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…
A rather inelegant retitling of Gary Sherman’s British thriller “Deathline”, originally pitched to the grindhouse crowd but eventually rediscovered by critics and audiences on tv and video. One of Donald Pleasance’s finest hours.
Lewis Gilbert’s 1956 film about a World War II flying ace is one of the great stiff-upper-lip docudramas. Kenneth More stars as real-life hero Douglas Bader who flew numerous missions during the Battle of Britain and survived years in a POW camp. All of this on prosthetic legs. Gilbert’s crew is ace too, including Hammer Studio’s…
Get out your 3-D glasses….then put them away, as director/writer/comic Albert Brooks personally hawks his debut feature in a special Hitchcockian trailer (with no footage from the actual movie) presented entirely in 3-D — Not. This is Brooks in his post-Saturday Night Live period, a funny warm up for his masterpiece, Modern Romance. One of…
Curiosity killed the cat and next in line might be Jeff Jeffries, a nosy shutterbug who suspects his henpecked neighbor is a cold-blooded killer. Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller is not only one of the most suspenseful films of all time, it has some cheeky things to say about the voyeuristic tendencies of its own audience. Starring…
It’s pretty much a bromide that if James Dean had not died at his peak he might have ended up like Troy Donahue, but in this emblematic Nick Ray film, released after Dean’s death in a 1955 auto accident, he continues to electrify new generations with his raw emotion.
Set in a smoggy Pennsylvania mill town, the first film from director James Foley and screenwriter Chris Columbus sounds like the plot of a Springsteen song with Aidan Quinn in the role of a misunderstood dreamer from the wrong side of the tracks romancing a poor little rich girl played by Daryl Hannah. Beautifully photographed…
Howard Hawks’ first western was a huge hit and marked what John Wayne had feared might turn out to be his swan song, at the age of 41. He later said John Ford “never respected me as an actor until I made Red River.” During the shoot Wayne came to appreciate the talents of debuting…
Director James Goldstone’s 1971 film takes its title from an ancient mariner’s rhyme, “Red sky at morning, sailor take warning” – the movie is no less compelling than that ominous rhyme, the story of a teen uprooted to a lonely town in New Mexico at the beginning of World War II. Richard Thomas plays the…
There are more twists and turns in two minutes of David Mamet’s action-packed drama than a dozen martial arts films (Chuck Norris need not apply). With an eclectic cast featuring Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tim Allen, Ricky Jay, and Mamet favorite Joe Mantegna, the head-spinning plot mixes up insurance lawyers, magicians, crooked fight promoters, and jiu-jitsu in…
Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift both wanted to play the lead in John Huston’s adaptation of Carson McCullers’ Southern Gothic novel. But after Clift’s death Huston chose Brando to play the US army major whose obsession with serviceman Robert Forster leads to disaster. Brian Keith is especially good in support. Imagine this being made by…
Stooges and Bowery Boys director Edward Bernds brings his budget-savvy aesthetic to one of AIP’s profitable drive-in delinquency teen exploitation pics (great poster, btw). Bernds was accidentally nominated for an Oscar a year earlier, when the Academy confused his Bowery Boys vehicle High Society with the Bing Crosby-Grace Kelly musical. TFH Guru Jonathan Kaplan remade…
Director Alex Cox’s grungy sci-fi comedy has something for everybody; possessed life forms, shaggy dog humor, Harry Dean Stanton and one of the greatest punk rock soundtracks in the history of movies. Iggy Pop’s theme song kicks off the quirky plot about a layabout (Emilio Estevez) who finds his calling repossessing cars and ends up…
Roman Polanski’s first English-language film is one of his best, a a brilliant study of a young French girl’s descent into madness. Catherine Deneuve’s most iconic performance, with one of the great closing shots ever.
Darren Aronofsky’s hyperventilating portrait of drug addiction focuses on a group of Coney Island inhabitants each with their own down-spiraling horror story. Relentlessly grim, the film is shot and edited in a speedfreak frenzy with Clint Mansell’s slash and burn musical score egging on each character’s fast track to hell. Ellen Burstyn was nominated for an Oscar for…