The troubled young British director Michael Reeves was credited with only three films and then, just as his star was ascending, died at the age 25. But the James Dean comparison doesn’t end there; Reeves’ signature work, Witchfinder General (released in the US as The Conqueror Worm) is a cry for justice from an angry young rebel,…
Next week at TFH we’re featuring a modest tribute to Bela! … Lugosi, of course. The films include Invisible Ghost (helmed by Gun Crazy‘s Joseph H. Lewis), 1947’s Scared To Death, and the subject of today’s Saturday Matinee, Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla. The sole reason for the existence of Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla…
Next week at TFH features a trio of trippy films gathered together under the banner “Just Say No”. They include Requiem for a Dream, The Trip, and the subject of today’s Saturday Matinee, Confessions of an Opium Eater. Producer Albert Zugsmith was a consummate exploitationist, launching his career in 1952 with the berserk red-scare screed,…
In all of Frank Tashlin’s work, there is nothing quite so boldly staged as the delirious sequence in 1961′s THE LADIES MAN, in which Jerry Lewis, the film’s director and Tashlin’s nominal pupil, deconstructs a panic attack in twenty five seconds. Framed inside an enormous set that resembles the interior of a gargantuan and painstakingly detailed dollhouse, Lewis’…
Roger Corman sat down with Conan O’Brien last week for a spirited interview (promoting his latest Sy-Fy spectacular, Sharktopus Vs. Pteracuda) turning in a charismatic performance that provoked a reaction not unlike Dennis Hopper’s besotted appraisal of Dean Stockwell’s spaced-out lounge lizard in Blue Velvet: “Suave? Goddamn, you are one suave fucker”. Suave? Yep, that’s Roger. O’Brien’s wide-ranging conversation with Corman proved that this…
A group of scientists in the Antarctic rig an atomic blast that releases a dinosaur from its icy hibernation. Only one of the explorers, Tom Nesbitt (Paul Christian, Ne, Paul Hubschmid) gets a good look at the beast and he spends thirty or so minutes of the film trying to convince everyone that he’s not…
Help!, the 1965 musical comedy directed by Richard Lester, stars Leo McKern as the venal Clang, a deranged cult leader and Victor Spinetti as the underhanded Professor Foot, a mad scientist who’s both Clang’s soulmate and adversary. Each of these crooks subscribe to different credos but they’re after the same thing, power, and they can…
The current BBC production of Sherlock starring Benedict Cumberbatch is a lifetime away from director Terence Fisher’s take on the great detective, The Hound of the Baskervilles. But no matter how transformative is the new Sherlock, Fisher’s blood and thunder interpretation felt no less transgressive in 1958. By remaking the classic Universal monster films with Curse…
Mr. Hillary, meet Mount Everest. Mr. Kubrick, let me introduce you to Lolita. There are some challenges that will test an adventurer to their fullest mettle but Stanley Kubrick’s gutsy decision to film Vladimir Nabokov’s scandalous masterpiece in 1962 invites awe even today. Published by Olympia Press in 1955 in two softcover volumes sporting the…
Even for such a low budget movie, Bert Gordon’s THE CYCLOPS has an unusually hungry appearance. With its undernourished special effects, desolate Bronson Canyon settings and lost-and-lonely title character, the movie practically begs for its supper, inviting our sympathy if not our charity. It does offer a stalwart cast of Hollywood stars, fallen though they…
During a routine assignment in outer space, stalwart space jockey Neil Patterson (Eric Fleming) and his trusty crew crash land on the planet Venus where they’re waylaid by a mob of petulant space-babes decked out in mini-skirts and ray-guns. These comely Venusians are already enslaved by their own dictator, the deranged, man-hating Queen Illyana and…
In Mad Magazine’s 1954 send-up of Alice In Wonderland, Alice finds herself once again surrounded by the nightmare inhabitants of Lewis Carroll’s looking glass world and finally snaps, unleashing a terrified wail, “It may be quaint by you!… It may be delightful by you!… It may be Wonderland by you! By me it’s only one…
The Court Jester was a vanity project put together in 1956 by Danny Kaye’s own production company and, at nearly four million dollars (around thirty-five million in contemporary coin), the most expensive comedy produced to that date. Even with that formidable budget sitting on its shoulders, the movie never feels weighed down; with its palatial…
The title, Jason and the Argonauts, is slightly misleading. It’s really the story of Zeus, an overworked Greek god who is beginning to tire from the strain of dispensing (literally) earthshaking decisions seven days a week. His loving wife, Hera, is starting to assert her own divine authority and meanwhile, down on earth, mortals themselves…
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Robert Aldrich’s morbidly fascinating Hollywood gothic starring Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, had its premiere in October of 1962. William Castle, the director of Homicidal and sundry other shockers, took a close look at Baby Jane’s box office and two years later, with Crawford in tow, produced his own morbidly fascinating…
The compact 6 X 8 inch magazine first appeared in 1990 featuring one of the waterlogged ghosts from Carnival of Souls framed within a TV screen. The black and white format was pretty unprepossessing in the day but the contents were anything but. Right out of the gate Video Watchdog proclaimed itself “The Perfectionist’s Guide…
Based on Jules Verne’s CAREER OF A COMET, Valley of the Dragons stars Cesare Danova (Mean Streets) and Sean McClory (The Quiet Man) as two dueling cavaliers suddenly swept into earth’s orbit on the back of a wayward comet. Edward Bernds, the man responsible for the Three Stooges’ comeback hit The Three Stooges Meet Hercules,…
John Gilling’s The Flesh and the Fiends is the story of Burke and Hare, graverobbers who find that murder is a more expedient route to the cadavers they need for their trade. William Burke’s grisly claim to fame is his own entry in the dictionary; to “Burke” is to “… stifle or to execute someone…
The internet is nothing if not list-crazy but New York Magazine critics David Edelstein and Bilge Ebiri have put together an insightful “best of” list that’s genuinely provocative and worthy of discussion. With The 25 Best Horror Movies Since The Shining they use Kubrick’s controversial classic as a demarcation point for modern horror films and, in doing so, have cast…
If Trailers From Hell has a literary soul-mate, it must surely be the long-running film magazine, Video Watchdog. Launched in June of 1990 by Tim and Donna Lucas, the “perfectionist’s guide to fantastic video” has gradually broadened its scope over the length of its 23 year run to focus not just on fantastic film but…