Dismissed in some circles as a poor man’s Deliverance, the reputation of this Canadian survivalist slasher movie has risen over the years. The original US release was a bowdlerized 89 minute cutdown but the stronger 100 minute original is now available on DVD. Also released under the title The Creeper.
Third in the series of seven self-aware Hope-Crosby Road comedies, this Ishtar-like entry was one of the most popular. Full of Hollywood in-jokes and asides to the audience (much like Warner Bros cartoons), the Road pictures transcend their dated settings with a modernistic approach that has stood the test of time. Famous for an unplanned…
A grim psychological thriller starring Mimsy Farmer, Robert Walker and Rita Hayworth, 1970’s Road to Salina was directed by Georges Lautner, a man best known for his lighthearted comedies. Walker plays a drifter who may or may not be Farmer’s brother and the quasi-incestuous relationship that ensues adds an intriguing if queasy exploitation angle to the…
Perhaps not as well-known as their road trips to Morocco or Singapore, but Road to Utopia is one of Hope and Crosby’s funniest and most surreal films (screenwriters Melvin Frank and Norman Panama nabbed an Oscar nom). The boys play two vaudevillians searching for gold in turn of the century Alaska. Produced in 1943 but…
A vanity project from Tippi Hedren and her husband Noel Marshall, this 1981 thriller about a family under attack by angry jungle creatures was dubbed “the most dangerous movie ever made” thanks to numerous animal injuries suffered by cast and crew. That bruised and bloodied bunch included Hedren’s daughter Melanie Griffith and 70 other crew…
Often misidentified as a George Pal production, this popular sci fi thriller recycles space ships from War of the Worlds and space suits from Destination Moon in the service of a clever updating of Daniel Defoe’s original survivalist classic. Sadly, co-star Mona the Wooley Monkey seems to have retired after her screen debut.
It’s hard to fathom the concept that they remade this in 2014, as Paul Verhoeven’s now-classic original is one of the great science fiction movies of all time, and hardly dated at all. Followed by two inferior sequels.
Probably the most sheer fun New World Picture ever, Allan Arkush’s classic would probably never have attained its legendary status without its most brilliant component — the casting of The Ramones, the band your parents warned you about even though they didn’t know they existed!
Before producers Max J. Rosenberg and Milton Subotsky hit upon their popular series of Amicus horror films they made a number of mainstream programmers through their own Vanguard Productions. This was the first. This minimalist excuse for a bunch of hot rock acts to do their stuff was Tuesday Weld’s film debut. Some say she…
The sixth film in the long-running Rocky series, Rocky Balboa is director/writer Sly Stallone’s Lion in Winter take on the aging prizefighter, now retired and managing a restaurant in Philadelphia. Critics were kind to the film and in particular Stallone’s touching take on his bowed-but-unbroken alter-ego. The 2006 release was a box office success, due…
“Let’s do the Time Warp again!” And again. And again. Although virtually ignored in its initial rollout, Jim Sharman and Richard O’Brien’s movie version of their wacky horror musical stage show has since become the longest running theatrical release in movie history through endless audience-participation midnight screenings. This knowing spoofery of 40s and 50s sci fi/horror…
Director Mark Lester’s film is an 80’s take on 60’s beach movies, substituting roller skates and disco for surfboards and rock n’ roll. Linda Blair stars along with A.I.P. favorite Beverly Garland in a dance-fueled love story mixing music and mobsters. Like the beach movies, it was targeted directly toward teens and was reasonably successful…
Rollercoaster, director James Goldstone’s disaster thriller about a mad bomber’s plot to destroy an amusement park, was the third film presented in the seat-shaking audio process known as Sensesurround. Though it stars such personable actors as George Segal and Richard Widmark and boasts some spectacular action scenes, the film was only a modest success, perhaps due…
John Flynn (The Outfit) was the director, but writer Paul Schrader’s Taxi Driver sensibilities seem to dominate this unjustifiably obscure, violent entry in the betrayed-Vietnam-vet sweepstakes, which is not on DVD and deserves to be better known.
“The most erotic thing in their world was money”. Imagine anyone trying to make a serious expose of the international banking business today! Even in 1981 nobody was interested. Considered a notorious turkey in its day, this financial conspiracy thriller looks positively prescient now. Not among director Alan Pakula’s best-realized works, but certainly deserving…
In a plot reminiscent of W.C. Fields’ The Old Fashioned Way, Groucho plays a down on his luck theatrical producer saddled with a stage full of hungry actors. Adapted from the 1937 broadway hit, this was the Marx Brothers’ first film not tailored specifically to their characters. The movie co-stars Lucille Ball and a very young…
Filmed plays don’t get much more interesting than this. For years Hitchcock’s legendary long-take experiment was a hard film to see, but it’s become more available in recent years. This was the first time the studio was contractually obligated to bill one of his films with the “Alfred Hitchcock’s” possessory credit.
William Castle’s greatest movie– because it was directed by Roman Polanski! May be the finest book to film adaptation ever, brilliant in every detail. Naturally, it’s slated to be remade–but we dunno who’d be foolish enough to try and improve on it.
Roman Polanski’s sinister and sophisticated adaptation of Ira Levin’s novel is also one of the most darkly comic films ever made, in this case personified by Ruth Gordon as the busybody neighbor of poor, paranoid Rosemary who finds out too late that the funny, kaffeeklatsching blue-hair next door is a dyed-in-the-wool satanist. Polanski insisted on keeping…
Bertrand Tavernier’s 1986 musical drama is based on the life of the saxophonist Lester Young, played by the great bebop artist Dexter Gordon as a struggling band man named Dale Turner. Turner’s highs and lows are reflected in the wonderful music on the soundtrack including Thelonious Monk and Bud Powell. Gordon is joined by other real…
Wes Anderson’s absurdist family comedy features a jam-packed cast full of eccentrics that recall the heyday of Preston Sturges. Anderson’s deadpan mannerist approach seems to bring out the best in his eclectic cast including Anjelica Huston, Bill Murray and Gene Hackman as Royal Tenenbaum, the trouble-making patriarch who sets the story in motion. Fans of…
An out-of-nowhere global hit that makes the Energizer Bunny look lazy, S. S. Rajamouli’s 2022 film is a whirling dervish of a movie powered by music, mythology, and wall to wall special effects. N. T. Rama Rao Jr. and Ram Charan play two enemies who become fast friends in their search for a kidnapped child….
Piper Laurie, still flush with her success in 1976’s Carrie, is mother to another supernatural trouble-child in this 1977 possession potboiler from director Curtis Harrington (Night Tide). Laurie plays the titular Ruby whose deaf-mute daughter begins to show signs that her personality has been taken over by the spirit of her dead father, a sleaze-ball…
This was Matt Dillon’s third featured role in a film based on an S.E. Hinton novel, shot back-to-back by Francis Coppola immediately after finishing The Outsiders, which shares much the same cast and crew. What was viewed as its self-indulgent art-house aura turned off audiences and critics, but modern viewers have begun to warm up…
2010’s Unstoppable had a decades-earlier precedent. Andre Konchalovsky’s dynamic thriller took a long time to make it to the screen, but when it did (under the auspices of Cannon Releasing, no less) it rocked. Rod Lurie explains its surprising origins.