Michael Caine specialized in charming scoundrels and his role in Peter Collinson’s The Italian Job is one of his more memorable ne’er-do-wells. Caine is Charlie Coker, a canny crook with a big dream; swipe a cache of gold bullion from an armored tank as it grinds its way through Turin. His unlikely crew includes Benny…
Steve Martin’s stand-up act combined equal measures of the stupid and the cerebral; he turned dropping your pants into a philosophical statement. By 1979, his remarkable on-stage success had gained him enough clout to write and star in his own film. Directed by his old friend Carl Reiner, The Jerk, is an often hilarious series of vignettes that expand on Martin’s…
Sabu plays Mowgli, a kinetic young adventurer who gets to cavort with a parade of talking animals in the most sumptuous jungle setting this side of the Garden of Eden. The 1942 film was a family affair, directed by Zoltán Korda, produced by his brother Alexander and art directed by his other brother Vincent. But the real stars are…
John Avildsen’s stirring 1984 film is a classic “the-worm-turns” tale starring Ralph Macchio as a bullied teenager and Pat Morita as the karate master who teaches him some valuable life lessons. The movie touched a nerve with critics and audiences alike and earned Morita an Academy Award nomination — though the studio had wanted Toshiro…
Wendell Corey plays bank clerk Leon Poole whose mild-mannered demeanor disguises a ruthless killer. Joseph Cotten plays the detective who killed Poole’s wife and makes his own wife a target for the deranged Poole. Director Budd Boetticher and cinematographer Lucian Ballard took a break from sagebrush dramas to shoot this atmospheric crime picture on the…
Based on the Cosmopolitan story about a real-life health crisis, Earl McEvoy directs this uniquely noirish thriller from a script by Harry Essex. Evelyn Keyes stars as a smuggler sick with Smallpox trying to pass off some hot diamonds while infecting everyone she meets. The 1950 film features a great B-movie cast with Lola Albright…
Preston Sturges’ screwball masterpiece is typical for the director, mixing outlandish slapstick with colorful characters and outrageous plot twists worthy of Mark Twain and Voltaire. There’s a touch of melancholy about the duplicitous romance between Barbara Stanwyck’s luscious but two-faced card shark and Henry Fonda’s hopelessly naive beer magnate but it’s mitigated by another stellar Sturges…
A shell of what may have been a great film. What remains of Orson Welles’ fourth Hollywood effort is dazzlingly inventive and narratively jumbled, due to Columbia prexy Harry Cohn cutting Welles’ version by nearly an hour. Still considered a key film noir, Dave Kehr once called it “the weirdest great film ever made”. The…
Alexander Mackendrick’s final film for Britain’s Ealing Studios is one of its most celebrated comedies as well as a pivotal film for an embryonic Peter Sellers, thrilled to be working with his idol Alec Guinness. Sellers later emulated Guinness by taking on numerous multi-character assignments. The macabrely witty (Oscar-nominated) script is a virtual catalog of…
Bram Stoker gets the Ken Russell treatment in this arch, over the top but still creepily grotesque chiller, one of Hugh Grant’s early starring roles. Some of the ripely hysterical anti-clerical imagery seems to have been gleaned from the cutting room floor of The Devils. Has attained camp classic status over the years despite being…
Although this bittersweet French adventure-drama was one of Alain Delon’s biggest domestic hits in 1967, it was dumped onto double bills by US distributor Universal two years later and is undeservedly obscure today. Director Robert Enrico, perhaps best known to American audiences for the short film Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, directs Delon, Lino Ventura and Joanna Shimkus…
Robert Fuest’s 1973 film plays out in the world’s waning hours; Trafalgar Square is dust, the Vatican has disappeared. Jon Finch plays Jerry Cornelius, a playboy physicist with a James Bond complex. His preening self-confidence is tested when the secret of his late father’s invention makes him the target of his own family. Fuest loads…
Along with The Apple and Can’t Stop the Music, The Last Dragon stands at the pinnacle of 80’s WTF movie-making. Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown Records, co-produced this jaw-dropping mix of of martial arts and musical numbers that must be seen to be disbelieved. The bizarro plot revolves around a Bruce Lee acolyte who…
Even heavily invested fans of the great director may not have known about this little-seen film from Vittorio De Sica. A multi-storied phantasmagoria about the end of the world (announced from on high in a booming voice) the movie features a psychotronic cast worthy of Irwin Allen’s The Story of Mankind including Anouk Aimee, Jack…
It’s Vincent Price vs. plague-ridden zombie/vampires in a bleakly depopulated urban setting in this surprisingly influential US-Italian coproduction. Although it fell into into the public domain in the US its reputation has risen in recent years and parts of it seem eerily predictive of the coronoa virus situation. It’s available in its full TotalScope glory…
To the roster of forgotten comedy teams (Wheeler and Woolsey, Brown and Carney, Mitchell and Petrillo, etc.) can be added tv/nightclub comics Allen and Rossi, whose brief moment in the sun produced only a single feature film. This laboriously zany spy spoof features the charisma-challenged duo as inept would-be James Bonds with Hitchcock regular John…
The ghosts of Howard Hawks and John Ford hover over film buff/historian Peter Bogdanovich’s first studio movie after the impressive indie Targets. Orson Welles persuaded him to insist on shooting his Oscar winning adaptation of Larry McMurtry’s semi-autobiographical novel in black and white, unusual for the period. He followed it in 1990 with a sequel,…
Trailers From Hell Guru Allan Arkush’s The Last Reel video essay series is back with a look at two trailblazing filmmakers: Lois Weber and Ida Lupino. In her day, the largely forgotten Lois Weber was the equal of DW Griffith. She ran her own production companies in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and then in East…
Trailers From Hell Guru Allan Arkush’s The Last Reel video essay series continues with its first installment of a TWO-PARTER about the great Questlove. Today’s episode includes Allan’s TFH commentary for Summer of Soul, Questlove’s band The Roots performing, Adele jamming with The Roots in The Tonight Show‘s Toy Instrument Orchestra, and part of the…
Trailers From Hell Guru Allan Arkush’s The Last Reel video essay series returns with Side B of his extended look at Questlove.
Pop-eyed Brit comic Marty Feldman directs and stars in this wacky spoof chosen from a list of titles to which Universal owned the remake rights. Taken away from him and completely recut by the studio, it nevertheless ended up a critical and financial success. When the New York Times published a rave review, Feldman wrote…
Lance Guest plays a teen obsessed with an arcade game named “Starfighter” that turns out to be an intergalactic training vehicle. Thanks to his high scores, he’s whisked away by avuncular alien Robert Preston to join other warriors in protecting his home planet. Director Nick Castle (best known for portraying Michael Meyers in Halloween) was one of the…
Written, directed, and edited by TFH Guru Francis Galluppi, The Last Stop in Yuma County is a ’70s noir steeped in that era’s culture—the crooks drive a green Ford Pinto. Set in and around a diner and filling station in the middle of Arizona, Jim Cummings (another TFH Guru!) plays a knife salesman drawn into…
The Shangri-La of war movies, James Clavell’s epic set during the 30 Years War stars Michael Caine as a mercenary and Omar Sharif as a teacher who take haven in an idyllic valley still untouched by bloodshed. The last movie produced in 70mm Todd A-O is gorgeously shot on fabulous locations but despite fine performances and one of John…
Probably best known as the basis for the TV series Petrocelli, Sidney Furie’s 1970 crime drama stars Barry Newman as an ambitious lawyer who makes his name in a high profile murder case. Diana Muldaur co-stars as Newman’s wife and TV perennial Harold J. Stone plays his volatile courtroom rival.
Audacious for 1964, Sidney Furie’s daring take on Kitchen Sink dramas stars Rita Tushingham as a young bride whose husband begins to show more interest in biker boys than herself. Based on Gillian Freeman’s book, the movie benefits mightily from Gerald Gibbs’ streamlined black and white cinematography.