Director Stan Lathan’s 1973 film documents a concert held during Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH exposition. Like Woodstock, it’s long for a concert film but with over 25 acts it needed to be. Featuring a once in a lifetime lineup of Motown greats including Marvin Gaye, Wilson Pickett, Issac Hayes, and the Jackson 5.
“WARNING! This motion picture depicts UXORICIDE!” (look it up). A phone prank gets two teen girls in big trouble with the murderer next door. The seat-belt gimmick depicted in this trailer is pretty half hearted; William Castle would soon give up on these adornments altogether.
“10 Seconds: The Pain Begins. 15 Seconds: You Can’t Breathe. 20 Seconds: You Explode.” Heads exploded at Avco Embassy Pictures when David Cronenberg’s Canadian telekinetic thriller grossed an unexpectedly hefty $14 million, setting the company on a course of profitable genre pix throughout the early ’80s. Two sequels (The New Order, The Takeover) and two…
There’s a heapin’-helpin’ of palace intrigue in this 1952 swashbuckler starring underrated action hero Stewart Granger (the role was a gift from MGM for his bang-up job in King Solomon’s Mines made two years earlier). Though it lacks the Boy’s Life adventurism of King Solomon, the movie is still brightly colored fun, shot by Charles Rosher (The…
The sinister presence of Bela Lugosi at his skulkiest (though he’s hardly in this trailer) adds the only layer of distinction to this disjointed poverty row “mystery” which at times seems like an unfinished feature stitched together in editing. Still has some delirious moments for die-hard fans.
Brian de Palma and Oliver Stone’s ultra-violent, over the top remake of the 1932 Howard Hawks classic moves the action to 1980s Miami and provoked a wave of negative reaction to its boisterous excesses. It had to be submitted three times to the MPAA before being cut to qualify for an R rating. Yet today…
John Landis spills on what he thinks (not much) of the ridiculous reissue trailer for his first movie, Schlock! — which, as John has reminded us over and over on Trailers from Hell, has to be Great because it stars a guy (John!) in a (Rick Baker!) gorilla suit! Nuff said!
Top-lined by David Arquette, Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox, and Drew Barrymore, Scream is the perfect horror film for Gen X’ers; full of slyly self-referential humor, Wes Craven’s 1996 meta-slasher flick came out of nowhere during that year’s Christmas season and assumed Godzilla-like proportions in the number of sequels it has spawned. It also ignited Kevin Williamson’s…
“Psycho” spawned a cottage industry of twist-ending killer-thrillers, and this modest Hammer entry is one of the best. Psycho’s unconventional ad campaign also led to gambits like this one, pretending the movie was just too scary to show any actual footage in the trailer!
Reputedly a favorite of Fritz Lang, this is an oddly structured sci-fi horror spy movie that anticipates a number of later horror trends. Fans tend to either love it or hate it, but it does provide a welcome break from the increasingly formulaic genre films of the period. Peter Cushing is misidentified in this trailer….
Directed by Bryan Forbes, this haunting film—a psychological thriller bordering on horror—deserves a bigger audience. Kim Stanley plays a medium desperate for fame and fortune, and Richard Attenborough is her much-too-compliant husband. Their scheme: kidnap a schoolgirl and use Stanley’s so-called psychic ability to help police “find” the child. Forbes wrote the screenplay based on…
John Frankenheimer’s chilling adaptation of David Ely’s sci-fi novel is one of the last classic works of his prolific 60s period before a dry spell and comeback in the 90s. A great score by Jerry Goldsmith and probably Rock Hudson’s best performance.
Nobody’s favorite Joseph Losey film, this strange, dreamlike melodrama found little audience reception and is more famous today for the hatchet job Universal did on it to broadcast it on network tv. Elizabeth Taylor, playing a prostitute in the original, became a woman “who tried on wigs for a living”!
R. Lee Ermey acted in three of my films and was a good friend. Sad to lose him so young. He was so strong, energetic, resolute, in command, I thought he would live forever. He worked hard to build a career after his riveting performance in Full Metal Jacket. As an untrained actor, he could…
An old west spin on To Kill A Mockingbird, John Ford’s 1960 horse opera broke new ground as the first “mainstream” western to star a black actor. Set in the early 1880s, Woody Strode plays an African-American soldier on trial for the rape and murder of a white girl. Jeffrey Hunter is his embattled commander…
Director Bill Persky’s 1980 satire benefits from the kind of quirky casting and jaundiced worldview that served Robert Altman so well in the 70’s. A sexual roundelay set in monied Marin County, the film finds such odd couples as Martin Mull and Tuesday Weld navigating new-age cults while working overtime on their disintegrating marriage.
John Waters plays nice but not too nice in this bent scenario about a suburban mom who’s really a serial killer. Starring Kathleen Turner, it’s Mommie Dearest taken to the next level and Waters positively revels in outlandish social satire; he’s like Tex Avery directing a Preston Sturges screenplay (during her trial Turner’s daughter sells…
Considering the iconic status of the finished product, it’s hard to believe that Lumet replaced director John Avildsen just before filming commenced. His detail-oriented approach yielded a cop classic. Al Pacino, in one of his most memorable performances, plays real life NYPD detective Frank Serpico, who uncovered widespread police corruption and suffered the consequences.
Sexual politics get the once-over as a family of Oregon mountain men decide to take ’em some wives. Stanley Donen’s slapstick backwoods musical is famed for its knockout choreography by Michael Kidd and proved immensely popular worldwide, leading to no less than five different stage shows (1979-2007), a tv series and even a 1982 Bollywood…
As Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas tighten the screws in a life and death face-off between a traitorous general and his whistle-blowing aide, John Frankenheimer keeps upping the ante in this brilliantly directed political thriller scripted by Rod Serling in 1964. Good-guy politicos Fredric March and Edmond O’Brien push back against the gathering storm while…
BTS details the troubled production of one of Kurosawa’s greatest achievements, a mythic and primal epic of feudal Japan that became a virtual template for latter-day action films, influencing western filmmakers for decades. Kurosawa professed himself disappointed with the popular 1960 Americanized remake The Magnificent Seven, which spawned numerous sequels and ripoffs. Screenwriter John Sayles…
Like most epics, Seven Samurai has a simple plot: beleaguered farmers hire a makeshift army of samurai to defend their crops from bandits. The no-nonsense Takashi Shimura holds down the fort alongside Toshiro Mifune as a hot-headed but loyal mischief-maker. Akira Kurosawa’s definitive masterpiece is rife with extraordinary action scenes and moments of serene beauty, embodied…
The psychotronic title is perhaps exploitation virtuoso Albert Zugsmith’s greatest gift to cinema. But ultimately, no film could live up to the forbidden delights promised although this one certainly tries. Anticipating Zugsmith’s gradual descent into total sleaze, this bizarre clunker features a ramshackle robot named “Thinko” (voiced by Al himself) who draws extra duty in…
Jonathan Glazer’s pitch-black comedy, a parody of kinky, hard-bitten British gangster films in the vein of Performance and Get Carter, stormed the box office in 2000. Ben Kingsley’s spittle-flecked performance as the bloodthirsty sociopath Don Logan was based, in Kingsley’s own words, on his grandmother, who he described as a “vile and extremely unpleasant woman”.
Vaudeville lives again in this notoriously square concoction from music producer Robert Stigwood, using most of the Beatles songs from the albums Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road. Generally considered one of the all-time turkeys of the 1970s.
The (admittedly cultish) reputation of this 1937 comic-mystery rests on one truly startling scene. And that scene is… Ah, forget it, just watch the movie, it’s only 54 minutes long and well worth the wait. Hugh Herbert and Allan Jenkins star as two bumbling detectives facing off against a killer octopus inside a deserted lighthouse….