The famous example of the whodunit where none of the prestigious writers, including Raymond Chandler, William Faulkner and Howard Hawks, could ever really account for who did what to whom. A year after the film wrapped the studio added two new sequences to expand the presence of Lauren Bacall, by then Bogart’s inamorata, which entailed…
AIP’s 1966 followup to the smash rock concert hit The T.A.M.I. Show is fun but had less cultural impact. The lineup is stellar but producer Phil Spector didn’t hit the jackpot this time out.
A frenetic mash-up of 30’s pulp and 70’s kung fu thrillers, John Carpenter’s action comedy stars Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, a winking caricature of every musclebound hero from Doc Savage to Indiana Jones. The film was hampered in its rush to beat Eddie Murphy’s similarly styled The Golden Child to the box office but…
Director John Milius brings his brand of Maileresque macho to this story of three young Californians who transition from carefree surfers to older-but-wiser adults, a kind of Malibu-set Deer Hunter. Jan-Michael Vincent and Gary Busey star, the script was by Milius and Dennis Aaberg and the cinematography was by that consummate Hollywood pro, Bruce Surtees…
Nicholas Ray’s coruscating portrait of suburban American family hell even outdoes Douglas Sirk, with the addition of drug addiction. Naturally it flopped, but producer-co-writer-star James Mason’s passionate belief in the project is evidenced in this trailer, which he presents. Based on a 1955 New Yorker article, this is one of the essential movies of the…
After producing the first two Harry Palmer movies to provide a more realistic, intellectual alternative to his cartoonish James Bond series, producer Harry Saltzman “Bonded” it up for this third entry after The Ipcress File and Funeral In Berlin. Although a troubled production with Big Sleep-level plot complications and an unlikely director in arthouse favorite…
One of the key works in the early British “kitchen sink” movement, John Schlesinger’s screen adaptation of Keith Waterhouse’s seriocomic novel spoke loudly to young people the world over. Tom Courtenay, taking over from Albert Finney in the stage version, made a big enough impression to go on to a strong career. But the revelation…
Unique and memorable, this period recreation of the last days of what was then called baseball’s Negro League is an unsung classic with a terrific cast. John Badham was there, directing his first feature (a guy named Spielberg decided to make Close Encounters instead).
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week’s wine and cocktail pairings are for three films which require hazmat suits in the screening room. Virus – known in Japan as Fukkatsu No Hi – is a 1980 sci-fi from…
Directed by longtime jazz enthusiast Clint Eastwood, Bird is the story of Charlie Parker whose tempestuous private life and brilliant career provided a ready-made template for screenwriter Joel Oliansky. Forest Whitaker plays the gone-too-soon saxophonist and Diane Venora plays his wife Chan. Aficionados will enjoy the parade of fabled musicians portrayed by a string of…
Another marathon Hitchcock cult-of-personality trailer with not a single shot from the actual movie. Drolly scripted by Hitch’s tv series intro-writer James Allardice.
Jonathan Glazer’s 2004 film, about a ten year old boy who claims to be the reincarnation of Nicole Kidman’s deceased husband, is part psychological thriller and part ghost story. Glazer (Under the Skin) explores the queasy ambiguities in the film’s premise with an elegant touch and though the movie received exceedingly mixed reviews upon its…
Harlem gangster Fred “the Hammer” Williamson takes on the Mafia and crooked cops in Larry Cohen’s own version of The Godfather saga, which spilled over into a sequel (Hell Up in Harlem), released only 8 months later. Larry takes us behind the scenes of one of his biggest hits. Songs by The Godfather of Soul,…
“If this movie doesn’t make your skin crawl…it’s on too tight!” Bob Clark’s Canadian precursor to Halloween (also released as Silent Night, Evil Night) has become comparatively obscure but rates as one of the most influential of “slasher” movies. Surprisingly, it was not a box office hit, and played on cable tv under the title…
More brain games from screenwriter Curt Siodmak, this time involving Boris Karloff as an ethically-challenged scientist who transfers the grey matter of a brutal gangster into the skull of timid professor Stanley Ridges. Karloff and Lugosi are top-billed but the velvet-toned Ridges, an underrated vet who refined his craft on the English stage, turns in…
One of the more provocative entries in Warner Bros.’ line of socially conscious potboilers, Black Legion is based on the real events surrounding a murderous splinter group of the Ku Klux Klan that, though numbering only around 30,000 members, still managed to rattle the nerves of a large portion of the populace in the late thirties….
Jack Cardiff’s breathtaking cinematography for Powell-Pressburger’s spectral saga of madness and Himalayan nunnery is one of the greatest uses of Technicolor ever. One of a kind, essential viewing for anyone interested in cinema.
Directed by Fernando Méndez, 1959’s The Black Pit of Dr. M (AKA Mysteries from the Beyond) is several steps above the usual monster movie fare spilling out of Mexico in the late fifties and early sixties. Dr. M‘s predictable parade of pedestrian horror movie tropes, including mad scientists, zombies and mediums all staged inside an…
When Mario Bava’s Black Sunday paid off in the USA for AIP, they commissioned this gorgeously shot color followup starring Boris Karloff. Multi-story films were all the rage in Italy in the early 60s and uneven as they usually were, this one is two-thirds swell. The dubbed and reworked AIP version, owned now by MGM,…
Basil Rathbone’s coldly obsessed Dr. Cadman looks like a dry run for Peter Cushing’s Baron Frankenstein in this florid period monster rally with scary makeups by Gordon Bau. Akim Tamiroff’s role was intended for Peter Lorre.
The worldwide success of Mario Bava’s official directorial debut spurred the brilliant cinematographer on to a new career and made an international star of the entrancing Barbara Steele. U.S.distributor AIP changed the title and claimed it was too scary for anyone under the age of… well, 12.
A great cast swashbuckles its way through Henry King’s piratical spectacular with an assist from Leon Shamroy’s Oscar-winning Technicolor cinematography. Splendid hokum in the overstuffed Darryl Zanuck tradition.
A turning point for rock and roll. Bill Haley and the Comets provide the groundbreaking context as former teacher turned crime writer Evan Hunter’s novel becomes, in the hands of director Richard Brooks, primarily an expose of the corruption of urban school systems. Uncharacteristically realistic for the period, this set the tone for another half…
One of Spike Lee’s most audacious films is actually based on a true story; the infiltration of the Ku Klux Klan by an African-American police officer named Ron Stallworth. John David Washington plays the persevering Stallworth—the Oscar-winning screenplay was written by Charlie Wachtel, David Rabinowitz, Kevin Willmott, and Lee.
AIP’s vampiric contribution to the prevailing blaxploitation avalanche of the 1970s benefits from the casting of stentorian Shakespearian actor William Marshall, who manages to retain his dignity in some very tacky situations. Successful enough to spawn a sequel, Scream Blacula Scream.
Audiences didn’t “get it” at the time, but Ridley Scott’s dystopian neo-noir sci-fi extravaganza has gone on to become a classic, distributed over the years in so many different cuts we can’t list them all. But each version shares the same mesmerizing ambience of a dehumanizing future society we’re finally beginning to recognize as our…