Articles by Glenn Erickson

Once Were Warriors

Hammer Films Double Features

A Frankenstein, a Mummy, Dr. Jekyll and a mythological dame from Hell: three out of four of these classic titles appear in…

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil

Clint Eastwood's mint juleps 'n' murder epic is an easygoing pleasure. Kevin Spacey, John Cusack and a host of great performances guarantee…

The Glory Guys

Do you like my choice of leading image?  'We're the Glory Guys! EEE-Yow!' What is surely the most generic cavalry western of all time…

Deadline – U.S.A.

Richard Brooks' exciting Humphrey Bogart picture is one of the best newspaper sagas ever. An editor deals with a gangster threat and…

Cat People

This kitty needs no introduction: Simone Simon is the purring-sweet immigrant with a dark atavistic secret. It's Val Lewton's debut smash hit.…

Hardcore

The conflicted Paul Schrader works out some hellacious personal issues, in a feverish tale of a Michigan Calvinist searching for his daughter…

Fixed Bayonets!

Samuel Fuller's first picture under his Fox contract is a fine Korean War 'suicide squad' tale, filmed on a sound stage but…

Tony Rome / Lady in Cement

It's ring-a-ding time, with producer-star Frank Sinatra and his cooperative director Gordon Douglas doing a variation on the hipster detective saga. The…

American Ninja 3: Blood Hunt

At the bitter end of a ten-year slide into ever-cheaper productions, The Cannon Group sends stars David Bradley (a nice guy), Steve…

Chimes at Midnight

Fans that lament Orson Welles' many career frustrations will flip over this Spanish-filmed masterpiece. Not well distributed when new and MIA for…

Tab Hunter Confidential

What's the right thing to say about a closeted movie career in an industry that feeds on gossip? There's plenty to say,…

The Pride and the Passion

Surround three international stars with several thousand extras in Franco's Spain and you've got yourself an instant historical adventure epic. Unfunny Cary…

The Ox-Bow Incident

Leave it to director William Wellman to direct the most compelling social justice movie of the 1940s. Taken from a bestselling novel,…

Wild in the Streets

Shelley Winters, Christopher Jones and Diane Varsi star in American-International's most successful 'youth rebellion' epic -- a political sci-fi satire about a…

The Immortal Story

Orson Welles' French TV show with Jeanne Moreau is a near-masterpiece, directed with assurance and style. It's the filmmaker's first color feature,…

Tale of Tales

It's strange, it's different, and I can see why it wasn't a theatrical hit... but Matteo Garrone's superb telling of three very…

Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon

Troubling fact: the great director Otto Preminger's worst film is not Skidoo. Three physical misfits form an alternative family as a defense…

Love Me or Leave Me

MGM's show is a surprising powerhouse musical bio about the personality clash between an ambitious singer and the powerful enabler who wants…

A Taste of Honey

Road House (1948)

Microwave Massacre

'Worst Movie Ever?'   No way. But neither is Wayne Berwick and comic Jackie Vernon's tacky cannibalism tale a piece of art.…

The Spiders (1919)

When Fritz Lang began in film he was a better writer than director. This lavish two-part thriller sees him concocting a multi-genre…

Ingrid Bergman In Her Own Words

Chandu the Magician

Hissable villain Bela Lugosi is in denial --- no, actually star Edmund Lowe is in the Nile, deep-sixed in a sunken sarcophagus.…

These Three

Radical changes were required to adapt Lillian Hellman's Broadway play for post-Code Hollywood, to eradicate a theme that in 1934 was entirely…