CineSavant
Dragonwyck
Before Vincent Price haunted houses, he chalked up plenty of experience as a Broadway star and a versatile character actor. This superb Joseph…
Articles by Glenn Erickson
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The Drowning Pool
'Harper Days Are Here Again,' reads the advertising tag line for this worthy follow-up to Paul Newman's first outing as Ross Macdonald's…
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King of Jazz
Make room for a genuine rarity, come back from the cinema graveyard in excellent condition: a lavish color musical extravaganza from 1930…
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The Dumb Girl of Portici
We may not have film of the legendary actresses Lily Langtree or Sara Bernhardt to enjoy, but now we can see the…
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Ship of Fools
Secure one major book with a serious subject, sign up a wagonload of stars (including a legend or two) and make sure…
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Great Balls of Fire!
Director Jim McBride puts retro magic into a rock 'n' roll bio about a big talent who was probably more fun on…
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A Fistful of Dynamite (Duck You Sucker)
More mysterious than ever, Sergio Leone's ode to (condemnation of?) revolution is said to be the centerpiece of his three 'Once Upon…
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Highway Dragnet
Here's something odd: the formative feature in Roger Corman's proto- career. Roger gets credits for Story and Associate Producer, and learned what…
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Colossus: The Forbin Project (Region B)
This nearly forgotten Sci-fi masterpiece should have been a monster hit. For some reason Universal didn't think that a computer menace was…
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Elevator to the Gallows
Louis Malle's French thriller is cooler than cool -- his first dramatic film is a slick suspense item with wicked twists of…
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The Hallelujah Trail
Blown up to Road Show spectacular dimensions, a fairly modest idea for a comedy western became something of a career Waterloo for…
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The Outlaw
Louise Brooks once said that the movies were invented to enable rich men to own desirable women. The Outlaw is the stuff…
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The Incident
New Yorkers of two centuries ago surely complained loudly about rampant street crime, but in the 1960s the media really ramped up…
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The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds
Of all the 'depressed relationship' dramas of the early '70s, this may be the most rewarding. It also sports one of the…
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Shoes
Some movies attempted to change social attitudes from the very beginning, and director Lois Weber made that goal her specialty, with a…
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No Orchids for Miss Blandish
Devotees of crime and film noir will get a kick out of this Brit attempt to capture the American style, that now…
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Henri-Georges Clouzot’s INFERNO
A cinematic puzzle and a filmic detective piece, Serge Bromberg's examination of a world-class filmmaker's catastrophic, never-finished production fascinates and dazzles. If…
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Night of the Living Dead
Talk about Zombies We've Known and Loved -- this famed shocker is now worshipped as the father of the modern horror film.…
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The Silence of the Lambs
Talk about staying power -- Jonathan Demme's riveting, ultimately humanistic horror thriller raked in a full house of Oscars and is still…
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Nowhere in Africa
Caroline Link's wonderful, woefully obscure Best Foreign Film winner is an entertaining story of the perils of wartime emigration. It hits hard…
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The Killing of a Sacred Deer
There's a point where unnervingly harsh and disturbingly irrational movies become more trouble than they're worth. This groaner is two hours of…
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Threads
Hey kids! Learn about the great time we'll be having if the world powers plunge us into a nuclear winter! This post-atomic…
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Harper
Ross Macdonald's Cool Cat detective -- originally Lew Archer -- comes alive in Jack Smight's smart SoCal kidnapping mystery, thanks to a…
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The Witches (Le streghe)
The strangest Italian portmanteau picture of the sixties features glorious Silvana Mangano in dozens of costume changes, directed by big names (Visconti,…
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The Border
Tony Richardson's look at corruption in the border patrol service is both sensational and insightful, and Jack Nicholson gives a committed performance…
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Kameradschaft
Georg Wilhelm Pabst's mine disaster saga is both a stirring social drama and a remarkable feat of technical engineering -- the underground…