Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, we honor another great who has gone to the great hereafter. We have wine pairings, too, of course. Gene Hackman passed away at the age of 95, leaving a lot of…
This one is for fans of Ava Gardner — an expensive Italian production we have never seen in a decent video copy, now remastered from the original Technirama negative. Anthony Franciosa is an emotional, altruistic Francisco Goya, caught up in the court intrigues of 18th century Madrid. Neither his tempestuous romance with his rumored muse…
No, it’s not about the secret life of Scrooge McDuck — reviewer Charlie Largent takes the measure of Lucio Fulci’s delirious giallo about horrible crimes and the ugly human responses they bring about — undue suspicion, false accusations, hysteria, more violence. Some pretty twisted people are involved, played by a Class-A cast: Florinda Bolkan, Barbara…
Michael Mann’s WW2 horror disaster is still a fascinating item, especially in 4K. We marvel at its moody ‘architectural’ atmosphere, that generates dread even when the movie just plain ain’t workin’. The interesting actors include Jürgen Prochnow, Gabriel Byrne, Scott Glenn and a very different-looking Ian McKellen. Elijah Drenner’s full stack of extras dig deep…
This great-looking (especially now) musical splits opinions right down the middle. It charms many who love the songs and the rustic comedy; others find it an overlong departure from the original stage musical. Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood sing, which for some invalidates the whole show. Yet after a few viewings we can see that…
I’m a fan of writer/director Osgood Perkins. I think he’s one of the best filmmakers in the horror genre today, a distinctive stylist in a town in which originality is often not valued. His film, The Blackcoat’s Daughter, is a near masterpiece, and his surprise hit from last summer, Longlegs, was also excellent. I wrote…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, another theme without a theme. We throw out the Strunk and White guide book to bring you wine pairings for yet more movies you never heard of. Pale Flower is a…
She said she preferred to play ‘bad’ women because they were more interesting than virtuous characters, but it’s tempting to speculate that Joan Crawford, the ultimate Hollywood survivor, was expressing her own conflicted personality. With the help of two trusted directors, one of them her lover, Crawford ruled the roost in a pair of indictments…
Blood and Lace 1971 – 86 Min. Starring Gloria Grahame, Melody Patterson, Vic Tayback Written by Gil Lasky Directed by Phil Gordon As discriminating in their appetites as an expert wine-taster, grindhouse audiences were a special breed of movie-goer: true connoisseurs of crap. Whether lounging in notorious Times Square fleapits like the Liberty or Cine…
Düsseldorf is ground zero for a superior Deutscher Kriminalfilm that never made it to the U.S.. Heist mastermind Götz George guides a bank hostage standoff from afar, stage-managing the details of an amorous inside job. Director Dominik Graf winds up the tension for this precise ‘puzzle-crime:’ Only ‘The Cat’ knows the full plan, and he’s…
This Golden Turkey embarrassment is far too entertaining to be dismissed as a mere Bad Movie — Howard Hughes’ ode to Mongol barbarians does have perhaps the worst-cast star role of all time, and every third dialogue line is fall-down hilarious, but it’s great fun. John Wayne, Susan Hayward and Pedro Armendariz give it their…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, we pair wines with three worthwhile films from director Richard Quine. Operation Mad Ball is a military farce from 1957. Quine had some great actors in this film. Jack Lemmon, Ernie…
Donald Cammell’s collision of gangster brutality and drug-soaked decadence steps up to 4K clarity. Excellent extras properly credit the writer-director, whose name is sometimes omitted in favor of co-director Nicolas Roeg. Mick Jagger’s first dramatic role is as a recluse who interrupts his drugs ‘n’ sex lifestyle to shelter a mobster on the run; James…
Frankenstein Jr. and The Impossibles 1966-67 – 395 Min. Starring Dick Beals, Paul Frees, Don Messick Written by Michael Maltese, Eddie Brandt Directed by William Hanna, Joseph Barbera A pretty cool cash-in combining the 60s monster-craze and Beatlemania, Frankenstein Jr. and the Impossibles shouldn’t work but it does; powered by Hanna-Barbera’s well-oiled assembly line of…
Guillermo Del Toro’s first feature is a mini-masterpiece that revitalized the Mexican fantastic film. Inventing his own macabre horror concept, Del Toro envisions a bizarre fountain of youth with an unforeseen side effect that’s akin to vampirism without supernatural powers. Federico Luppi, Ron Perlman and Claudio Brook star in a beautifully designed and directed scare…
This movie sat on a shelf for 5 years, and was shown on TV only when Burt Reynolds became a big star. A romance heats up on a movie location in Utah, between a local guy and an assistant editor. It’s a ’70s ‘new Hollywood’ slice-of-life character study, but 5 years too early … and…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, we pair wines with three films that examine life by the slice. 1959’s The Savage Eye is a drama and a documentary rolled into one picture. It examines how a divorced…
Kurosawa’s witty samurai classics are back, in 4K Ultra HD. The master of cinema greeted the 1960s with American pulp cynicism in Japanese period costume, creating what was essentially a Japanese western. Toshirô Mifune is a riot as an amoral sword for hire in Yojimbo, promoting a turf war for fun and profit. In the…
Is it exploitative junk or a radical feminist manifesto? Or just an out-of-control genre mashup between Sci-fi and a skin flick? It’s Denis Sanders’ final feature and Nicholas Meyer’s first script, but the real auteur may be the producer who put voyeurism above all other concerns. Scores of males in Peckham are dying in the…
With the economy in collapse and millions out of work during the Great Depression, a few Hollywood thrillers proposed radical political changes. William Randolph Hearst was the impetus behind this bizarre tale of a President ‘possessed by an Angel’ who assumes dictatorial powers. The Cabinet and Congress are pushed aside, labor camps are set up…
Kino keeps finding noir thrillers for its Dark Side series; classic-era stars decorate collection Number 23. Paul Henreid tortures Burt Lancaster for diamond secrets in Rope of Sand, witnessed by Claude Rains, Peter Lorre and sultry Corinne Calvet. Ruthless crook James Cagney woos Helena Carter and foolishly doublecrosses Barbara Payton in Horace McCoy’s Kiss Tomorrow…
Appropriately enough for a columnist writing for trailersfromhell.com, I’ve always loved movie trailers. I enjoyed the bombast of the classic ones (THE GREATEST ADVENTURE EVER PUT ON FILM!) and the way they skillfully promoted the films without ruining any of the plots. Alas, that time has long passed. Trailers today deliberately show you the entirety…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. This week, we pair wines with a trio of films about one of our favorite subjects: movies. If you think making movies is a dream job, 1995’s Living in Oblivion is for you….
Italian neo-realism and humanitarian sentiment meet in writer-director Ermanno Olmi, whose docudrama style wins over all that see it. In Il posto (The Job) a meek Milano goes through the humiliating process of applying for a career as a civil servant; in I fidanzati (The Betrothed) we witness the long-distance suffering of a young engineer…
It’s the notorious slasher horror noted for ‘starring’ Brooke Shields … although she exits the picture very quickly. New York filmmaker Alfred Sole turns in one of the better psychodrama efforts of the 1970s, a bloody murder tale in a Catholic context. Awful events on a First Communion day point suspicion toward a surviving daughter….