New Jersey native Alfred Sole caught some critics’ eyes with his creepily Hitchcock-influenced but poorly distributed Alice Sweet Alice (a.k.a. Communion), and soon gave up directing for a more productive career as a production designer. His penultimate directorial effort was Tanya’s Island, an even more obscure and bizarre pseudo-sexploitation fantasy starring sexy model Vanity (billed…

Universal was the leader in slickly produced 50s genre pix, and here’s another eerie desert-set chiller from Jack Arnold with good special FX and creepy makeups. Leo G. Carroll, one of Hitchcock’s favorite actors, classes up the joint as the scientist whose serum results in big buggery.

Before Robby and The Terminator, movie robots tended toward the bulky and box-like. One such vacuum-hosed menace stands in for offscreen hordes in this cheap but fun alien invasion saga, circa 1954.

Peter Bogdanovich’s harrowing directorial debut was made independently and sold to Paramount, becoming an effective calling card for his career in the majors. In the wake of the rash of 1968 political assassinations the studio got cold feet and slapped on a misjudged gun control card at the beginning. Bogdanovich plays a film director named…

Generally regarded as the pinnacle of MGM’s Tarzan series, this pre-code entry is the second in the 12-picture Weissmuller series, spectacularly produced and unexpectedly violent considering the kid-friendly tone of later episodes. Though credited to veteran art director Cedric Gibbons, most of the film was directed by Jack Conway and James C. McKay.

Probably the last creditable Dracula sequel and one of the better Hammer productions of the period, despite the fact that the vampire Count himself was a late addition to the mix. Ralph Bates as the fiendish Lord Courtley was intended to take over the reins from Christopher Lee as the continuing menace but the US…

Bernard Herrmann’s pulsating final score propels one of the great New York movies which brilliantly captures a time and place that has largely disappeared. But the dark corners of Paul Schrader’s disturbing screenplay are illuminated by Martin Scorsese’s intensely affecting collaboration with star Robert De Niro in perhaps his greatest role. This lost the Best…

1985’s Teen Wolf flips the similarly themed I Was a Teenage Werewolf on its head. Instead of the heavy breathing psychodrama of Michael Landon’s tortured teen, we’re treated to a family-friendly comedy where Michael Fox’s lycanthropic curse is used as a metaphor for self-empowerment. Director Rod Daniel’s film was a modest success leading to a…

The sole directorial effort of cinematographer Jacques Marquette (A Bucket of Blood, Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, Burnt Offerings) came about when the intended director backed out, reducing the 8 day schedule by one, and DP Marquette took over.  It’s an odd but entirely conventional amalgam of monster movie and sagebrush saga. Shot for…

Lightning in a bottle: AIP’s penchant for making bargain- basement movies based on title and poster research paid off in spades with this hugely influential amalgam of juvenile delinquent and monster genres. The surprise hit of 1957.

Indie filmmaker Tom Graeff, inspired to make his own movie after completing a grip job on Roger Corman’s Not of This Earth, convinced monster maker Paul Blaisdell to design the dime store ray gun mirror-reflective gags and the beat-up spray-painted flying saucer shell with the visible crack in it for his magnum opus, which has…

Although MIA for several years, we’ve recovered our 600th trailer commentary which was Epic in every way. Larry Cohen extemporizes 10 MINUTES of stuff to say about this extended promo for C.B. DeMille’s last religious spectacle– which isn’t really so much about the Bible as it is about Anne Baxter’s breasts. Seems like every ten…

Director George Pollack shepherded four Agatha Christie thrillers into theaters between 1961 and 1964, each starring Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple and each a model of lighthearted moviemaking deftly mixing comedy and chills. In 1965, Pollack took an international cast including Hugh O’Brian, Shirley Eaton and Stanley Holloway to Ireland where he tackled Ten LIttle Indians,…

A diminutive paranoid hallucinates a lot of trouble for himself–or does he? Considered in some circles the last of Roman Polanski’s “apartment trilogy” with Repulsion and Rosemary’s Baby, but in light of his recent Carnage, it’s now a quartet. Polanski plays the lead role but gave himself no billing.

The notorious German killer known as both The Butcher and the Vampire of Hanover was guillotined in 1925 for the murders of young men and boys between 1918 and 1925. His gruesome exploits inspired three films including Fritz Lang’s M and 1995’s The Deathmaker as well as this uncomfortable Uli Lommel creepfest which was pretty…

Barely released in the US in a heavily cut and censored version improbably titled The Unsane, Dario Argento’s violent thriller is celebrated for its pioneering use of the Louma crane. American writer Anthony Franciosa, in Italy to promote his latest horror novel, finds that a serial killer is offing victims in gruesome tableaus based on…

Roger Ebert dismissed Stephanie Rothman’s sweaty sexploitation flick as “The kind of movie that can almost be reviewed by watching the trailer”—TFH Guru Heidi Honeycutt is here to accept that challenge. More entertaining than Ebert would suggest, the 1973 film stars Phyllis Davis as just one of many voluptuous inmates on a remote island where…

James Cameron’s triumphant updating of the well-made, low-budget sci-fi thrillers that flourished in the fifties was a box office smash in 1984. Cameron’s whip-smart direction hits all the satirical twists and turns of the innovative script he wrote with Gale Ann Hurd and attention must be paid to TFH guru Mark Goldblatt’s turn-on-a-dime editing. Four…

Marooned Mars expedition survivor Marshall Thompson is blamed for the murder of his entire crew, but the real culprit, stalking the shadowy spaceship, is ….IT! Economical to say the least, Edward L. Cahn’s mini-budget cheapie has entertained fans for decades, including, it seems, Ridley Scott!

Lloyd Kaufman tries to explain (justify?) his most self-referential epic in which he plays the blind director of a Troma production plagued by a hermaphrodite serial killer murdering his/her/its way through the cast and crew. It’s pretty much Lloyd’s 8 1/2, featuring Ron Jeremy and a parade of references and props (including the Penis-Monster first seen in Tromeo and…

A high-flying crowd pleaser that only the studio system could manufacture, MGM’s Test Pilot was directed by Victor Fleming, written by Howard Hawks, and starred the can’t-miss trio of Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, and Spencer Tracy. Gable plays a reckless flyboy, Loy his down-home  sweetheart, and Tracy his true-blue pal. The airborne pyrotechnics and earthbound…

Hallucinatory sci-fi from director Shinya Tsukamoto who takes David Cronenberg’s body-horror themes to their illogical/logical conclusion. Shot on 16mm, Tsukamoto’s 1989 cult fave is a frenetic nightmare allegory of a roboticized society in which people consume, inject and otherwise merge with scrap metal and other household appliances. For those who think “sex toy” but say “power…

Gritty, visceral and intensely disturbing, Tobe Hooper’s Nixon-era magnum opus achieves almost all its power‚ through suggestion and indirection. Nevertheless it was banned and censored throughout the world. Art director‚ Robert Burns practically earns auteur status himself for his all-encompassing graveyard atmosphere.‚ Followed by three remakes and a sequel, videogame and comic books.

Set in the New Hebrides during World War II, James A. Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific inspired the sweepingly romantic stage and film versions of South Pacific—his best-selling The Bridges at Toko-Ri resulted in a far grimmer portrayal of war directed by Mark Robson. William Holden plays a rebellious navy aviator flying missions over North…

Director Philippe De Broca (King of Hearts) directed this spy spoof at the apex of Bondmania in 1964 and transformed easy-going art-house favorite Jean-Paul Belmondo into a box office mega-star. Featuring a fast-paced globe-trotting chase for an Amazonian statue, That Man From Rio is more Indiana Jones than James Bond but French audiences didn’t care, making it…

In what could be another entry in “Movies You Never Heard Of”, Sig Shore’s musicalized drama tells the story of a funk band and their meteoric rise up the charts. Harvey Keitel plays their producer and Earth, Wind, and Fire do double duty—as actors and as film composers. The movie dropped off the radar but…