CineSavant
Dark Intruder
Produced in 1965, Universal Pictures intended Dark Intruder for television but when NBC executives screened the film they took a pass—set in…
Articles by Charlie Largent
CineSavant
Tex Avery Screwball Classics Volume 2
With their bawdy gags and come-hither chorus girls, Tex Avery’s cartoons might seem better suited to the burlesque stage than a movie…
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The Kiss Before the Mirror
James Whale’s The Kiss Before the Mirror opens on familiar terrain for the director of Frankenstein—a moon-lit backroad littered with crooked trees…
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Inner Sanctum Mysteries—Franchise Collection
For the first eight years of his career, Lon Chaney Jr. was just a face in the crowd—that all changed with 1939’s…
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Castle of the Creeping Flesh
Just in time for the holidays, it’s Castle of the Creeping Flesh. The film’s director, Adrian Hoven, helmed a mere seven films…
CineSavant
Fear No Evil / Ritual of Evil
Just as she hops into bed with Charles Aznavour in Shoot the Piano Player, Michèle Mercier exclaims, “Television is a cinema that…
CineSavant
The Irishman
Brotherhood, betrayal, bloodshed… memories are made of this. And these days memories are Frank Sheeran’s only companions. He was a man who…
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The Wonders of Aladdin
Henry Levin was a more than reliable director of Hollywood entertainments, most notably the unassailable widescreen thrills of Journey to the Center…
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Amazon Women on the Moon
Mark Twain said “If you don’t like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.” That applies just as…
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The Fu Manchu Cycle—1965-1969
Arthur Henry Ward was born in Birmingham in 1883—at the age of 20 he adopted the pen name of Sax Rohmer, specializing…
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The Ape
William Nigh directed over 40 silent films before he signed on for The Ape, which might account for this 1940 film looking…
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The Chalk Garden
Julie Andrews thrived in the role of governess—even when pitted against the Nazis in The Sound of Music she found plenty of…
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The Vincent Price Collection – 2020 Reissue
The Vincent Price Collection, the first in a series of Blu-ray sets celebrating the beloved actor’s glory days, arrived in 2013. They…
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The Phantom of the Opera ’62
Hammer Studios made their mark by viewing Universal’s classic horror films through a contemporary lens—which for the late 50’s and early 60’s…
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Universal Horror Collection Volume 5
The Universal Horror Collection Volume 5 should appeal to ape suit fans everywhere—and spoiler alert—one of the films in the set is…
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The Cat and the Canary & The Ghost Breakers
Bob Hope’s brand of comedy may have been extinct by the sixties but it was alive and kicking in the pages of…
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Dr. Who Double Feature—1965 & ’66
The story of Doctor Who turns on a distinctly British conceit; our hero, a grandfatherly type usually found puttering in the garden,…
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The Paleface
In 1934 Al Christie directed Going Spanish, a 19 minute farce billed as “An Educational Musical Comedy.” The movie is notable only…
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The Balcony
When Jean Genet died in 1986, France’s Minister of Culture proclaimed “Jean Genet has left us and with him, a black sun…
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Town Bloody Hall
No matter the subject, Norman Mailer was the star of whatever he produced—in Advertisements for Myself, a mix of self-criticism and self-congratulation—he…
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Audie Murphy Collection
“My temper was explosive… perhaps I was trying to level with my fists what I assumed fate had put above me.” –…
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Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves
Thanks to George Robinson’s Technicolor photography and Vera West’s kaleidoscopic costumes, death and destruction look pretty as a picture in 1944’s Ali Baba…
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Slave of the Cannibal God
At the same moment the Korean War was ending and Eisenhower entered the White House, illustrator Samson Pollen found his niche; illuminating…
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The Lady Eve
In The Lady Eve a wealthy ophiologist named Charlie Pike and a sexy card shark named Jean Harrington fall in love. It’s a rapid-fire…
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The Flesh and the Fiends
The Flesh and the Fiends lives up to its name and then some. The setting is Scotland but the squalid streets and…
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The Thief of Baghdad
When he shuffled off this mortal coil in 1995, Arthur Lubin’s New York Times obituary was titled “Arthur Lubin, 96, Director Of…