George Pal’s second science fiction classic has conceptual imagination and visual wonder to spare, along with a million awkward and dated details. When rogue planets threaten to obliterate the Earth, a super-Ark spaceship is built to spirit forty ‘chosen ones’ to safety. The Ark passengers have the right stuff, but you may be enraged…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. Pull up your mask – up over your nose – and we’ll hit the streets of Hollywood for this week’s diversion. Fairy tales can come true, they can happen to you, if you…
Arrow jumps into the 4K Ultra HD bracket with a knockout 40th anniversary presentation of this campy, music-filled and incredibly colorful Dino De Laurentiis spectacle. The impressive package has an endless catalog of extras, plus a second Blu-ray disc with a full-length feature about the film’s one-hit-wonder star Sam J. Jones. Buyers beware —…
Jules Dassin’s most popular pre-exile crime thriller is many things: a cracking good police tale, a drama of human struggle and weakness, and an amazing cinematic time machine of New York’s distinctive hustle and bustle circa 1948. Mark Hellinger’s final production bristles with a ‘these are the facts’ narration, a voiceover personifying a city…
John Wayne, Robert Ryan and some thrilling color combat footage grace this Howard Hughes WW2 aviation epic, that’s famous for being the odd-title-out in the filmography of Nicholas Ray. Just how did the politically diverging Ray and Hughes get along so well? The WAC’s sensational Technicolor restoration does the real combat footage a big…
Roger Corman began his boom year of 1957 with a marvelous bit of ‘way-out’ sci-fi — a ‘Tidal Wave of Terror’ no less. This note just arrived from Donald J.’s Seafood Emporium: “You puny, dunderheaded humans, don’t let the campy title fool you! Soon you will be ‘absorbed’ into our crabby super-mentalities, heh heh heh….
When they dig it up, what will they find? Fans will want to see this forgotten Deutsch-noir masterpiece. Helmut Käutner’s tale of trouble on an American air base in West Germany is a swirl of romantic, political and criminal complications — all down & dirty. A tiny burg that serves as a brothel for U.S….
The Paleface Blu ray Kino Lorber 1948 / 91 min. Starring Bob Hope, Jane Russell Cinematography by Ray Rennahan Directed by Norman Z. McLeod In 1934 Al Christie directed Going Spanish, a 19 minute farce billed as “An Educational Musical Comedy.” The movie is notable only for the film debut of Bob Hope whose wisecracks…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. A trio of island-related movies are on the card this week to help you escape the pandemic virtually, if you’re not ready to brave an airline flight just yet. Paradise Lagoon is the…
The Balcony Blu ray Kino Lorber 1963 / 84 min. Starring Shelley Winters, Peter Falk Cinematography by George Folsey Directed by Joseph Strick When Jean Genet died in 1986, France’s Minister of Culture proclaimed “Jean Genet has left us and with him, a black sun that enlightened the seamy side of things… Genet was liberty…
Guest reviewer Lee Broughton returns with an assessment of Ricky Lau’s Hong Kong comedy horror show-cum-mystical martial arts romp. Introduced to the vampire mythos are some novel ideas, like scary-looking vampires that get around by hopping on two legs. Effective horror scenarios include expertly choreographed martial arts routines. However, the score on the genre mash-up…
Most people smile just at the mention of this show … nothing is more healthy than an old fashioned laugh. Zucker, Zucker & Abrahams’ non-stop joke fest finds good fun in movie spoofery without malice, and is populated by a squadron of old pros that once made the originals fly right, no matter how clunky…
Excellent news, TFH maniacs! Trailers From Hell now comes equipped with a JustWatch function for every single trailer commentary. What is JustWatch, you ask? JustWatch is a very, very helpful app that answers that age-old question, “Where is this movie (or television show) streaming right now?” Founded in 2014, JustWatch collates information from every streaming…
For vintage Japanese classics Arrow is the place to be this summer. Yasuzô Masumura’s complicated tale of industrial espionage is an attack on the free enterprise system — even good people will do terrible things to get ahead, to prevail over the competition. It’s Tiger Car Company against the Yamato Car Company, winner take all….
Hookers! Devil worshippers! A naughty teenage voyeur! A deadly knife, a lethal sedan and a chainsaw-wielding psychopath! Nasal Spray! CineSavant breaks with the disc-reviewing norm and abandons journalistic integrity. Well, not really, but it is a heck of a lot of fun to finally review a film I edited 32 years ago, on a happy…
Trucks for victory! No deadheads on this run! Bald Tires for Adolf! Budd Boetticher’s two-fisted teamsters haul General Patton’s supplies through a France not completely cleared of German resistance, a gearshift in one hand and a buxom mam’selle in the other. The movie is not bad, especially in the casting department — it least includes…
Fans of Jean Renoir will rush to see something ‘new’ from the great director; this very different Renoir picture sees him filming in the South of France, among regional laborers that bring their Italian and Spanish customs with them. It’s a tragedy about a crime of passion, all shot outside of a film studio, without…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. I awoke to news that some 70 million bottles of Italian wine are being turned into hand sanitizer. This pandemic, before it’s all over, may reduce me to pairing alcohol gel with movies….
Japanese cinema’s earliest attempt to depict the full impact of the 1945 atom-bomb attack is one of the best anti-Nuke movies ever… yet it somehow stayed under the radar of American awareness for decades. The bombing is seen from only eight years’ distance, when the nation was seemingly resisting coming to terms with its social…
Town Bloody Hall Blu ray Criterion 1979 / 85 min. Starring Norman Mailer, Germaine Greer, Jill Johnston Cinematography by D.A. Pennebaker Directed by D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus No matter the subject, Norman Mailer was the star of whatever he produced—in Advertisements for Myself, a mix of self-criticism and self-congratulation—he could have been talking to himself….
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. What else are you doing while stuck at home? You can’t blow out your candles while wearing a mask, and who needs birthday cake when there’s a bottle of wine sitting right there?…
The message of this ode to early Christian martyrs is overpowered by Cecil B. DeMille’s indulgence of his sanctimonious/perverse instincts: although seldom lumped in with other pre-Code sex & sadism offenders, there’s more salacious and violent content here than in a dozen ordinary ‘discouraged’ pre-Code pictures. Fredric March and Elissa Landi provide the pro-Christian idealism,…
Is this a thrilling, Chinatown-like Hollywood mystery, or a semi-docu about the making of the first TV Superman show? Or is it going to shed light on the mysterious death of actor George Reeves, the childhood hero we couldn’t believe had died by his own hand? Allen Coulter’s well-crafted show has a lot to…
David Lynch’s demented crime fantasy Wild At Heart was unleashed upon an unsuspecting nation 30 years ago today. A violent, angry road trip romance, Wild At Heart boasts stars stemming from three cinematic powerhouse families — Nicolas Cage (a Coppola), Laura Dern (daughter to Corman and Dante stalwart Bruce) plus her real-life mother Diane Ladd,…
Hoo-haw, as they say… but the hot reputation of this pre-Code slice of censor bait begins and ends with its astonishing original poster. The movie itself isn’t daring in sex, smut or violence, but is instead a highly cinematic art-piece about a woman taking on the sins of men and society. Director Phil Goldstone fashions…