star Christian Slater…
No, it’s not the Warren Beatty remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan, but the sublime Ernst Lubitsch comedy fantasy, his biggest commercial hit and generally considered the last of his films to exemplify the inimitable “Lubitsch touch”. Feckless womanizer Don Ameche recounts his love life to urbane devil Laird Cregar at the gates of Hell…
Life and hard times on the streets of ’70s Brooklyn from proudly non-P.C. multimedia animator Ralph Bakshi. Semi-autographical and reputedly Bakshi’s favorite among his films. The Chuck Berry “Maybelline” sequence, animated by Mark Kausler, is a highlight. Originally rated X.
The face that launched all those ships is played by the comparatively unknown Rosanna Podesta, surrounded by a distinguished cast and thousands of real extras, not pixels. This Hollywood epic shot at Cinecitta is not the movie to use for an easy book report on The Iliad, as Homer’s version of events differs from the…
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.