You Axed for it, as Forry would say: the grade Z horror movie that launched a thousand bad puns is also an unbeatable party favorite. Idiotic island natives clash with condescending Anglo scientists, and a death curse initiates the hell-spawning of a horrifying, vengeance-seeking pagan demon-monster. Sounds great — but what we get is Tabonga,…
Long before movies routinely created ‘worlds’ with their own twisted fantasy logic, only a few paranoid thrillers, usually odd genre items, tried out twisted stories of deceptive ‘hidden realities.’ Like an extended Twilight Zone entry, this lively James Garner war pic morphs into a bizarre conspiracy worthy of Philip K. Dick. If only it weren’t…
Take one fiercely individual auteur fed up with the Hollywood game, put him in Kyoto with a full Japanese film company, and the result is a picture critics have been trying to figure out ever since. It’s a realistic story told in a highly artificial visual style, in un-subtitled Japanese. And its writer-director intended it…
Sometimes a movie is simply too good for just one special edition… Savant reached out to nab a British Region B import of Georges Franju’s horror masterpiece, to sample its enticing extras. And this also gives me the chance to ramble on with more thoughts about this 1959 show that inspired a score of copycats….
Director and documentarian Mark Hartley scores both a film history and comedy success with this ‘wild, untold’ account of the 1980s film studio that was both revered and despised by everyone who had contact with it. The ‘cast list’ of interviewees is encyclopedic, everybody has a strong opinion, and some of them don’t need four-letter…
Can radical theater make a good movie? Elio Petri continues his string of biting social comment movies with a black comedy about rich people, thieves, and the notion of ownership — it’s a caustic position paper but also a funny satire, with quirky yet believable characters. Ugo Tognazzi is terrific as scheming capitalist, as much…
When Alfred Hitchcock films are praised, this 1944 picture tends to get overlooked. Yet it hooks and holds audiences as strongly as any of the Master’s classics. When a handful of English and Americans are lost at sea, survival depends on their ability to cooperate. Can they trust the experienced sea captain — a German…
There’s plenty of Sin in Walerian Boroczyk’s searing movie but little of it can be laid at the feet of its heroine, no matter what terrible crimes she commits. In pre-WW1 Poland the innocent Ewa’s tragedy is to fall hopelessly in love, without restraint; Boroczyk’s camera doesn’t flinch as the hapless Ewa falls from grace….
Before he became the flag bearer for cinema violence, Sam Peckinpah made his reputation with this unique western, a marvelous rumination on ethics, morality and personal responsibility. MGM all but threw it away in the summer of 1962 but it immediately became a critical favorite. Ride the High Country Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1962 /…
Another offering of vintage East German pictures gives us all the pieces of a cinematic puzzle: Heiner Carow’s 1968 memory- movie of traumatic experiences in WW2 displeased the Communist authorities and was shelved… only to be cannibalized as a back-story for a new 1970 release aimed as a dig at West German values. It’s a…
Another impressive horror restoration! Majestic Pictures pulls together a great cast, including Fay Wray and Lionel Atwill, for a smart gothic horror outing complete with squeaky bats, a flipped-out village idiot (Dwight Frye!), a crazed mad scientist (the worst kind) and a lynch mob with torches that have been hand-tinted in color. Melvyn Douglas is…
Peter Cushing! Christopher Lee! Each is at the top of his game, playing competing collectors of occult incunabula — the kind that comes with a satanic curse, when the purloined item in question is the Skull Of The infamous, despicable and sharp-toothed Marquis De Sade! Freddie Francis directs up a storm in this amicable Amicus…
Not so fast Savant — with the help of correspondent input, CineSavant presents more information on David Swift’s adaptation of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying — correcting and modifying some assumptions in my first review. Don’t worry — it’s good reading. A Savant article This is an odd circumstance. I routinely update,…
Bela Lugosi fan alert! This Monogram horror opus is yet another narrative-challenged fumble of unmotivated, incomprehensible characters… but Bela’s great in it, and in a central role, too. He’s a sympathetic non- maniac this time, if you don’t count his tendency to go into trances and (cough) smother random houseguests. Savant’s review has the lowdown…
Pedro Almodóvar bounces back with an absorbing saga of a mother and daughter told in an interesting style. A woman feels isolated, powerless, alone and anguished about what has happened in her life. Is any of it her fault? Or is all of it her fault? How do we hold relationships together, or do they…
The book was raw & dirty, and did you read what that girl did with that guy on page 167? Racking up a stack of Oscar nominations, Peyton Place became one of the big hits of its year, launched the careers of several young actors and proved that Hollywood could pasteurize most any so-called un-filmable…
Broadway’s delightful — but wickedly accurate — satire of big business was brought to movie screens almost intact, with the story, the stars, the styles and dances kept as they were in the long-running show that won a Pulitzer Prize. This is the place to see Robert Morse and Michele Lee at their best —…
J. K. Rowling is back with a wizard world tale over which she has complete control — a diverting period adventure starring Eddie Redmayne and scores of fanciful magic creatures that belong on an endangered species list. Yep, it’s 2+plus hours of CGI illusions — in glorious 3-D for those so equipped, and Ms. Rowling…
No, not a blind Sherlock Holmes, but a blind Van Johnson who directs his butler, his girlfriend Vera Miles and the London police to thwart a crime based on something he overheard in a bar. Henry Hathaway directs a complicated murder mystery that plays like a combo of Rear Window and Wait Until Dark, with…
A fateful day is re-examined by its survivors, whose stories are told via a brilliant narrative arrangement, and the use of animated recreations is only one aspect of it. The Texas tower shootings put our present, everyday reign of violent terror in a humanist context. It’s not exploitative — the killer’s name is barely mentioned….
Verdict? The film of August Wilson’s play is absorbing, intense. If we rate by quality of writing, acting skill, and the craft of direction, Denzel Washington’s film betters most of its fellow Best Picture nominees. It’s also something positive for the arts, a ‘black experience’ play that can’t be pigeonholed as merely black- themed. The…
Or, “Never on Sunday with Your Stepson.” Director Jules Dassin’s monument to his beloved Melina Mercouri transposes a Greek tragedy to a modern setting. The pampered wife of a shipping magnate is like a queen of old — she can fling a priceless gem into the Thames on just a whim, and she goes…
It’s Obi-Wan versus Fidel! Well, not really. The pre-Bond espionage genre lights up with cool intrigues and comic absurdities, as a Brit vacuum salesman in Havana is recruited to spy for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. The filmmakers and stars are all top caliber, and the location is legendary: Castro’s Cuba, immediately after the revolution. Our…
An experimental film by an Irish playwright, shot in New York with a silent comedian at the twilight of his career? Samuel Beckett’s inquiry into the nature of movies (and existence?) befuddled viewers not versed in film theory; Ross Lipman’s retrospective documentary about its making asks all the questions and gets some good answers. First…
Here’s a real gem — a ‘classic’ Chekhov story turned into a compelling tale of lust and murder. George Sanders and Linda Darnell shine as a judge and the peasant girl who intrigues him; Edward Everett Horton is excellent cast against type in a dramatic role. Summer Storm DVD Sprocket Vault / Kit Parker 1944…
“Thru the Time Barrier, 552 years Ahead… Roaring To the Far Reaches of Titanic Terror, Crash-Landing Into the Nightmare Future!” … and as Daffy Duck says, “And it’s good, too!” Allied Artists sends CinemaScope and Technicolor on a far-out timewarp to a place where the men are silly and the women are… very female. Hugh…