Barry Sonnenfeld leaped from hot cinematographer status to A- list director with this sure-footed big screen adaptation of the TV show based on Charles Addams’s marvelously morbid New Yorker cartoons. The cast is ideal: Anjelica Huston and Raul Julia complement TV’s Carolyn Jones and John Astin without inviting comparisons. Winning an imaginary award for making…
One of Alfred Hitchcock’s so-called lesser films bounces back in an immaculate restoration. Say goodbye to dismal, indecipherable Public Domain versions — now we can fairly evaluate this amusing early talkie. An odd cross-section of underworld characters gathers amid the staircases and dark shadows of an abandoned house and proceeds to play games of identity…
Wes Craven’s getting a 4K Ultra HD workout this year, what with his monster hit Scream arriving in 4K last month. This 1977 franchise-starter is a down & dirty slaughter-fest out in the desert, with bloody jeopardy its one and only reason for being. It can attest that it was quite a nail-biting experience in…
Veteran filmmakers Michael Relph and Basil Dearden try a hip ‘n’ flip costume comedy about an 1899 consortium that’s the equivalent of Murder Inc.: Killings for hire done with veddy proper civility and good taste. The charming Oliver Reed and Diana Rigg lead a notable cast — Telly Savalas, Curd Jürgens, Philippe Noiret, Beryl Reid,…
Fritz Lang’s first American picture is a searing social statement out of message-averse Hollywood. It’s also a cinematic landmark, packed with innovative visual concepts. Sylvia Sidney and Spencer Tracy have great appeal as lovers torn apart by vigilante violence, and Tracy’s very Langian hero pulls off a ‘return from the dead’ to serve as an…
Richard Cunha’s third of four horror item for Astor Pictures is perhaps the most marketable: in 1958 almost anything with the name Dracula or Frankenstein could get a big release. The Film Detective’s new disc (remastered from a 4K scan) shows the picture at its absolute best and confirms Cunha as a decent director. The…
From beneath the Southern Cross come a pair of genuine noirs that happen to have been made in Argentina, where film art flourished in a system almost totally divorced from the American awareness. The Beast Must Die is a hardboiled tale of tragedy and murder told in an upside-down way that would make Orson Welles…
We loved James Bond but diehard ’60s spy fans hold a special admiration for Len Deighton’s ‘thinking man’s secret agent’ Harry Palmer. Viavision pulls off a slick trick by assembling the three top Michael Caine Harry Palmer pictures, each from a different studio, in a single deluxe gift box. Harry fights the Brain Drain, encounters…
Vincente Minnelli’s best non-musical drama hits on a magic combination — a tough tale of small-town malaise, his patented hyper-expressive sense of visual design, and a triple-win in casting, including Frank Sinatra in his most committed performance this side of The Manchurian Candidate. Frankie may even have said Yes to a Take 2 now and…
This first remake of the 1956 sci-fi classic retains many of the original’s story points, clears up the bio minutiae for literal-minded viewers and adds a fascinating social commentary about ’70s lifestyles that’s almost as depressing as the idea of being ‘replaced’ by an alien simulacrum. Philip Kaufman’s first big hit is a worthy picture…
Nicholas Meyer’s ‘other’ fantastic film project was ignored for all the wrong reasons; Pierce Brosnan fills a heroic leading role in a revisit of The Stranglers of Bombay, but filmed on location with great attention to authentic details. An officer of the East India Company detects an incredibly murderous cult of Kali-worshipping Thugs, a criminal…
Walter Mirisch’s slam-bang, eardrum-pounding Sensurround stock footage orgy for the Centennial Year gathers an impressive lineup of big stars to celebrate the U.S. Navy’s biggest aircraft carrier battle: Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, James Coburn, Glenn Ford, Hal Holbrook, Toshiro Mifune. Director Jack Smight manages the talky, exposition-laden account of a sprawling, complicated battle rather well,…
A genuine ‘sleeper’ hit, this ‘all in the family’ noir pits innocent childhood against cold blooded murderers. Little Bobby Driscoll witnesses Paul Stewart and Ruth Roman committing a murder, and can’t get Mom and Dad to believe him because of a habit of crying Wolf. But the killers believe him … and they live right…
MGM sends James Stewart and Anthony Mann to Colorado high country locations for their third big-ticket western, a tight & tense psychological drama with a select cast: Janet Leigh, Robert Ryan, Ralph Meeker and Millard Mitchell. Stewart’s anguished bounty hunter is a sick man on a mission he knows is self-destructive and just plain wrong;…
It’s a pleasant thing to revisit an old favorite and discover that it’s better than you remember. The tale of Zampanò and Gelsomina is Italo neo-realism 2.0: it’s got poverty, misfortune and misery but also a bankable American star or two. The visually revamped presentation of Federico Fellini’s international breakthrough picture is a wonder —…
Barbara Steele has one of her better performance showcases in Camillo Mastrocinque’s classy ghost story with a somewhat dispiriting twist. Steele’s fan-collectors won’t need extra encouragement, as she’s in most every scene and gets to play a variety of moods from delicate to seductive to outright poisonous. Quality performances flatter a flawed screenplay, and the…
Nobody did better with horror franchises than Wes Craven, who reinvigorated the genre in this relentlessly bloody thriller. Its self-referential gimmick should have been exploited decades before: what if the teenagers in movies were like real teenagers that watch horror movies. . . and that must rely on their movie knowledge when confronted with R-rated…
Dario Argento in 4K — that sounds like a good idea, especially for his more visually jolting giallos. Arrayed in garish reds and blacks, this blood-soaked mystery shocker emphasizes exotic murders — stabbings, scaldings, lacerations from broken glass. David Hemmings is again the investigator, digging into evidence sourced not in photographic details, but the hidden…
When did murder thrillers become horror pix? This one is horror only by association, and star Basil Rathbone would be a suave leading man if he wasn’t slaying wives left and right. He sets his sights on the rich, conveniently suicidal Ellen Drew, yes (sigh) that Ellen Drew. This atypical Paramount thriller has glamour to…
New remastered restorations of Val Lewton pictures? We’re there. This terrific double bill gives us two Lewton shockers that are in no way ‘lesser.’ The progressive psycho killer picture The Ghost Ship suffered a legal setback and disappeared for almost fifty years; it’s a masterpiece of taste and tone. Bedlam is a costume picture…
What a Halloween treat! Karl Freund stopped directing after this classic, which is a shame — it’s German expressionism’s most exciting foray into classic Hollywood horror of the ’30s. Peter Lorre is incredible as Dr. Gogol, making himself as creepy and repulsive as possible while retaining a giddy audience sympathy. It’s Grand Guignol all the…
John Huston plays every narrative card in the deck for the difficult task of expressing the great doctor’s insights into psychoanalysis. His actors personalize the concepts of neurosis, etc., investing us in Sigmund’s search for answers in long-ago Vienna. The fascination has multiple levels: in investigating the nature of ‘hysteria’ Dr. Sigmund Freud finds that…
An old favorite receives a quality restoration: Raoul Walsh, John Huston, W.R. Burnett and actress Ida Lupino launch Humphrey Bogart as an A-list star deemed strong enough to carry romantic leads. Bogart’s gangster Roy Earle is a classic anti-hero; audiences in 1941 surely thought the film’s play with wrongdoing and heroism was edgy material. Lupino’s…
Talk about raising the roof with song — George Nierenberg’s documentary is still considered the best on gospel music. Made in the early 1980’s, the show caught the greats of decades past, now happy to describe the history and future of their work: Thomas A. Dorsey, Mother Willie Mae Ford Smith. The testimony of singers…
It’s been said that American women of the 1950s admired Marilyn Monroe, but they wanted to be Audrey Hepburn, who projected an entirely different appeal. Hepburn had talent, grace, a dazzling smile and the strength to overcome any obstacle. Paramount now rounds up their Audrey Hepburn holdings to release this seven-picture ode to the great…
Let loose some airy English film aesthetes with a big budget, a French film studio and a theme somewhere between Marcel Proust and Jean Cocteau, and back comes this strange, slightly off-balance but extremely impressive objet d’art. Eric Portman is really good, Edana Romney not so much. English actresses Barbara Mullen and Joan Maude compensate…