A chameleon by nature, Peter Sellers had been turning in inspired comic performances since the early fifties – but it took the role of the habitually hapless Inspector Clouseau (originally intended for Peter Ustinov) in this first of seven The Pink Panther comedies to catapult him to superstar status. Though director Blake Edwards’ screenplay placed the…
Roger Corman’s 1978 Jaws ripoff spawned remakes in 1995 (for cable) and 2010 (in 3-D) and its own “3-DD” sequel, as well as an Italian-made 1981 flying fish sequel directed by James Cameron. Although released three years after Spielberg’s blockbuster, Piranha hit the international jackpot especially in South America. Part ’50s sci-fi spoof and part underwater gore fest, this vaguely subversive Joe Dante-John Sayles collaboration…
With a great subject and a wonderful cast including Philip Seymour Hoffman and Kenneth Branagh, Richard Curtis’s 2009 comedy-drama should have a bigger following. Its release was complicated by studio cuts and a title change which, for once, seems to have helped the film find its audience. Hoffman is a rebellious DJ broadcasting from an…
Probably the best known of the AIP Corman/Poe series, circa 1961. Writer Richard Matheson had to concoct an almost entirely new story incorporating Poe’s central situation. The great Paul Frees narrates the trailer.
Jack Hill gives us the lowdown on one of his most belatedly popular movies, which took several years to make it to the drive-ins, largely because it was shot in black-and-white. Filmed under the title The Winner, it’s a gritty, no-frills drag racing saga set around the dangerous Figure Eight Races, which seem designed to…
Director David Twohy’s modestly budgeted science-fiction thriller was a surprise hit in 2000. Starring Vin Deisel as the space-age anti-hero Richard Riddick, the film grossed over 53 million leading to a 2004 sequel, The Chronicles of Riddick. Twohy (screenwriter for 1998’s The Fugitive and TFH guru Mick Garris’ Critters 2) revisited the character three more times in…
Plan 9 From Outer Space is the prototypical Ed Wood movie, a low rent but mightily ambitious mix of old-fashioned horror and new-fangled science fiction (the original title was Grave Robbers from Outer Space). Adding to the fun are some of Ed’s favorite eccentrics including Vampira, Tor Johnson, and perhaps the oddest oddball of all,…
One of the major science fiction pictures of its era. J. Lee Thompson was originally to direct, but was busy with McKenna’s Gold. Franklin Schaffner was recommended to replace him by star Charlton Heston. Author Pierre Boulle objected to the famous ending provided by Rod Serling (rewritten by Michael Wilson), but later came to accept…
Gothic grandmaster Mario Bava leaves his corpse-strewn crypts behind and takes off into deep (and scary) outer space. In doing so he simply transforms the spaceships into intergalactic haunted houses (though sans cobwebs). Britain’s Monthly Film Bulletin accurately pegged this lurid Italian-Spanish-US mash-up as “a triumph of mind over matter, or of Bava over a…
Clint Eastwood’s taut directorial debut prefigures Fatal Attraction in its obsessed stalker plotline, and has risen to the upper echelons of the psycho-girlfriend thriller genre. Attractively shot in Carmel, CA, where Eastwood was later elected mayor.
The great comedian/director Jacques Tati’s 1967 comedy, focusing on events taking place during a single day and set in an enormous phantasmagorical movie set, recalls both Ulysses and Jerry Lewis’s The Ladies’ Man. Tati also pays homage to animator Tex Avery’s cautionary cartoon The House Of Tomorrow when he finds himself in an exhibit touting technological…
John Boorman’s dreamily stylized adaptation of a Donald E. Westlake novel was way ahead of its time, adapting New Wave techniques to produce a deliberately alienating effect that confused and annoyed the brass at MGM, and might even be a moment-of-death flashback. Lee Marvin’s greatest role. Remade more conventionally as Payback in 1999.
Kathryn Bigelow’s first commercial hit is a visceral surfing/heist thriller that takes its title from the moment when a wave breaks as it hits a point of land jutting out from the coastline. Under such earlier titles as Johnny Utah and Riders on the Storm this was originally conceived to star Matthew Broderick and Charlie…
“What Ivy wants, Ivy gets.” Depraved teen seductress Drew Barrymore is the houseguest from hell in TFH Guru Katt Shea’s erotic psycho thriller, which didn’t pack them in on its limited theatrical release but became a big enough hit on cable and home video to spawn three exploitation-minded sequels. Blink and you’ll miss a young…
Peering into the past through the rosiest of glasses, Pollyanna is the dream child of two dedicated nostalgists, Walt Disney and writer/director David Swift. Considering the sentimental story line—a young orphan charms a morose midwestern town with her “glad game”—the film is even-tempered and never bathetic, thanks mainly to 13-year old Hayley Mills, a natural…
“They’re he-eere!” Director Tobe Hooper’s fifth feature was his biggest to date, produced on a grand scale by co-writer Steven Spielberg the same year he made ET. Its critical and box office success was undercut by persistent rumors that Spielberg had co-opted the film much like Howard Hawks did with Christian Nyby (on The Thing)…
Even in 1976 Joe Ruben’s drive-in sexploitation hit was considered a cut above the usual, so its relative obscurity today can only be ascribed to its long unavailablity.
Jill Schoelen found “final girl” fame in Joseph Ruben’s sublime The Stepfather and rode that wave into 1991’s Popcorn, a more conventional teen/slasher thriller set, conveniently, within the confines of a movie theater. Directed by Mark Herrier, the movie benefits from Schoelen’s prom-queen presence as well as the resilient Dee Wallace Stone who, as Schoelen’s…
Who knew good-natured Portland, Oregon could be so hard-boiled? It certainly looks that way in Harold Schuster’s 1957 noir with Edward Binns as a barkeep caught between two hungry mob bosses. Carolyn Craig, the world-class screamer from House on Haunted Hill, plays Binns’ wife and she’s got plenty to scream about when threatened by some…
Moviegoers who loved Philip Roth’s comic masterpiece about the bedeviled Alexander Portnoy, his monstrous mother, and his mostly silent psychiatrist, were hard-pressed to endure Ernest Lehman’s awkward adaptation starring Richard Benjamin, Karen Black (as “The Monkey”), and Lee Grant as Sophie Portnoy, the nagging nightmare at the root of Portnoy’s (many) complaints. Critical reaction was brutal…
Obsessive producer David O. Selznick fussed over this metaphysical celebration of wife Jennifer Jones for years before finally releasing it in 1948 to dismal box office returns. One of the most haunting love stories ever to come from Hollywood, it improves on the poetic Robert Nathan novella it’s based on. Beautifully shot and scored, it…
Isabelle Adjani’s award-winning performance anchors this most unusual and little-seen marital nightmare from Polish director Andrzej Zulawksi, which won plaudits in Europe in its 123 minute version but played off as a horror programmer in America after losing 26 minutes. Imagine Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage set in Berlin with special effects by Carlo Rambaldi….
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 examine what our landscape might look like had something in the past gone terribly wrong. The backstory behind 1998’s Six-String Samurai is a Russian nuclear victory over the U.S. in…
A film influenced as much by South Park as Mad Magazine, Uwe Boll’s gonzo satire was based on a video game first released in 1997. Starring Zack Ward and Dave Foley as two small-town con artists involved in a get-rich-quick scheme, the film evolves (or devolves) into an apocalyptic confrontation between a video game entrepreneur and…
Carrie Fisher’s witty 1987 roman-a-clef about her Hollywood upbringing is brought to the screen in somewhat restructured form by director Mike Nichols in one of his most underrated works. Nichols stages the story of a troubled actress and her diva mother with impeccable comic timing and understated emotion. Fisher’s mom Debbie Reynolds was ready to…
Subtitled Night of the Chicken Dead, this gross “fromage to Takashi Miike” continues the tradition of Troma-tizing other movies, this time under the guise of a fast-food horror musical. “Humans: the other white meat… Unless you’re black, then it’s dark meat…”, etc.