Five Oscars went to William Friedkin’s dynamic NYPD saga based on the exploits of detective Eddie Egan, who envisioned himself being played by Rod Taylor. Instead, Gene Hackman leapt to stardom in the role. The Department, annoyed by scripter Ernest Tidyman’s portrayal of the force, canned Egan seven hours before he was to sign his…

John Gilling’s odd Euro sci-fi-fantasy has pretty much slipped through the cracks since it was issued as a co-feature to the (pretty good) CIA-funded 1956 incarnation of 1984. This used to be a late night tv staple but today it’s missing in action even on homevideo. Politics, parody and horror collide in what still ranks…

In 1969 eligible young men would try just about anything to get out of The Draft, including wounding themselves. A less drastic tack is taken by the heroes of Bruce Kessler’s drive-in situation comedy: they pretend to be gay, and have to keep up the pretense while trying to date girls on the side. The…

Thanks to some fancy cinematic footwork, Frank Tashlin and Jerry Lewis stay entirely within the confines of Hollywood for this 1958 farce set in Japan. Jerry is a down and out magician who takes a forlorn orphan boy under his wing (or is it vice versa) leading to the usual mishegoss of tomfoolery and schmaltz….

Get out your handkerchiefs, director Joseph Mankiewicz’ 1947 fantasy has been known to inspire tears in even the hardest-hearted moviegoer. This ectoplasmic romance between Gene Tierney (as the most beautiful spinster ever to don a shawl and wire-rim glasses) and Rex Harrison as the sea-faring ghost who loves her is a match not made in heaven…

Filmed in 1940, director George Marshall’s elegantly eerie spook-fest looks better with each passing year. Bob Hope, in top form, plays a radio star who finds himself in the middle of a Havana-bound haunted-house mystery. Paulette Goddard is his luscious companion and as his valet the great Willie Best gives Bob as good as he gets in his definitive…

“Winged Monster from 12,000,000 B.C.!” Sounds good, huh? Well, it might have been at least OK except for one small miscalculation, and you’re looking at it. Not Sam Katzman’s finest hour.

Not all 50s monster pix came from Hollywood–some were regionally produced on miniscule budgets, like this minor entry in the enlarged varmint sweepstakes, slavishly following the misunderstood teens vs.clueless adult authority formula pioneered at AIP. The monster blows up real good, though. GILA, Jim Wynorski’s 2012 remake of this public domain chestnut, debuts on video in…

I. A. L. Diamond, the acerbic screenwriter for Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot and The Apartment, concocted this wafer-thin screwball comedy directed by Peter Godfrey. Ronald Reagan and Eddie Bracken are searching for an elusive blonde who’s hiding in plain sight: a shy teacher who moonlights at the beach in a form-fitting swimsuit. The…

Screwball director Frank Tashlin jumps feet first into the chaste world of Doris Day comedies and emerges with his gonzo cred intact. The 1966 film, co-starring Rod Taylor, features sufficient Tashlin-inspired sight gags and winsome Day crooning to keep fans of both artists satisfied. Featuring a supporting cast of able TV vets including Paul Lynde…

One of the great American films, despite its chaotic production. Producer Al Ruddy agreed with mob leader Anthony Columbo not to use the words Mafia or Cosa Nostra in exchange for permission to shoot in New York. Burt Reynolds wanted the role of Sonny but Marlon Brando (who beat out no less than Laurence Olivier…

Robert De Niro’s extraordinary performance as Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver came fast on the heels of his equally fine—and completely different— performance as a young Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s superb sequel to The Godfather. A feast for the eyes and ears, the movie criss-crosses over time and place from Michael Corleone as a…

From the Golden Era of Eddie Murphy hits comes this offbeat combination of comedy and mysticism. It’s sort of like a Bob Hope version of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Critics were not kind, but today it’s regarded as a quintessential exemplar of the ’80s studio aesthetic, troubled production history and all.

Last and biggest of Sergio Leone’s “Dollars” trilogy, this Euro western classic dazzles with gorgeous imagery and sheer scope. Filled with memorable setpieces, none more grand than Eli Wallach’s delirious graveyard run to the pounding strains of Ennio Morricone’s “Ecstasy of Gold”. The term “horse opera” was never so apt.

Dustin Hoffman was nearly 30 when he played his star-making role as college student Benjamin Braddock, a part he landed when producer Lawrence Turman rejected Robert Redford as too movie star handsome. Similarly, Anne Bancroft inherited her signature role as Mrs. Robinson when Doris Day turned it down (what a different movie that would have…

Best known for The Dick Dyke Show, director Jerry Paris manages to inject some needed humor in this bleak tale of broken dreams. Jacqueline Bisset plays an aspiring dancer who gets off on the wrong foot in Vegas and doesn’t recover. Jim Brown is her good-hearted husband and Joseph Cotten is the reprobate who assists…

Ken Shapiro’s The Groove Tube coasted on the backs of Mad Magazine and in particular National Lampoon—an edgy humor mag so popular that in the early 70s it produced a comedy revue starring Chevy Chase called Lemmings. Chase is also one of the stars of Shapiro’s amiable 1974 satire which has the hit and miss…

Chuck Bail, a stuntman turned director, goes with what he knows in this 1976 comedy about an illegal cross-country road race. Michael Sarrazin is a wealthy candy maker who instigates the party (code name “Gumball”) and his car-happy co-stars include Raul Julia and Gary Busey.  Dominic Frontiere, composer for The Outer Limits, did the freewheeling…

John Frankenheimer’s film about a band of highflying skydivers was marketed as an action film when much of the film is grounded along with the daredevils. The box office reflected moviegoers disappointment but the cast, including Lancaster, Deborah Kerr and Gene Hackman, is unusually strong and Frankenheimer himself regarded it as one of his best…

The formidable action director John Sturges added laughs to his bag of tricks with this old west spoof starring Burt Lancaster and Lee Remick. Lancaster plays a Cavalry man pressed into escorting a reformist firebrand played by Remick who’s determined to stop delivery of a shipment of whiskey to Denver, home to a sizable crew…

Set in San Francisco’s Chinatown, William Wellman’s 1932 melodrama is as hard-boiled as a pre-code film could get and paved the way for more explicitly bloody action in Hammer’s own Terror of the Tongs. Robinson is Wong Low Get, a man with a particularly sharp axe to grind and a ravishing Loretta Young (almost unrecognizable…

Although seeming quite a bit like one of Roger Corman’s period Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, it’s actually a slight digression in that it’s not based on Poe at all but on an H.P. Lovecraft story. Economical but imaginative, it offers two Vincents for the Price of one and pairs them with Lon Chaney for the…

Charles Grodin was passed over for the lead in The Graduate, but gets to play a similar role here as Peter Pan syndrome sufferer Lenny Kantrow, who falls for shiksa goddess Cybill Shepherd days after marrying his annoying wife Jeannie Berlin. Both films share similar endings as well, but Elaine May’s comic take is darker…

Jack Sholder’s sci-fi satire finds Michael Nouri and a suspiciously Agent Cooper-like Kyle MacLachlan on the trail of a slimy space worm who uses unsuspecting humans to navigate around town including, most amusingly, Claudia Christian as a stripper who suddenly exhibits an unearthly facility with heavy artillery. For a low budget film the effects are first rate….

Not widely distributed (more kids saw the photos in Famous Monsters of Filmland than ever saw the movie), actor-turned-producer/director Robert Clarke’s home-made vehicle is remembered fondly today primarily for one of the cooler monster masks of the ’50s.

William Wellman’s soap opera in the sky is the granddaddy of disaster films, in particular Airport and its many sequels. John Wayne plays the harried pilot who experiences more than his share of turbulence including jealous husbands and an airliner that is slowly dismantling itself. Claire Trevor, Wayne’s old flame from Stagecoach, is on board along with Robert Stack as The…