True to its word, Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and The Beautiful is full of bad, beautiful people. Baddest of all is Kirk Douglas as a two-faced director who’ll walk over anyone or anything to get what he wants. Those walked upon include a ravishing Lana Turner, Dick Powell as an unassuming novelist, and Walter Pidgeon…
Michael Ritchie’s 1976 comedy about a squad of underachieving Little Leaguers and their boozing coach (played by a rumpled Walter Matthau) is a bracing antidote to most of today’s carefully vetted family-friendly feel good films. Ritchie’s uniquely warmhearted but unsentimental take on his crew of misfits allows even the most peripheral of characters their own…
Contemporary audiences could be forgiven for thinking Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers is a documentary; this shocking and powerful war movie is neorealism to the nth degree. A jittery, hand-held portrait of rebels vs. the French government during the near decade-long Algerian war, Pontecorvo used mostly non-professional actors and a newsreel approach to the…
By the time Swedish wrestler and best-selling Halloween mask Tor Johnson made this, his all-time worst picture, his career was behind him and the days of Ed Wood must have looked like Eden. The longest 54 minutes in movies.
There’s a reason presidential elections happen so soon after Halloween; they’re their own kind of horror show. The ghouls in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man aren’t typical monsters though, they’re political operatives. Henry Fonda is a conflicted but honorable candidate facing off against the Prince of Darkness, Cliff Robertson, a phony populist willing to break…
Joan Crawford has one of her better roles of the decade in this popular ensemble piece based on Rona Jaffe’s best seller. Although her part was reduced to some seven minutes in editing, eliminating a reportedly memorable drunk scene, Crawford managed to impress even among the diverse and generally younger cast of Fox contractees. A…
Homicide cop Glenn Ford visits destruction on every woman he meets while avenging the murder of his wife. Fritz Lang’s noirish classic is tough, cynical and operates from the premise that most big cities are run by crime syndicates, a popular theme in contemporary thrillers like The Enforcer, The Big Combo and The Phenix City…
Conceived in the 1950s, Sam Fuller’s fine war film The Big Red One didn’t make it to the screen until 1980, yet it has the same stoic vision and brass-knuckled poetry of the director’s best early work. Lee Marvin plays a soldier fighting a World War alongside his own demons. With a fine supporting cast…
Dario Argento’s acclaimed directorial debut emerged from a successful writing career that encompassed everything from movie criticism to contributions to westerns like Five Man Army and Once Upon a Time in the West. He enlisted his father, producer Salvatore Argento, to help fund what would become a landmark in the Italian giallo genre, whose origins…
In one of the more unusual love triangles in Hollywood history, David Niven plays a bishop so distracted by his charity work he begins to lose interest in his wife, played by Loretta Young. Cary Grant is the angel sent to earth as their heavenly marriage counselor, and to no one’s surprise but his, he…
Every good film deserves a sequel. And then there’s The Stud which got one, too. Sister act Joan and Jackie Collins followed up their mega-smash with 1979’s The Bitch which continues the bed-hopping adventures of Fontaine Khaled, the glamorous disco-owner still looking for love in all the wrong places. Remarkably, Joan’s star continued to rise; The…
Disney’s first PG-rated release tries to combine Star Wars and 2001 into one expensive but rather muddled package that doesn’t quite know which one it wants to be. Still, a seminal experience for many 1979 kids which has a dedicated cult following despite its mix of childishness and attempted profundity.
A Boris Karloff tour-de-force casts him as twin brothers under the thrall of a grim family curse. One of the most unjustly unheralded Golden Age horror films, it’s seldom seen today but deserves a lot more recognition than it’s gotten since it disappeared from the tv airwaves in the mid -70s. This cut-down reissue trailer…
“The management reserves the right to put up the lights any time the audience becomes too emotionally disturbed!” crowed the poster for this Mexico-set monster rally, which also urged to crowd “not to panic or bolt from your seats”. It’s doubtful the lights went on anywhere, but there may have been some snoring during the…
Old-fashioned in the best possible way, Carroll Ballard’s 1979 film about a boy and his horse deserves to be called timeless. The simple story; a boy trains a wild stallion to compete in a championship race with the help of a retired jockey played by Mickey Rooney. The film stars Kelly Reno as the determined…
1958’s The Blob proves just as adaptable to the times as Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Thing in this remake helmed by Chuck Russell and co-written with Frank Darabont. Laced with cheeky humor and post-Watergate paranoia, the movie is memorable for Russell’s nimble direction and a quick-witted cast that includes Shawnee Smith and…
Most of the voluminous cameo roles in TFH Guru John Landis’s landmark rock comedy were performed on studio sound stages, but the death defying car crash stunts were shot right on the streets of Chicago. This is the premier movie of those generated by Saturday Night Live. The preview version was shorn from 148 minutes…
Directed by Tony Richardson, this 1982 “neo-noir” stars Jack Nicholson as Charlie Smith, a border agent up to his neck in a human smuggling scheme run by his glad-handing partner played by Harvey Keitel. The fine cast is rounded out by Warren Oates and Valerie Perrine, but it’s Nicholson who shines in one of his…
Richard Fleischer, director of 1959’s Compulsion, revisits the true-crime genre with 1968’s The Boston Strangler. The sordid nature of the material would make it a natural for the 42nd Street audience but the presence of Henry Fonda as a tenacious police detective and Tony Curtis as the infamous killer made sure the film was a…
Roger Donaldson took over the reins from David Lean for this revisionist take on Mutiny on the Bounty, a film made instantly appealing by its dream cast; Mel Gibson as Fletcher Christian, Anthony Hopkins as William Bligh, and a supporting crew made up of Laurence Olivier, Daniel Day-Lewis, and Liam Neeson. A more than respectable…
Set on the French Riviera during the roaring 20’s, Sandy Wilson’s smash 1954 London musical production ran for 2,078 performances to great acclaim. Julie Andrews made her Broadway debut in the starring role the same year, but when Ken Russell mounted his 1971 film version he chose current pop culture icon Twiggy for the lead,…
Directed by Bruno VeSota and produced by Roger Corman and star Ed Nelson, this six-day production has a can-do attitude that’s difficult to dismiss. Nelson plays a scientist investigating space parasites that are turning his friends into mind-controlled killers—one of those zombies is played by Leonard Nimoy. Being a Corman production it features a nifty…
“Memorable” is the word for Nathan Juran’s inadvertently surreal science fiction film from 1957—”ridiculous” comes to mind too: it’s a movie so preposterous the director took cover behind a pseudonym. John Agar plays a wide-eyed scientist whose eyes only get wider when he’s possessed by an airborne brain named Gor. The balloon-like creature has plans…
Shot near Tarrytown, New York as “The Head That Wouldn’t Die”, this sleazy little gem sat unreleased for two years until AIP picked it up in 1962. Their numerous censor cuts for reasons of “good taste” (as if!) have been since restored and the whole sordid farrago is now available pretty much everywhere in its…
This inconsequential comic fantasy from 1964 remains a rainy day favorite thanks to the peerless Tony Randall who stars as an agitated architect getting some unwanted assistance from a very persistent genie played by the always affable Burl Ives. A lighter-than-air mix of magic spells and harem girls, it almost certainly pointed the way to co-star…
Based on a story by the then blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, Irving Rapper’s The Brave One is a heart tugging drama about a little Mexican boy named Leonardo and his bigger-than-life pet, a bull named Gitano. Trumbo would win—pseudonymously—1957’s Academy Award for Best Story.