Under the auspices of Roger Corman, Oscar Williams directed 1972’s The Final Comedown, a rote Blaxploitation thriller starring Billy Dee Williams. In 1976, again under Mr. Corman’s auspices, “Frank Arthur Wilson” was hired to spruce up the earlier film with new footage. Mr. Wilson was in fact Allan Arkush and he’s here to share the story…
Finally retrieved from undeserved obscurity, Allen Baron’s 1961 shoestring feature debut is one of the seminal New York City movies. A dead-eyed mob hit man reaches the end of the line at Christmastime. Bleak, pessimistic and gritty, with similarities to Irving Lerner’s Murder by Contract.
Wacky anachronisms abound in Mel Brooks’ now classic sagebrush satire about a black sheriff in a racist western town. It’s an unstructured, fourth wall-breaking romp that recalls Hellzapoppin’ and stands proudly as the first major studio film to break the currently inexplicable embargo against fart jokes. Shot under the title Black Bart, it spawned an unsold tv pilot of that name in…
After a run of distinguished films during the sixties, socially committed producer-director Stanley Kramer’s downhill slide accelerated with this somewhat prescient but pretentious adaptation of Glendon Swarthout’s well-regarded novel about emotionally disturbed teens at a summer camp who try to prevent a buffalo slaughter. This gimmicky trailer, a faux interview between actor Bill Mumy and a…
A fast-talking farce with gangsters and newspaper men, Blessed Event is a quintessential example of racy pre-code fun. Lee Tracy plays the ad man turned gossip columnist who gets into hot water with tell-all columns about a mobster and his expectant girlfriend.
Maybe it’s only a few notches up from an industrial film, but this Valley Forge, PA indie has outlasted its sequel and remake. Newcomer “Steven” McQueen leads the pack of elderly “teen” hot-rodders who save the blockhead adult authority figures from the malevolent space goo.
Even with a trailer tracked with library music from Teenagers from Outer Space, Roger Vadim’s gorgeous and sexy pre-Bava Euro-horror is one of the coolest, most unjustly neglected vampire pix of all time, mostly because it’s been unseeable for years. Here’s a link to Glenn Erickson’s review of a new German Region 2 PAL DVD release. The…
Footage from several different movies has been cannibalized for this sleazy AIP favorite, which exists in alternate versions with various titles. Jack Hill, one of the co-conspirators, gives his side of the story for film scholars to pull out their hair over.
Mario Bava’s influential and fabulously stylish murder parade, one of the great horror films of all time, was ill-served in its previous Trailers from Hell incarnation, which frankly looked really crummy. So Joe has revisited it in a better looking transfer, but the movie itself still remains woefully unappreciated.
Mario Bava’s trend-setting murder parade played only grindhouses and drive-ins in its day, but has since become recognized as one of the major influences in the giallo genre as well as one of the greatest Technicolor extravaganzas since The Red Shoes.
Based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of the Seven Stars, this 1971 Hammer release is notable for its troubled production and the presence of zaftig Valerie Leon as a reincarnated Egyptian princess. The cast, led by Andrew Keir, soldiered on and the result was a typically handsome Hammer release thanks to Arthur Grant’s cinematography and Tristram Cary’s score.
When is a movie not even a movie? When it’s just a patchwork of senseless footage cobbled together to make an unfinished project marginally releasable. Even the trailer for this is a mess. The mess can be seen in its entirety here!
Lush, brooding and somewhat perverse, this highly atmospheric 17th century British horror film made few ripples on original release, but has come to be regarded on par with its evil twin Witchfinder General, another stylish amalgamation of satanic superstition and bleak tragedy. Disjointed at times, but high on the list of superior‚ fright films of the 70s.
Dashiell Hammett’s classic thriller Red Harvest provided the title for Joel and Ethan Coen’s first movie, a neo-noir that set the tone for acclaimed follow-ups like Fargo and Miller’s Crossing. “Blood simple” is a term that describes the disoriented, terrified behavior of people exposed to prolonged violent activities. The DVD “director’s cut” is three minutes…
Movie legend Roger Corman made his TFH debut with this commentary for his 1970 fantasia on the Depression-era Barker crime family. AIP wanted him to shoot it on the Warner Bros. backlot, but he convinced them to shoot on Arkansas locations, which made all the difference. A no-holds-barred Shelley Winters is the definitive Ma Barker.
Pretty subtle title, huh? Produced in Italy as Il Boa Scarlatto, this lurid gorefest also goes by The Crimson Executioner, A Tale of Torture, and Some Virgins for the Hangman, among other titles. Campy, sadistic Eurotrash that played off in the US paired with another retitled Neapolitan thriller, Terror-Creatures from Beyond the Grave. They don’t…
Brian DePalma’s intriguing amalgam of Blow Up, The Conversation and The Parallax View casts John Travolta as a movie sound technician who records more than he bargained for. Top tech contributions from cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond and composer Pino Donaggio distinguish a box office disappointment that has gained in stature over the years.
Paul Schrader’s post-Taxi Driver rust belt auto worker directorial debut was shot in Kalamazoo, Michigan with three lead actors who hated each other and sometimes resorted to on-set fist fights. Nonetheless, each provides brilliant moments, none more so than Richard Pryor in what may be his greatest performance.
50’s teens get in Trouble in this scandalous-for-its-day adaptation of James Leo Herlihy’s Broadway play. Good casting and sensitive acting keeps it from playing like a sitcom today, but this cautious trailer indicates the studio felt it needed to neutralize The Abortion Issue with a big star endorsement.
Kathryn Bigelow followed Near Dark with a gritty urban thriller also co-written by Eric Red. Jamie Lee Curtis is a rookie NYC policewoman who takes on psycho serial killer Wall Street trader Ron Silver. “It’s not the violence, per se, it’s the drama, with good, fleshed-out characters and a good story, that interests me,” she said at the time….
Director Jeff Lieberman’s acid-laced horror satire about a killer strain of LSD could have been the plot of the squarer-than-square Dragnet in 1968: party-goers are helping themselves to a brand of Psilocybin that results in murder sprees. And that’s not all, the drug makes your hair fall out (that’ll show those damn hippies). Zalman King…
John Badham recalls the making of his rip-roaring action picture featuring some of the craziest urban helicopter action yet seen onscreen, as overseen by veteran pilot and aerial coordinator James C. Gavin. Malcolm McDowell, playing the villain, conquered his longstanding fear of flying long enough to go aloft for the loopy attack helicopter sequences. His obvious…
David Lynch’s bifurcated vision of small-town America, one part blue skies and picket fences, one part helium-inhaling sociopaths, is one of the most startlingly original films ever produced. Kyle MacLachlan plays the apple-cheeked boy-next-door who gets taught a thing or two by the pitiable Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and her nightmare captor, Frank Booth (played…
Brian Trenchard-Smith expounds on his direction of one of the most beloved teen pictures of the 1980s, a kind of Aussie pre-vis of The Goonies — introducing an almost unrecognizable Nicole Kidman wearing Art Garfunkel’s hair.
Archetypal film noirs like The Postman Always Rings Twice were steeped in sex but kept the main event behind closed doors. Body Heat, Lawrence Kasdan’s 1981 noir revival, puts the sex front and center (along with several other positions). Set during a heat wave in a tony Florida suburb, Body Heat was an enormous success and much of that…
Of all the various titles this subversive satire has sported, TFH’s favorite is Dial R for Rat! Larry Cohen, whose first directorial effort this was, tells us as much as he can about‚ one of his best movies in a speedy sixty seconds. You can watch the entire film here.