No further evidence is needed that the 1970s were the anything-goes era of American filmmaking than this bizarre cult item that has understandably fallen through the cracks over the years. An attractive daddy’s girl satisfies her strange need to copulate with cadavers by joining a necromantic cult. Although the cultural March of Progress eventually led…

Critics moaned but audiences swooned over Arthur Hiller’s antiquated sob story, a 40’s-style tearjerker for the Me Decade. The film’s screenwriter, Erich Segal, churned out the novel as part of the movie’s marketing campaign—voilà, a best-seller in bookstores and at the box office. Though the film made stars out of Ali MacGraw and Ryan O’Neal,…

Tony Richardson’s take on the veddy British Evelyn Waugh’s skewing of Hollywood culture and the death business wasn’t very popular with audiences in 1965, but has become one of the key films of the era. Shot largely on the grounds of LA’s Doheny Mansion, the upscale location equivalent of Bronson Canyon.

“Loveless” is the perfect title for Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2017 tragedy about a missing child and two of the worst parents in movie history. Because Zvyagintsev equates that cold-hearted couple with the Russian state he was compelled to find financing from three other countries. The finished product overcame political pushback from Moscow and snared the Jury…

The movie that began the William Castle legend is a modest affair with a terrific ad campaign that surprised everyone by becoming a sleeper hit. Do you know anyone who died of fright while watching? No, neither do we, darn it!

Peter Lorre’s Hollywood debut is one of the weirder pix ever to come from MGM, or maybe anywhere else. One of ace cinematographer Karl Freund’s rare forays into directing, and his last. Gregg Toland photographed it, and years later Pauline Kael would claim he stole a lot of shots from this to use in Citizen…

Although one wag said of director Stanley Kramer’s all-star Cinerama extravaganza, “it shows what happens when a man who doesn’t understand drama tries to do comedy”, the years have been kind to it. Nostalgia for the once-in-a-lifetime ensemble cast alone would get it by, but the extravagant stunt work that seemed so unwhimsical in 1963…

Medical doctor George Miller teamed with amateur filmmaker Byron Kennedy to make this action-packed dystopian car crash saga on a shoestring budget. Inspired by the 1973 oil crisis, its violent depiction of a bombed-out society became a top-grossing Australian commercial hit, but ran aground during limited distribution in the US. AIP, on its last legs…

Mad Max returns to his post-apocalyptic junkyard future to scavenge for food and petrol. Warner Bros. gave a big promo push to this improved, retitled sequel (Mad Max 2 in Australia) and turned it into a sizable international success. Most audiences were unaware there had been a previous Mad Max movie. By now Mel Gibson…

Director George Miller takes his adrenalized action epic The Road Warrior and injects it with an unholy supercharged mix of psychotropics and nitroglycerin. The result is Mad Max: Fury Road; no less combustible than Road Warrior but filmed with a hallucinatory fever dream zeal. In contrast to the near non-stop action sequences are sensitive, muted performances from Charlize Theron as the…

Mostly nobody saw this in its limited 1963 second feature run, but a decade later it was transformed into one of the most notorious syndicated tv titles of the era. Suffice it to say that even the author of Mein Kampf would probably find this one a pretty dire experience.

Long before Gordon Gekko told us “greed is good”, Sir Guy Grand (Peter Sellers) embarked on a mad quest to prove that everyone has their price. Terry Southern transforms his cynical novel into a nihilistic lark full of celebrity cameos and Monty Python-esque gags, some contributed by actual soon-to-be Python members.

John Sturges’ Mexico-set remake of The Seven Samurai was one of the biggest hits of its era and inspired three not-as-good sequels and a tv series. Elmer Bernstein’s indelible music score became best-known as the theme for Marlboro cigarette ads throughout the ’60s.

The title of the second Dirty Harry movie reflects the contributions of screenwriter and firearms fan John Milius, who was rewritten by a pre-Deer Hunter Michael Cimino. Director Ted Post, who had worked with Eastwood on Hang ’em High and TV’s Rawhide, found the star more contentious at this stage of his career and claimed…

Ken Russell’s largely metaphorical take on the life of 19th century Austrian composer Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell) takes place primarily on a single train ride embellished with flashbacks and fantasy sequences. More restrained than expected, it’s stylistically ascetic compared to some of Russell’s more over the top biopics. Oliver Reed has a brief cameo as…

Cut from its over-4-hour length to 136 minutes, Sam Peckinpah’s beleaguered civil war epic was released in 1965 already showing the results of his own civil war with the studio – who then cut another 13 minutes after the film’s disastrous premiere. Over the years that footage and more as been reinstated burnishing the movie’s…

In today’s remake-crazed atmosphere it’s worth noting that this was the second remake of Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade detective novel. John Huston got his first directing assignment in exchange for scripting‚ Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra. In one of many bad career decisions, George Raft turned down the lead role that consolidated Humphrey Bogart’s star status.

This (British) trailer goes out of its way to oversell the debuting David Bowie (the best-cast alien since Michael Rennie in Day The Earth Stood Still), but Nic Roeg and Paul Mayersberg’s adaptation of Walter Tevis’ novel faced a rocky reception when producer Paramount Pictures refused to distribute it after its first screening. Picked up by arthouse indie Cinema V, it…

Brian Trenchard-Smith’s fourth directorial effort is a kinetic, over the top smashathon. Released in the US as The Dragon Flies, this Aussie/Hong Kong effort to turn Jimmy Wang Yu (The One-Armed Boxer) into a new Bruce Lee has spawned its own hard core cult following, although it remains undeservedly obscure to general audiences.

A long-cherished project of director John Huston, this memorable Rudyard Kipling adaptation finally came together with Sean Connery and Michael Caine on location in Morocco and Marrakech. Christopher Plummer, playing Kipling, immersed himself in every recording and picture of the novelist he could find. In the end Connery and Caine had to sue the overextended…

Raoul Walsh gets a powerhouse performance out of an exhausted Ida Lupino in an atmospheric noir soaper that was originally intended for Ann Sheridan. This troubled production received mixed reviews, but it touched an audience nerve and became a big hit. One of Martin Scorsese’s favorites.

Austrian shoestring auteur Edgar G. Ulmer hits it out of the park with one of the first-out-the-gate alien invasion movies, which scared a lot of early ’50s tykes when it was sold to television soon afterward.

For their 1957 “Silver Jubilee”, Universal offered this occasionally accurate biopic of its biggest silent star, Lon Chaney, as portrayed by the always reliable James Cagney. At the personal request of his widow Norma Shearer, producer Irving Thalberg is played by fledgling actor Robert Evans in his second film role before later becoming a Hollywood mogul himself.

Capital and labor work together to suppress a great invention in this essential Ealing comedy. Alec Guinness invents an indestructible cloth that threatens to destroy the textile industry. Dry, witty and subversive satire from the versatile Alexander Mackendrick.

In recent years Richard Fleischer’s critically derided adaptation of‚ Kye Onstott’s ‚ steamy novel has been revalued as a progressive portrait of a racist era, but Josh Olson begs to differ. Even in its day this anti-Gone With the Wind‚ effusion was considered beyond the pale, but it was successful enough on the exploitation circuit…

In some ways the ultimate Nicolas Cage movie, Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy, gives the go-for-broke actor plenty of room to rage. Cage plays “Red”, a lumberjack seeking retribution for the unspeakable murder of his girlfriend—and the bloodier the revenge, the better (a chainsaw fight propels the hallucinatory climax). Andrea Risebourough plays the star-crossed Mandy, Cosmatos and Aaron…