Anticipating punk rock, Peter Watkins’ semi-documentary study of a future society using music to enslave the masses appropriates some unauthorized reenactments from the National Film Board of Canada’s groundbreaking Paul Anka docu “Lonely Boy”. How Universal ended up distributing this is a mystery even they couldn’t solve.
Our friend, the late Jonathan Kaplan, was the nephew of Van Heflin, who stars in this unique noir. The American Dream gets drop kicked in Joseph Losey’s existential thriller about a psycho cop’s obsession with a lonely housewife whose hubby he plots to kill. The Sisyphean ending takes place in‚ the ghost town of Calico,…
Dick Clark produced Richard Rush’s ode to the Haight-Ashbury scene, filmed on location by Laszlo Kovacs in Psychedelic Color. Remember, as Dean Stockwell tells us, “all the games gotta go, or else it’s just a plastic hassle”!
A most unusual trailer (almost a short subject at nearly 7 minutes long) from 1960, when Hitchcock had merchandised himself a la Walt Disney into one of the most recognizable movie directors on earth. WARNING! MR. LANDIS REQUESTS YOU WATCH THIS TRAILER FIRST WITHOUT HIS VOICEOVER TO ENJOY MR. HITCHCOCK’S NARRATION.
The only way to watch Gus Van Sant’s remake of Psycho with a fresh eye is to never have seen Hitchcock’s irreplaceable original. That’s because Van Sant’s film is virtually an identical cousin of that 1960 classic using many of the same camera set-ups, albeit this time in color. Whether seen as a provocative post-modern…
After the boxoffice failure of PSYCHO III plans for Anthony Perkins to again direct and star in a follow up were derailed and Mick Garris was brought in to direct. Original PSYCHO scribe Joseph Stefano decided to ignore the plot twists of the previous two entries and the unsold tv pilot BATES MOTEL and treat…
With his 1984 film debut, the multi-talented Minnesotan proved that all you really need to carry a movie are some killer dance moves and a dyn-o-mite set list guaranteed to rock the house for 111 minutes. Purple Rain is directed by Albert Magnoli in the most prosaic fashion possible but at least he stays out of the way of the musical performers,…
Before Robert Downey Jr. there was … Robert Downey Sr. (A Prince)! This was his first widely released “underground” indie (filmed for $120,000) and his most popular, but we here at TFH have a soft spot for Chafed Elbows. Arnold Johnson, as the token black employee put in charge of a NY ad agency, is…
Former fashion photographer Jerry Schatzberg directed this Fellini-esque drama about walking soap opera Lou Andreas Sand (Faye Dunaway), a disturbed runway model whose drug use and shallow existence lead to some self-reflection as she dictates her life story to a screenwriter.
Former Vogue photographer Jerry Schatzberg began his notable directorial career with this Bergmanesque tale of a fashion model’s nervous breakdown. Faye Dunaway plays the hard-partying fashion-plate and Roy Scheider, still a few years from movie stardom, plays one of the men in her life. The screenplay was the work of “Adrien Joyce”, a pseudonym for…
Larry Cohen gives us as much info as he can squeeze in regarding his guerilla monster movie about the flying serpent Quetzelcoatl, especially considering this teaser runs only 30 seconds! Stop-motion animator David Allen had to rise to the occasion, as none of the background plates Larry shot were made in the traditional manner.
A distinctly ’70s movie, Waris Hussein’s film stars Gene Wilder as an Irish dung hauler who falls in love with an American student played by Margot Kidder. Supported by a sturdy cast of Irish actors including Eileen Colgan (My Left Foot), the film’s woebegone hero would have been perfect fodder for Jean Renoir who very…
Franc Roddam’s acclaimed directorial debut is an edgy update of the working class kitchen-sink “angry young man” movement, a symphony of disillusionment based on the 1973 double vinyl concept album by The Who. Phil Daniels is so magnetic in the lead it’s surprising he never became a major player in British film. A true cult…
“Howdya like to drag that one to the High School Prom?” leers a horny astronaut while ogling the shapely acolytes of Queen Yllana, leader of the all-girl Venusian population. “I hate zat qveen”, grumbles Chief Scientist Zsa Zsa Gabor, who doesn’t appear to be in on the joke. Silly, spoofy and cheerfully chauvinistic, this one…
Riots erupted in Germany when this anti-war classic debuted in cinemas. Lewis Milestone (who took home a directing Oscar along with the Best Picture award) imported tons of WW I German and French military equipment in his quest for authenticity. DP Karl Freund suggested the indelible concluding butterfly sequence, and the dead hand we see…
Canadian writer-director David Cronenberg, the Tod Browning of the 70s, tapped porn star Marilyn Chambers to topline his second commercial feature, another meditation on the corruption and eventual dessication of the human body. A viral plague of vampirism manifests itself as a blood-sucking carnivore in Ms. Chambers’ armpit!
Enraged devil-worshippers give chase to a winnebago full of infidels who witnessed their human sacrifice in a wild chase movie from the unjustly forgotten action director Jack Starrett (The Losers). Part ’70s conspiracy film, part Deliverance, and all drive-in movie energy, it’s apparent that the makers of From Dusk ‘Til Dawn liked this one.
Martin Scorsese welcomed the 80’s with this blood-soaked but lyrical portrait of a violent thug who solves his problems with his fists, both in and out of the ring. Jake La Motta’s mesmerizing rise and fall followed the rise and fall of star Robert De Niro’s waistline – in one of the most audacious stunts…
In 1981 Steven Spielberg and George Lucas paid homage to the adventure serials of the thirties and forties and in doing so gave a hot-foot to contemporary action films. Spielberg’s brilliant staging of the familiar clichés from those beloved b-movies gave them a new lease on life and captivated younger audiences who showed up to the theaters…
Lewis Milestone’s 1932 film about a fun-loving hooker named Sadie Thompson and her clash with a two-faced missionary takes full advantage of its pre-code status. Supposedly set in the South Seas it was filmed on Santa Catalina Island in Los Angeles county. Walter Huston plays the conflicted reverend and Joan Crawford stars as the repentant…
Lewis Milestone’s 1932 film about a fun-loving hooker named Sadie Thompson and her clash with a two-faced missionary takes full advantage of its pre-code status. Supposedly set in the South Seas it was filmed on Santa Catalina Island in Los Angeles county. Walter Huston plays the conflicted reverend and Joan Crawford stars as the repentant…
Any subtleties or ambiguous notions found in 1982’s First Blood are blown up real good in this 1985 sequel. Co-written by Stallone and James Cameron, the second film picks up right where the first left off as Rambo is released from prison in order to rescue a squadron of POWs in Vietnam. Directed by George…
Like Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa found it difficult to find backing for projects in his later years. Producer Serge Silberman came to the rescue with a Japanese-French coproduction package to enable the director to make this dark spectacle based primarily on the exploits of an actual 16th century warlord, although there are undeniable similarities to…
Rasho-mon is the name of the gate to the city of Kyoto, the medieval setting of the film that brought director Akira Kuroswa to international recognition. Despite daily battles with his unsympathetic studio backers, he produced a worldwide hit that rejuvenated Japanese cinema on the world stage, although it was less appreciated domestically. The concept…
Bruno Mattei, one of Italy’s more shameless exploitation directors, pays gory homage to Bert I. Gordon in this futuristic horror film about biker gangs and giant rats. Ottaviano Dell’Acqua is the relatively heroic gang leader and cameraman Franco Delli Colli, cousin to the great cinematographer Tonino, adds some much-needed class to the production.
Having added some comedy to his earlier Poe trilogy “Tales of Terror”, Roger Corman went all out for humor in this popular 1963 entry, which was nevertheless sold basically as a straight horror film. But the image of Peter Lorre in a bird costume was kind of a tipoff…