Two on a Guillotine Blu ray Warner Archives 1965/ 2:35:1 / 107 min. Starring Connie Stevens, Dean Jones Cinematography by Sam Leavitt Directed by William Conrad Imagine shock-meister William Castle directing a Disney movie and the result might be something like Two on a Guillotine. William Conrad, narrator of Rocky and Bullwinkle and star of television’s…
The Oscar Blu ray Kino Lorber 1966/ 1:66:1 / 120 min. Starring Stephen Boyd, Tony Bennett, Elke Sommer Written by Harlan Ellison Directed by Russell Rouse Alexander Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Success is a great movie with two career-best performances from Burt Lancaster as a malignant gossip columnist named J. J. Hunsecker and Tony Curtis…
Night Tide Blu ray Powerhouse/Indicator 1960/ 1:85:1 / 86 min. Starring Dennis Hopper, Linda Lawson Directed by Curtis Harrington During the early fifties, an anxious era that leaned on fanciful songs like Faraway Places, Beyond the Sea and Robert Maxwell’s Ebb Tide, Curtis Harrington wrote a similarly dreamy fable called The Girl from Beneath the Sea. The 34…
Viy Blu ray Severin Films 1967/ 1:37:1 / 78 min. Starring Leonid Kuravlyov,Natalya Varley Directed by Konstantin Ershov, Georgiy Kropachyov Anything can happen in a horror movie and that was one of the reasons despots from Stalin to Khrushchev banned the genre from their homeland for the better part of a century. Education and propaganda,…
Cobra Woman Blu ray Kino Lorber 1944/ 1:33 / 71 min. Starring Maria Montez, Jon Hall, Sabu Directed by Robert Siodmak In the early 40’s Universal Pictures was still best known for its shadowy black and white horror shows. That all changed in 1944 when the studio produced the kind of candy-colored dreamland not seen…
The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh Blu ray Disney Movie Club 1964/ 1:66 / 151 min. Starring Patrick McGoohan, George Cole, Michael Hordern Directed by James Neilson One part Walt Disney, one part Patrick McGoohan – a bittersweet recipe if ever there was one. The notoriously brusque Irishman was immune to the crowd-pleasing sentimentality that shaped…
In the fall of ‘64, while Hollywood was gently satirizing the battle of the sexes with Send Me No Flowers and What a Way to Go!, Europe was at work in the trenches, peppering art houses with piercing dramas like François Truffaut‘s The Soft Skin and André Cayatte’s dual release, Anatomy of a Marriage: My Nights…
Abbott & Costello – The Complete Universal Pictures Collection Blu ray Shout! Factory 1940-1955/1:33-1:85 Starring Bud Abbott, Lou Costello, Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff Directed by Arthur Lubin, Erle C. Kenton, Charles Barton Two footloose Jersey boys with no particular place to go, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello finally found themselves – literally and figuratively –…
The Magic Sword Blu ray Kino Lorber 1962/ 1:85 / 80 min. Starring Gary Lockwood, Basil Rathbone, Estelle Winwood Directed by Bert I. Gordon Fresh off producing and directing Tormented, a mildly lurid psychological shocker released in 1960, Bert I. Gordon pointed his next film in the direction of the Saturday matinee crowd, a select…
Konga Blu ray Kino Lorber 1961/ 1:85 / 90 min. Starring Michael Gough, Margo Johns Directed by John Lemont Like any actor worth their salt, Michael Gough contained multitudes. And so did his fans – from the West End to 42nd Street they gathered as one to sing his praises. Born in Kuala Lumpur and educated…
Spirited Away Blu ray GKIDS/Shout! Factory 2001/ 1:85 / 125 min. Starring Rumi Hiiragi, Miyu Irino Directed by Hayao Miyazaki The story of a lonely child lost in a beautiful and bizarre dreamscape, Spirited Away naturally begs comparison to Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz. But in contrast to those frenetic classics, Hayao…
Have the classic films of Hammer been subjected to more reissues than The Beatles? Not by a long shot but it can feel that way to dedicated Hammer-heads. The relentless tide of upgrades and re-packagings both foreign and domestic, each with their own pleasures and pitfalls, could inspire loyal fans to lobby for their own…