Often cited (by Stan Laurel himself) as a quintessential Laurel and Hardy vehicle, this modest western spoof showcases their gently abusive relationship with a minimum of dialog. The music score by Marvin Hatley was Oscar nominated! Although the team remains popular with the baby boomer generation, present day kids are woefully unfamiliar with L & H. Hopefully the affectionate new…
Fritz Leiber’s pulp novella “Conjure Wife”, which originally appeared in the April 1943 issue of Unknown Worlds, has had a surprisingly durable screen history. It was adapted here as the second entry in Universal’s Inner Sanctum Mystery series, then redone years later as an episode of the Moment of Fear TV show (1960). A classy…
A bitter ex-con employs a most, er, unusual weapon to knock off his enemies. Jamaa Fanaka’s UCLA student project is one of the rare such films to receive wide theatrical distribution (from drive-in kings Crown-International Pictures). Avoid the heavily cut reissue version titled Soul Vengeance.
In 1976 Robert Altman’s unofficial protégé Alan Rudolph directed this knowing dissection of Angelenos with an appropriately Altmanesque cast including Keith Carradine (in a near reprisal of his womanizing turn in Nashville), Sally Kellerman and Sissy Spacek (whose break-out role as Carrie was the same year). Rudolph, having punctuated his long and admirable directing career with…
Based on a short story by Graham Greene, this 1942 “what-if?” war film from the venerable Ealing Studios tells the story of a small British village overrun by invading German soldiers whose inhabitants strike back and violently murder their oppressors.The cast is equally venerable including Leslie Banks, Mervyn Johns and Basil Sydney. The director was Alberto Cavalcanti, who headlined that quintessential horror film omnibus, Dead of Night. Barely…
Before Universal introduced their own “official” werewolf legend in 1941’s The Wolf Man, the studio produced this trial run, directed by Stuart Walker and starring Henry Hull as a proto-Larry Talbot—he plays an unlucky explorer who changes into a snarling beast. Unlike Lon Chaney’s full-body transformation, Hull remains close to human form with only a…
One of the great titles. One of the great posters. One of the worst biker movies. Ever. Here’s Joe Dante’s original Film Bulletin review.
The title alone signifies how closely aligned the director was to his franchise and Wes Craven makes the most of it with this meta-spin on his Nightmare on Elm Street series. In a clever twist, this time out dreams aren’t responsible for summoning the dread specter of serial killer Freddy Krueger, it’s the movies themselves. Upping…
Wes Craven brings Freddy Krueger into the “real” world where he haunts the actual casts of previous Freddy films. Robert Englund dons the fiendish phantom’s fedora and former Elm Street mainstays like Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon play “themselves.” Craven paid for his cleverness at the box office, the film tanked even while garnering unusually positive…
When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet! Ten Academy Awards went to Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins’ enduringly popular screen version of the Romeo & Juliet-derived Broadway smash. New York City delayed the razing of several blocks in West Manhattan to provide tenement backgrounds for dance numbers. That area is now Lincoln Center. John Astin…
The second dramatic film shot in three-panel Cinerama, this sprawling all-star western epic came too late to save the process which was being replaced by a simpler single-lens system. Many action sequences were shot normally and converted to three-panel. By the time the brand-new Cinerama Dome in Hollywood opened in 1963 its initial “Cinerama” attraction, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad,…
Directed by William Wellman and released in 1951, this unusual western stars John McIntire as a rancher who plays matchmaker to a town full of lonely California cowpokes. Leading man Robert Taylor is the rangerider charged with shepherding the adventurous brides to be—a diverse band of city slickers more than capable of holding their own,…
Medical student-turned-novelist Michael Crichton’s directorial debut was the first of his cautionary futuristic-theme-park-gone-crazy thrillers (the second was Jurassic Park). The last picture produced by MGM before it stopped distributing movies became a huge popular hit and might have cut down somewhat on 1973 Disneyland admissions. The 1976 sequel Futureworld also figured into the popular 2016…
James Coburn, in one of his first starring roles, adopts many of producer-director Blake Edwards’ personal mannerisms as a Bilko-like lieutenant trying to trick a Sicilian town into surrendering during WW II. Intended as the first of a planned six coproductions between The Mirisch Company and Edwards, this one (based on a question his son…
Tom Noonan, an actor lauded for his villainous roles, is also an accomplished playwright, and this self-directed adaptation of his own off-broadway play reveals a sensitive side to the thespian better known as the serial killer in Michael Mann’s Manhunter. What Happened Was is nonetheless an intense and sometimes dark ride on that uniquely perilous rollercoaster known as dating. Noonan stars…
One of the most influential movies of the 1960s, Robert Aldrich’s celebrated Hollywood Gothic was the first movie to open widely in “Flagship Theaters” instead of playing initial dates in top urban houses and changed distributor release patterns forever more. It didn’t exactly hurt the late careers of Bette Davis and Joan Crawford either.
Writer Henry Farrell ushered in the horror-hag genre with Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, but this later iteration went into production with the title The Best of Friends, only to be changed when judged too close to the Otto Preminger movie Such Good Friends. Cult director Curtis Harrington’s stylish period production suffered from the usual…
Woody Allen’s first stab at moviemaking is still one of his funniest. “Key of Keys”, a low budget Japanese spy movie, is recut and entirely redubbed into a free-form comedy in which the Macguffin is the world’s greatest egg salad recipe. A huge favorite on college campuses in the late sixties, this exists in several…
One of the biggest comedy hits of the early ’70s. Following up on his dramatic breakthrough with The Last Picture Show, movie scholar turned director Peter Bogdanovich evokes ’30s screwball comedies and classic Looney Tunes in this self-consciously wacky homage to Bringing Up Baby. As befits the brief post-Easy Rider era when directors were as…
Introducing Howard Hughes’ latest discovery, Faith Domergue, as a wacko femme fatale who hooks fall guy doctor Robert Mitchum in her web. The underrated John Farrow provides his usual smooth direction including an amazing seven minute take. Mitchum sure is mean to Claude Rains in this trailer.
World War II meets James Bond. Elliot Kastner’s action-packed, enduringly popular superproduction was filmed on various impressive Austrian locations and features a top cast including Clint Eastwood, who distributor MGM didn’t really want. The $21 million boxoffice take changed their minds.
Boasting a fever dream cast that brings together Dana Andrews, George Sanders, Vincent Price, and Ida Lupino, Fritz Lang’s film about a serial killer and the race to catch him is a companion piece to Wilder’s Ace in the Hole. Price plays the cynical CEO of a news service who uses the killings as a…
A milestone—the first TFH trailer for a movie that never had a trailer! Sam Fuller’s final Hollywood picture, whose non-release at the hands of gutless studio execs drove him to Europe for the rest of his career, didn’t merit a finished trailer or even a poster. This is the never-seen rough cut for the unfinished…
Raoul Walsh’s most muscular gangster pic with an all-time great James Cagney as Cody Jarrett, the psychotic killer that only a mother could love. She’s the under-appreciated Margaret Wycherly, brilliant as the most monstrous mom since Agrippina. But she doesn’t get much attention in the trailer.
Director Jonathan Kaplan followed up his knockout Truck Turner with this slam-bang 1975 trucksploitation hit. Vietnam vet Jan-Michael Vincent takes over his late father’s Arizona hauling business and has to battle violent smugglers and corrupt officials. It’s a rubber-meets-the road, Capra-esque little-guy-vs.-the-system populist thriller, Walking Tall-style. Lots of great character actors on hand.
Sure it’s creaky, but this early talkie from poverty row was the first zombie movie and visually it’s still pretty cool. Bela Lugosi is the indelibly named Murder Legendre, head zombie master on a Haitian plantation where the dead don’t charge for their labor. First takes seem to be the rule, as there are a…