With enough plot turns for a 12 chapter serial, this 61 minute pre-code thriller stars 34 year-old Neil Hamilton (Batman’s eventual Commissioner Gordon) as a silk merchant and Guy Kibbee as a detective trapped aboard a train carrying gangsters, scientists and an unexpected hero not revealed till the movie’s final destination.
“Jim Brown goes over the wall to flash with a million dollar stash!” The former footballer’s 15th feature is one of this toughest, ably assembled by director Jonathan Kaplan in only his third feature, and first outside the Corman factory. This one has never been available on home video in any form until now.
As the psychotic delivery man whose hatred is reserved for women, Arthur Franz found the perfect vehicle for his flinty personality in this 1952 policier from director Edward Dmytryk. Produced by Stanley Kramer, the film is notable for cinematographer Burnett Guffey’s neo-realist take on the Bay Area locale. Franz must have been disappointed that this…
Directed by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne, The Son is a bundle of dynamite just waiting to go off. Olivier Gourmet is a cold-hearted carpenter and Morgan Marinne is his new apprentice, each holding a different piece of a sinister puzzle. A uniquely disturbing mystery, the film garnered excellent reviews and Gourmet received the Best Actor…
Roger Corman takes us behind the scenes on one of his rare big studio projects, a detailed and largely accurate account of the 1929 mass murder of Bugs Moran’s Northside Gang in a Chicago garage. George Segal plays the ill-fated, not to mention henpecked, Frank Gusenberg. Paul Frees narrates as the voice of doom, chronicling…
In the aftermath of a police shooting, a band of mercenaries huddle inside a warehouse, each one a suspect in the killing. James Badge plays a classically conflicted character, an ex-cop and current militia member who’s more interested in justice than saving his skin. Premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in 2018, Henry Dunham’s intense…
In a decade of oddities, Paul Sylbert’s 1971 satire is high on the list of unconventional entertainments. Set in the fall of 1962, Richard Benjamin plays a professor so unnerved by the Cuban missile crisis he sets out on a cross-country tour of America, changing his identity in each new city. Chill Wills and Cloris…
Character actor Terry O’Quinn makes the most of his greatest role in Joseph Ruben’s sleeper hit about a fastidious serial killer who moves from family to family on a black-hearted killing spree. Stepfathers II and III followed in 1989 and 1992, and a remake was loosed on an uncaring world in 2009.
The melancholy story of the brief affair between a black soldier and a white waitress in Paris circa 1967, The Story of a Three-Day Pass was Melvin Van Peebles’s first feature length film. Filmed over six weeks at the cost of $200,000, the movie stars Harry Baird and Nicole Berger (Thérèse in Truffaut’s Shoot the…
As sunny as Eraserhead was dark, David Lynch’s The Straight Story tells the tale of Alvin Straight’s (Richard Farnsworth) journey to visit his estranged brother. This being a Lynch film, Alvin makes the cross-country trip on top of a John Deere lawnmower, clocking in at a steady five miles an hour. It’s also a true story…
Posing as a college professor in a small Connecticut town, a Nazi war criminal plots all manner of perfidy under the unsuspecting eyes of his bride-to-be. Orson Welles’ work-for-hire thriller was aimed at proving he could make a mainstream Hollywood movie. Widely considered a second-tier title, it’s actually quite Wellesian in its anti-Fascist concerns and…
The 1968 student demonstrations at New York’s Columbia University are fictionalized and relocated to San Francisco in Stuart Hagmann’s no-nonsense polemic from 1970. Bruce Davison is a straight-laced college student set free by a fiery activist played by Kim Darby. Bob Balaban (fresh off Midnight Cowboy) and Bud Cort, appearing in MASH that same year,…
In 1969 Jackie Collins tapped out this trashy melange of romance novels and tabloid escapades and nine years later sister Joan turned it into a starring vehicle for herself while resurrecting her floundering career in the bargain. In fact, “resurrection” may be too mild a term, made for $600,000, the film netted over $20,000,000 internationally.
Brian Trenchard-Smith created this trailer for an Aussie supernatural thriller that never made it to American theaters. Director David Hemmings (star of Blow-Up) was determined to class up what was initially intended as a lowly horror movie, and rewrites of David Ambrose’s script continued throughout production. Actor’s Equity frowned on so many overseas cast members…
Monied suburbanites take another hit in this 1968 drama about the waterlogged journey of one man in search of an endless pool party. Directed by Frank Perry and based on a story by John Cheever, Burt Lancaster stars along with Janice Rule. Squabbles between star and director eventually put the troubled production in the hands…
This bargain basement sword & sorcery epic was part of a popular tide of early 80s historical adventures including Conan the Barbarian and Dragonslayer. This one, remembered as “the one with the three-bladed sword”, still has fans today — especially among those who saw it at the drive-in as kids. Although it sometimes buckles when…
The late Anthony Minghella (The English Patient) directs Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law in an adaptation of one of Patricia Highsmith’s most sinister and sardonic novels. Damon plays Tom Ripley, a walking metaphor for urbane corruption who weaves the spider web plot that results in a series of murderous cat and mouse games ensnaring both…
A killer cyborg from 2029 (played by California’s former “Governator”) arrives in the present to prevent the birth of the activist who will lead the rebellion against the corporate overlords of the future. Born of a fever dream James Cameron had while finishing Piranha II, this modestly budgeted, cleverly made sci fi thriller became a…
This 1963 offshoot of Roger Corman’s popular Edgar Allan Poe series has slipped into the public domain and is available on countless video labels, usually in crummy looking prints… this is from an original 35mm Technicolor print. For more on The Terror, check out this article at Movie Morlocks.
The great Jean Renoir made this unauthorized Robert Louis Stevenson adaptation as a multi-camera television quickie, which turned out so well it played theaters under the titles Experiment in Evil and The Doctor’s Horrible Secret. Jean-Louis Barrault provides one of the more memorably eccentric Mr. Hyde performances.
This threadbare but well received vehicle has the boys (with Joe DeRita replacing Shemp, Joe Besser and Curly) going back in time to goof on Hercules, newly popularized by the onslaught of spear-and-sandal imports that followed the late ’50s commercial smash of the Steve Reeves original.
William Castle’s craziest and most famous ballyhoo extravaganza unfolds in “PERCEPTO – Newest and most startling gimmick on the screen!” Also one of the most complicated to install in theaters, although in recent years many revival bookings have duplicated the seat-buzzing thrills that made this a late-blooming classic.
It’s ’60s style over substance in this soft-core spoof directed by Robert Freeman, best known for photographing The Beatles’ album covers. David Anthony plays a rock idol kidnapped by four adoring fans. True to Freeman’s background the Mod fashions and psychedelic settings take precedence over the slight story by Donald Cammell (before he teamed up…
Like Little Shop of Horrors, this modest exploitation film engendered an avalanche of mainstream success. Initially unnoticed, it became a hit at midnight screenings and was followed by three sequels, a tv cartoon, comic books, merchandise and at least three stage musicals. It brought good fortune to the House of Troma, whose majordomo Lloyd Kaufman…
John Frankenheimer’s 1965 World War II film is an admirable attempt to fuse the action genre with art-house drama a la The Wages of Fear. Thanks to Frankenheimer’s clean craftsmanship and star Burt Lancaster’s ambivalent performance – part rough and tumble leading man, part existential anti-hero – the movie succeeds on most counts. Burt is…
Franz Kafka’s 1925 novel about an office clerk who is arrested for a crime that is never revealed to him becomes a nightmarish black comedy in Orson Welles’ memorable adaptation. Baroque, surreal and graphically striking, it plays like a two hour dream sequence. Essential Welles. The full film can be seen in okay quality here.