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 feel those criminal fingers tightening around our throats. If there were a cinematic process called Strangloscope, these movies would have certainly been filmed in it. Strangulation has to be a…
It’s a manhunt South of the Border — Niven Busch’s drama has violence and murder but is really a novelistic character study that goes against the typical rules of Hollywood. Lew Ayres tries to atone for mistakenly killing a man, by coming to the aid of the victim’s widow. But he doesn’t realize that Teresa…
They’re after you, and your wives and children! This Corman/VeSota/Ed Nelson shocker with the excellent poster is a Robert Heinlein knockoff that can’t quite sustain the paranoid pitch of other ‘parasitic possession’ sci-fi horror epics. One of the cheapest of the drive-in cheapies, it remains a must-see title just for the audacity of its ad…
Welcome to the scintillating final chapter of our 2021 Streaming Wars saga! Check out the prior chapters here, here, and here. Thanks to our pals at JustWatch, we now have in our possession some insights into the fourth-quarter activities of all streaming platforms stateside, covering October through December of 2021, based primarily on JustWatch user…
Orson Welles in fine form! This lavishly produced costume drama, beautifully cast and directed, was filmed on location in gorgeous Italian palazzos, churches and villas. Welles is cast to type as the literally mesmerizing mountebank Cagliostro, who aids Madame du Barry in a scheme to seize the throne of France. Welles almost certainly ‘helped’ the…
Angels With Dirty Faces Blu ray Warner Archive 1938/ B&W / 1.33:1 / 97 Minutes Starring James Cagney, Pat O’Brien, Ann Sheridan, The Dead End Kids Directed by Michael Curtiz Released on a Thanksgiving weekend in 1938, Angels With Dirty Faces was a holiday treat with an unexpected punch; it could have been just another…
Alfred Hitchcock puts Jane Wyman in harm’s way, as she tries to rescue her unworthy boyfriend Richard Todd from a murder charge. Is Jane proving her love, or are both of them being manipulated by a scheming actress, Marlene Dietrich? This is the movie in which Hitch inflicts a ‘frump complex’ on Ms. Wyman —…
This creepy-crawly epic enjoyed a strong reputation on my grade-school playground. Does George Pal’s man-versus-the-elements saga hold up 68 years later? The ‘exotic’ special effects get the point across but the real appeal is the suppressed lust between Charlton Heston and his mail order bride Eleanor Parker — all heavy breathing and stern reproaches. I’m…
The Spider Woman Strikes Back Blu ray Kino Lorber 1946/ B&W / 1.33:1 / 59 Minutes Starring Gale Sondergaard, Brenda Joyce, Kirby Grant Directed by Arthur Lubin People are measured by the company they keep—in a superhero’s case, that company is usually the supervillain. Villains, besides giving the hero a reason to exist in the…
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 get down to business with wine pairings for three films about the corporate world. The first person to say “You’re fired,” gets fired. Richard E. Grant and Rachel Ward star…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. This week, the devil made us do it. The Devils is a 1971 British film taken from actual events of the 17th century – ripped from the headlines of a French gazette, if…
Night Gallery (Season 1) Blu ray Kino Lorber 1969/ Color / 1.33:1 / 408 Minutes Starring Joan Crawford, Richard Kiley, William Windom Directed by Steven Spielberg, Boris Sagal, Jeannot Szwarc A modern-day mythologist with a populist bent, Rod Serling fused the cautionary tales of fantasists like Ray Bradbury to the righteous anger of muckrakers like…
It’s the ‘other’ version of Dickens’ terrific novel, an English film that few Americans have seen. This Australian DVD is in the PAL format and from a rather outdated transfer, yet I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a favorite story enacted by a great batch of UK talent. Dirk Bogarde stars and the many character roles go…
The terrific survivalist buddy actioner Shoot To Kill (1988), a.k.a. Deadly Pursuit, stands tall as one of the great under-appreciated genre flicks of its day. This riveting, rollicking ride, starring Sidney Poitier, Tom Berenger, Kirstie Alley and a cadre of capable character actors, will get its time in the sun right now. Buckle up. At…
One of the best yet least seen of John Sturges’ westerns couples a fine screenplay with strong star perfs and superb direction: the straightforward story builds tension throughout. Kirk Douglas is a sheriff out for both justice and revenge and Anthony Quinn is the he-bull rancher who stands in his way: the guilty party is…
Burt Lancaster and Edward G. Robinson are excellent in this adaptation of Arthur Miller’s award-winning Broadway play, about a family torn apart by the denial of dark secrets from the WW2 homefront. Mady Christians is the mother who refuses to accept her son’s death, and Louisa Horton and Howard Duff the brother and sister trying…
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 salute the recently departed actor Sidney Poitier. I opened the door to my home and heard my wife crying. Out loud. As she is not one who finds herself openly…
Every once in a while a movie studio would ruin what might have been a masterpiece — and Preston Sturges’ last-released Paramount comedy suffered exactly that. “Triumph Over Pain” was supposed to be something new, a daring blend of comedy and tragedy. Studio politics intervened and tried to turn it into a straight comedy. Disc…
The Fab Four’s first and biggest movie hit comes to 4K Ultra HD! The Beatles brought something new and exciting to 1964 and the world embraced it. This United Artists release was a major event in the first wave of Beatlemania, setting the standard for Swinging London cool; thanks to Richard Lester’s flip approach and…
For this perplexing British production Peter Sellers fronts a solid cast (Charles Aznavour, Jeremy Kemp, Per Oscarsson and Peter Vaughn) in a numbingly literal tale of seven men buried alive in a wartime warehouse of supplies and foodstuffs — and who are forced to stay there for years, praying for rescue. Stories of this kind…
There’s no pretending on my part to have seen everything there was to see in 2021. I’ve still got a pretty long list of movies from the year that I would like to catch up on, including the other movie from director Ryusuke Hamaguchi, WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND FANTASY, Hamaguchi’s was a name that was…
Small thief and parolee Max Dembo is pinned in a parole system that all but guarantees he’ll go back to robbing banks and jewelry stores. Dustin Hoffman has one of his best and most unusual roles, taken from the story of a real bank robber. Directed by Ulu Grosbard, the docu-drama look at the seedy…
Favorite director Bill Forsyth lends his knack for droll understatement to a screenplay by John Sayles, a crime tale that opts for keen character study and doesn’t stretch credibility. Burt Reynolds has a gem of a role as a career burglar doing his bit for the next generation, showing a ‘new guy’ the ins and…
Lovers of vintage English crime thrillers will have a lot to chew over with this pair of escapist gangster pix, one pre-war and one post-. In each an innocent young couple suffers a run-in with a criminal gang. John Mills and Richard Attenborough are the ‘fresh’ new talent on display. The leading lady of Dancing…
A monster ape-man smashes Hong Kong accompanied by his adopted daughter, a sexy blonde in a daringly abbreviated bikini. The lavishly produced King Kong rip-off was released here under the title Goliathon; Quentin Tarantino raised its profile with a 1999 ‘Rolling Thunder’ reissue. Beyond absurd, all the way to insane, the Shaw Bros.’ crazy kaiju…