Jacques Tourneur’s 1964 horror romp retains most of the actors and crew from Roger Corman’s Poe adaptations—including poster art from Reynold Brown. The film lacks the luster of Mr. Corman’s efforts but with Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre, and Basil Rathbone on board, who’s complaining? Price and Lorre play luckless undertakers who start supplying…
Comedy buffs Carl Reiner and Dick Van Dyke re-teamed for this tribute to silent comedy centering on an egotistical star named Billy Bright. The plot juggles episodes culled from the careers of Langdon, Chaplin and Van Dyke’s friend Stan Laurel, but it actually hews closer to the life of Keaton than The Buster Keaton Story…
Bernardo Bertolucci’s glamorously beautiful investigation into the ugly nature of fascism (both political and emotional) is one of the great movies of the 70’s. Set in the early 30’s, Jean-Louis Trintignant stars as a hired killer working for a clandestine fascist organization who finds himself ordered to assassinate a friend. Bertolucci’s hypnotic, seductive camera movements, combined with his new wave sensibilities,…
Sandwiched in between his two Godfather triumphs, Francis Coppola’s tense thriller is a quietly malevolent masterpiece. Gene Hackman plays his reputedly favorite role as an obsessive surveillance expert whose recordings of a possible murder put him in jeopardy. Partially inspired by Antonioni’s Blow-up, this is the kind of grown-up movie they just don’t make anymore–remarkable…
A thrilling film noir and a pungent commentary on race relations circa 1959, The Crimson Kimono is one of Sam Fuller’s most striking films. James Shigeta and Glenn Corbett play two cops investigating a stripper’s murder in Los Angeles’s Little Tokyo. Ramping up the tension is Victoria Shaw as a key witness who both gumshoes…
Considerable production power (courtesy of Star Wars’ producer Gary Kurtz) was brought to bear on this 1982 fantasy epic from Jim Henson in what is essentially a 93 minute Muppet Show episode made on a grand scale and with a far grimmer atmosphere. Henson’s dream project was impeccably conceived with the help of English fantasy…
Moody, atmospheric B picture that recalls the Val Lewton formula of getting the most out of limited means. With one location and only six main characters, it manages to wring quite a bit of creepiness out of its familiar martian doppelganger premise. A nice example of our preferred format here at TFH, black-and-white Cinemascope.
A typically skewed horror satire from Spanish director Álex de la Iglesia, again combining gonzo exploitation thrills with the sardonic social commentary of his countryman, Luis Buñuel. Starring Álex Angulo (Pan’s Labyrinth) as a stouthearted priest with a uniquely wacky strategy to vanquish the devil.
They swim, they play, and they talk. They love George C. Scott and call him ‘pa.’ Mike Nichols’ paranoid sci-fi classic combines Lassie Go Home and The Manchurian Candidate. It works up a good guys versus bad guys conspiracy storyline — until the message arrives that what the adorable dolphins Fa and Bee really need,…
This first screen treatment of John Wyndham’s gripping science fiction novel took many liberties with the original, but the innate power of the concept of alien invaders blinding Earth’s populace has turned a troubled production into a semi-classic. Out of circulation for years, it’s been painstakingly restored by longtime Triffids fan Michael Hyatt, whose refurbished…
Elsewhere on TFH, Joe Dante describes Jack Arnold’s 1958 The Space Children as that rare example of a “pacifist” sci-fi thriller. Robert Wise’s 1951 The Day the Earth Stood Still could qualify as the granddaddy of that genre were it not for its ambivalent message which is, loosely translated, “Be peaceful or we’ll blow you out of the solar system”. Regardless,…
J.P. Miller’s grueling 1958 Playhouse 90 teleplay was brought to the screen in 1962 by its original producer Martin Manulis. Original star Cliff Robertson was replaced by Jack Lemmon, an actor with drinking problems of his own, who suggested director Blake Edwards to succeed the original’s John Frankenheimer. Lee Remick replaced Piper Laurie and Charles Bickford was…
John Huston didn’t live to see his final film released, but it’s one of his most impressive. James Joyce’s 1914 novella is considered one of the greatest stories ever written, yet Huston’s meticulous movie does it full justice. Stately, elegant and richly observed, with a poignant climactic punch that sneaks up on you. Among the…
A classic piece of Americana. William Dieterle’s haunting fantasy is that rarity, a major studio art film. It’s had a rocky ride over the decades but is now available uncut on DVD after years of neglect, recuts and spotty distribution under a myriad of titles, including All That Money Can Buy, Here is a Man,…
Bela plays a small town chemist out for revenge in Jean Yarborough’s poverty row thriller for Producer’s Releasing Corporation (PRC). Lugosi’s scheme includes giant bats and aftershave lotion which should be enough to pique any movie fan’s interest. Dave O’Brien, a familiar face from Reefer Madness and a score of Pete Smith Specialties, plays the…
Ken Russell’s historical horror film sparked plenty of outrage and spilled soft drinks in 1971—and continues to do so; Warner Bros. remains steadfast in refusing a legitimate stateside home video release. More’s the pity—beautifully photographed by David Watkin, the movie features a remarkably tender performance from Oliver Reed as a rebellious priest, and a shockingly…
Talented British director Robert Fuest’s promising career took a downturn with the overwhelmingly negative critical response to this low-budget but well-cast US horror film (“…as horrible as watching an egg fry”– NY Times). The climax is an endless montage of gooey, drippy makeups that presages the similarly protracted liquid climax of Gremlins 2 fifteen years…
Australia’s top grossing film of 2000 was this Rob Sitch-directed, Bill Forsyth-influenced semi-fictionalized dramedy based on NASA’s use of a radio telescope in New South Wales to beam images from the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing around the world. Much of the electronic prop equipment on hand was actually used during the landing but was too…
As Ethan de Seife notes in his essential, just-published study of writer-director-cartoonist Frank Tashlin, (“Tashlinesque”, Wesleyan University Press), this final collaboration between Tashlin and Jerry Lewis accentuates the tension between their divergent comedy styles, one of “the most vexing cases in the Tashlin/Lewis authorship question.” Wacky cartoon gags alternate with rampant sentimentality in a film…
Mel Brooks saw Eraserhead and perceived what few others could at the time, that David Lynch was an empathetic artist who, while fully capable of provoking nightmares, was just as able to move an audience to tears. That’s exactly what happened with Brooks’ 1980 production of The Elephant Man, a Frankensteinian parable about an outwardly…
A naval commander and a German U-Boat captain form a mutual admiration society in director Dick Powell’s The Enemy Below. Robert Mitchum plays the crusty Captain Murrell and Curt Jürgens is his—slightly—sympathetic counterpart, submarine commander Capt. Von Stolberg. Darryl F. Zanuck, longtime head of 20th Century Fox, has a cameo as a navy cook.
Although Clint Eastwood had intended to direct the third Dirty Harry movie himself, his replacement of Philip Kaufman during The Outlaw Josey Wales prevented him from taking the reins on The Enforcer, so his assistant director James Fargo was drafted to do the job. Tyne Daley’s tough female cop foreshadows her role in the hit…
Perhaps the first zombie film inspired by The Three Stooges, Sam Raimi’s low-budget thrill ride is outrageously gory and outrageously fun. The out-of-control zombies, with the help of Raimi’s runaway-train camerawork, are a memorably aggressive band of blank-eyed bloodsuckers.
William Peter Blatty, author and screenwriter of The Exorcist, takes the director’s chair in this second sequel to William Friedkin’s 1973 smash. This time Blatty ties a serial killer (most likely based on the Zodiac murders) to the supernatural goings-on. The resulting film, originally titled Legion, suffered a name change along with a host of…
Director Irvin Kershner’s stylish thriller is reminiscent in more ways than one of Mario Bava’s 1964 giallo, Blood and Black Lace; each film contrasts the glamorous world of high fashion with the lurid crime spree of a brutal serial killer. As the fashion photographer whose sadistic photo spreads resemble crime scenes, Faye Dunaway begins to…
Robert Florey’s melancholy melodrama stars Peter Lorre as Janos Szabo, a Hungarian immigrant whose luck goes from bad to worse—scarred in a fire, he’s unable to find work and turns to crime. The film teeters on the edge of tragedy but Szabo eventually finds redemption in the love of a blind woman played by Evelyn…