Look at She, she’s Sandra Dee! 1959’s most sexed-up soap drama came with beautiful actors, Technicolor scenery and a music tune that the radio wouldn’t stop playing. In a ‘Place’ not too far from Peyton, is it always summer? The sordid fun includes frigidity, class snobbery, divorce, alcoholism, teen sex drive, teen sex angst, teen…
Is that Werner S. Herzog, for Sisyphus? What filmmaker goes out of his way to make his work impossibly difficult? Werner Herzog did just that on Fitzcarraldo and filmmaker Les Blank documented the entire frustrating, risky process, which included the insane engineering feat of hauling an enormous steamboat over a hill. Herzog chose to shoot…
Nothing says ‘holiday time’ quite like jolly Jess Franco, so we asked UK correspondent Lee Broughton to cover of one of the mad Spaniard’s early films. This one features both medical horror and cold, calculated revenge. A coherent narrative, a stylish look and some reasonable technical qualities might surprise viewers familiar only with Franco’s later…
Here’s the third installment of my list of the twenty-five greatest horror films from the past quarter century, starting from the bottom and gradually heading to the top by the end of this year. It’s my November attempt to give thanks for excellence. Here’s a link if you missed the second installment, here‘s where you…
“He has my father’s eyes.” “Gomez, take those out of his mouth.” Such is the tone of Addams Family Values, Barry Sonnenfeld’s charmingly spooky 1993 sequel to his original 1991 smash — one of those ultra-rare film follow-ups that actually betters its predecessor. When the first Addams Family, adapted from the Charles Addams New Yorker…
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 is in the details of three horror movies and wine tastings. 1990’s The First Power is a modern noir film in which a Los Angeles cop searches for, and…
Yet another movie we dearly love, remastered in glowing 4K — a show that’s so much fun, who would want to poke about looking for faults? No fear there … Bud Abbott and Lou Costello seem to love the monsters as much as we do, and put out the welcome mat for Lon Chaney’s Wolf…
Director John Carpenter applies himself to this solid attempt to (finally) nail down the H.P. Lovecraft ethos on film. The project and its script were actually initiated by its producer, Michael DeLuca. Thanks to our emotional connection with star Sam Neill, we stick with a horror hallucination nightmare that threatens to become its own in-joke….
The old saying, “Strike while the iron is hot” is never more meaningful than in the movie industry, where financing is hard to find at the best of times. After the success of Longlegs, director Osgood Perkins delivered two more pictures in the following year. The first was The Monkey, which I had mixed feelings…
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 have three wine pairings for movies which allow us to seek out new grapes and great acidity; to boldly drink where no one has drunk before. No doubt you remember…
Nightmare Alley 2021 – 1.85:1 – 150 Min. Criterion – 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray Starring Bradley Cooper, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara Written by Guillermo del Toro, Kim Morgan Directed by Guillermo del Toro Guillermo del Toro makes a living finding the humanity in monsters and the monsters in men. A boy who grew up…
Errol Flynn is back in harness as an 18th century Scottish patriot who survives the Battle of Culloden only to fall in with pirates of the Caribbean. No, really — it’s from a novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Flynn’s late career mini-epic tries to cover too much story and the direction isn’t distinguished, but Flynn…
Action cinema, that most kinetic of genres, arguably reached its absolute U.S. cultural apex in the 1990s. While muscle-bound strongmen in the ’80s vein (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Dolph Lundgren, and even Chuck Norris — though Norris’ impact was declining) continued to pack a box office punch into the succeeding decade, a…
A 4K remaster puts a high polish on Howard Hughes’ WW1 air war epic — an enormous personal project that allowed the playboy tycoon to indulge his obsessions for women, movies and especially aviation. The film’s air combat has never been equalled: some shots have upwards of 30 aircraft buzzing through the clouds at the…
The irreplaceable WAC brings forth another sterling HD remaster of a vintage crime thriller. Robert Mitchum and Robert Ryan go head-to-head in this remake of Howard Hughes’ silent hit; the context is modern mob racketeering but the screenplay turns the conflict into an old-fashioned personal grudge match. Playboy producer Hughes threw the picture together and…
When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school It’s a wonder I can think at all And though my lack of education hasn’t hurt me none I can read the writing on the wall -Paul Simon, “Kodachrome” Although that song plays us out ahead of and during the credits for…
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 have three wine pairings for three somewhat recent entries into the film noir oeuvre. And all this time, I thought oeuvre was French for eggs. I guess they’ve been having…
One of the creepiest and most elegant fright films ever made gets a much needed audiovisual overhaul in 4K: Ealing Studios assembles 5 classic horror tales inside a diabolically clever wraparound story, one that poses an impressive conceptual puzzle. Four English directors set the stage with a tidy little gathering for tea, and waste no…
Don’t congratulate Hollywood too quickly — would this honest and accurate story of American racism have been filmed if the author of its source story weren’t William Faulkner? Juano Hernandez is a propertied black man who won’t back down or apologize when he’s accused of murder … in a town where a lynching could still…
Macabre fantasy! Diving into these 100 year-old silent films is like being back in film school again, excited by ‘new’ film ideas. Henrik Galeen was a prime exponent of German Expressionism, and these Uber-classics show the style at its refined best. The Student of Prague is one of the top films ever about selling one’s…
This week’s The Last Reel looks back at the otherworldly power of 60s rock and roll bands and how the media—films, videos, and concerts—helped shape their image.
Beware of hidden panels above your bed! The best of the silent ‘old dark house’ thrillers comes to 4K in a new remaster with a beautiful new music score. Laura La Plante is inheriting a vast fortune, but a pop-eyed monster with a clawed hand is eliminating the other relatives come to hear a reading…
Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies, and many more, at Trailers From Hell. Just for laughs, let’s get giggly with this week’s movies. Even the wine pairings for each film will seem laughable. When I was in college the student center had a room where a…
Gaumont’s restoration brings back a trio of French-language thrillers by the under-appreciated actor-director Robert Hossein. Two are Euro-noir takes on steamy pulp fiction crime stories costarring the dreamy Marina Vlady; the third is a fatalistic political western made years before the Italians got into the act. Each has a hard edge and at least one…
This remake of a gangster classic barely 15 years old adds CinemaScope, Warnercolor and a selection of method-y actors — and it copies some scenes shot-for-shot. Jack Palance is mostly scary as the ‘new’ Roy Earle, and Shelley Winters less vulnerable as his new love. Also good crime-time fun are Lon Chaney Jr., Earl Holliman,…