A supernatural tale of terror steeped in Jewish tradition and memories of the Holocaust, The Vigil stars Dave Davis as Yakov Ronen, a man charged with keeping watch over a deceased man who was interred at Buchenwald. Keith Thomas’s film premiered at 2019’s Toronto International Film Festival and was praised for its original approach and eerie…
Irony of ironies, Franklin Schaffner’s 1965 epic, The War Lord, was based on a play called The Lovers. Stalwart Charlton Heston plays a medieval knight tasked with defending a Druid village where he promptly falls in love with local lass Rosemary Forsyth. Richard Boone co-stars along with Maurice Evans who would reunite with Schaffner and Heston under far…
The War of the Gargantuas was planned as the sequel to Inshirō Honda’s Frankenstein Conquers the World but director Inshirō Honda had problems; he was in a contract dispute with the studio and star Tab Hunter was replaced by a less than cooperative Russ Tamblyn. Nevertheless Honda got his movie made with two of Toho’s…
“A beautiful woman by day. A lusting queen wasp by night!” If that doesn’t sound good to you, you’re on the wrong website. Roger Corman’s revamp of The Fly is a fun quickie with a great poster which completely misrepresents the film, but that’s part of the charm after all.
Bruce Lee’s third film for Raymond Chow’s Golden Harvest saw him awarded total control — he starred, wrote, directed and choreographed the action. In his second film appearance karate champ Chuck Norris challenges Lee to a knock-down-drag-out martial arts battle in the Roman Coliseum. Norris also made his way into the revamped version of Game…
Dan Ireland directed this 1996 film about pulp writer Robert E. Howard (Conan the Barbarian) and his bittersweet romance with school teacher Novalyne Price Ellis (who co-wrote the screenplay). Vincent D’Onofrio plays the troubled writer and Renée Zellweger stands in for his bookish sweetheart. The movie was widely praised, winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 1996…
It’s Christianity vs. Paganism and Guess Who comes out on top in Robin Hardy’s cult classic which initially suffered from poor distribution but is now widely considered a landmark horror film. Partially instigated by star Christopher Lee (it’s his favorite role), who is mysteriously absent from this confusing British trailer. Paul Giovanni’s memorable Celtic song…
In Roald Dahl’s 1983 novel The Witches, a young boy and his grandmother stumble upon a gathering of child-hating spell-casters. The book was typical Dahl; sardonic yet playful and Nicholas Roeg’s pitch-perfect 1990 adaptation hits each bullseye, from the mouse-eye perspectives of a boy-turned-rodent to the funny-ghastly witch make-up devised by Jim Henson’s studio for…
A storybook musical staged with the exuberance of a vaudeville show and the wit of a Marx Brothers movie. Judy Garland plays Dorothy Gale, a lonely farm girl swallowed by a tornado and dropped into a rainbow-hued Xanadu inhabited by singing-dancing doppelgängers of her Kansas cronies. This 1939 classic stays fresh as a daisy thanks…
A quintessential film noir, Fritz Lang’s 1944 thriller checks off all the boxes; Edward G. Robinson plays a college professor in over his head with a beautiful but dangerous mystery woman played by Joan Bennett. Written by Nunnally Johnson, the film seals its noirish credentials with Milton Krasner’s shadowy black and white photography.
There was a man in the director’s chair but none in front of the camera for George Cukor’s classic satire about high society and savage instincts. The film stars the most powerful actresses in Hollywood, each vying for a top of the heap position, including Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer, and Rosalind Russell in a hilariously…
George Pal’s roadshow fairy tale was epic in every regard, featuring an all-star cast and filmed in the lavish but soon-to-be extinct widescreen process known as Cinerama. Twilight Zone scribe Charles Beaumont was among the screenwriters who reenergized classic tales like The Cobbler and the Elves which took full advantage of Pal’s Puppetoons while special…
Bette Davis and George Arliss, two actors best known for their dramatic roles, star in this light-hearted pre-code comedy about the merger of two shoe companies resulting in the merger of two young lovers. Arliss plays a company CEO gone incognito and Davis is the unsuspecting daughter of Arliss’s chief competitor.
Every creative artist’s favorite anti-critic movie, as poorly reviewed Shakespearean actor Edward Lionheart gruesomely avenges himself on those who panned him. Probably the classiest of Vincent Price’s late career vehicles, in which he’s supported by the cream of British character actor royalty. Beautifully shot by Wolfgang Suzchitzky with a memorably contrapuntal romantic score by Michael…
Arnold Leibovit’s 1985 documentary on the life and art of George Pal may not be the last word on the filmmaker’s legacy but it feels like it. Packed with wonderful clips and behind the scenes materials, Leibovit was able to snag interviews with an extraordinary number actors and craftsmen who made Pal’s efforts so memorable. The narration…
With the resurgence of Kung Fu and Hammer horror in the 70’s, The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires was inevitable – Fang Fu, if you will. Roy Ward Baker’s shocker is packed with enough R-rated sex and violence to tide over any drive-in crowd and it brings back Peter Cushing as the indefatigable Van Helsing – though…
Nine years after Hiroshima the atomic chicken has come home to roost in the shape of giant ants, soon to be followed by jumbo mutant radioactive lizards, locusts, scorpions, etc. The near-biblical template for the dozens of nuclear monster movies that followed it, this is one of the most influential movies ever. Here’s more on…
The story of the Sunday school teacher behind a bawdy best-seller, Theodora Goes Wild opened the door to more comedy roles for the usually reserved Irene Dunne. Written by newspaper reporter Mary McCarthy, the 1936 film was directed by Polish immigrant Richard Boleslawski, no stranger to melodrama himself (he juggled all three Barrymores in Rasputin and the Empress)….
20 years after writing and directing the memorably acerbic All About Eve, Joseph L. Mankiewicz cast Kirk Douglas and Henry Fonda in this equally cynical take on human nature this time with a screenplay from Bonnie and Clyde’s David Newman and Robert Benton. Starring Douglas as a murderous bank robber and Fonda as the lawman…
Based on Terence Frisby’s stage play that lasted six years in West End theaters, There’s a Girl in My Soup stars Peter Sellers as a philandering television star (a call back to his far more cynical character in 1957’s The Naked Truth) and Goldie Hawn as a free-spirited flower child, a character so prevalent in 60s…
Director Rolfe Kanefsky has compared his 1995 film to Scream and one look at the plot—an alien frog arrives on earth to mate with the ladies—confirms the movie’s satirical nature. Though clearly a first-timer’s effort made on a shoestring, critics were inclined to regard the film with fondness. Kanefsky has continued to produce and direct…
If Mel Brooks had directed An Affair To Remember, it might look something like this 1998 comedy from the Farrelly Brothers. Mixing gross out humor with a genuinely sweet romantic pay-off expanded its target audience and helped make There’s Something About Mary the fourth highest grossing film of its year. Starring Ben Stiller, Cameron Diaz…
Fascinating mixture of science fiction and social comment from Hammer Films circa 1961. This bleak but moving atomic parable still packs a punch and was finally released uncut on DVD over 40 years after its truncated theatrical release. Oliver Reed’s role was reputedly one of the inspirations for Anthony Burgess to write A Clockwork Orange.
George C. Scott plays Justin Fairplay, otherwise known—to himself at least—as Sherlock Holmes. This touching quasi-romance was directed by Anthony Harvey and co-stars Joanne Woodward as Dr. Watson, in this case a psychiatrist trying to convince Fairplay that he’s not really the great detective.
In Thief, James Caan is an expert jewel thief who disdains using nitroglycerin to crack his safes but the director Michael Mann brings his own brand of pyrotechnics along for the ride; his 1981 heist movie, fueled by a percolating synth score by Tangerine Dream, is a stylistic knockout, a dazzlingly modernistic update to the…
Often imitated and remade but never equalled, this multi-Oscar- winner is the greatest Arabian adventure fantasy of all time, made over a period of years during WW II on several continents with numerous directors, including the producers (uncredited). Screen magic.