Cecil B. DeMille’s Seafaring Epic
When fans of classic films from Hollywood’s golden era exclaim “They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” they are usually referring to the kind of lavish, big-budget, audience-pleasing entertainments...
View ArticleThe Vampire Moth
There are a number of classic Japanese horror/fantasy films from the fifties and sixties that genre fans in the U.S. have read about but never seen due to their unavailability on DVD or Blu-ray. In...
View ArticleTrue Love Transcends Everything
Sometimes an offscreen scandal can kill or severely hamper a career (Fatty Arbuckle, Ingrid Bergman, Rose McGowan, etc.) or help bolster it as in the case of Mary Astor, Hedy LaMarr or Elizabeth...
View ArticleSteve Reeves as The Thief of Baghdad
One Thousand and One Nights also known as the Arabian Nights is a collection of stories from the Middle East and India that can be traced back to the 9th century although the author or authors of the...
View ArticleSaboteur, Pawn or Hero?
A train rushes through the night somewhere in Poland and the engineer receives an all-clear signal from the local lineman as it moves full speed ahead through a rural crossing. Suddenly a man appears...
View ArticleSwinging Down the Street So Fancy Free
A frumpy woman in her early twenties dreams of being loved but despite her continual attempts to have a romance finds herself observing life from the sidelines, barely noticed by those around her....
View ArticleDeciphering a French Film Icon
In 1969 French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant had three films in competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Costa-Garvas’s Z, Giuseppe Patroni Griffi’s Metti, Una Sera a Cena (Love Circle) and Eric...
View ArticleThe Old Dark House of Cyrus West
Some believe “Old Dark House” thrillers began with J.B. Priestley’s 1927 novel Benighted, which was adapted for the screen by James Whale as The Old Dark House in 1932. The reality is that the template...
View ArticleSafe Harbor
When did the immigrant situation become an international crisis? Anyone who follows the news knows that immigration has been on the rise for the last 20 years or more but, beginning in 2020, the number...
View ArticleLeon Klimovsky’s Pothead Noir
Among the many anti-marijuana films made over the years, it is generally agreed that the most famous of them all is Reefer Madness (1936), which earned a huge cult following in the 1960s due to its...
View ArticleBehind the Scenes on Bonjour Tristesse
When Otto Preminger announced in 1957 that his next project would be Bonjour Tristesse, based on the best-selling novel by Francoise Sagan, and that it would star Jean Seberg, colleagues and fellow...
View ArticleMasks Are Powerful
There is one cinema gimmick that always works for me and can sometimes lift a movie out of the ordinary and take it somewhere unexpected. This usually occurs when someone either puts on a mask or...
View ArticleOn the Loose in Amsterdam
The controversial problem of immigration in Italy has been a problem for decades, not just with internal migration of workers from the south to the north, but also with the influx of refugees from...
View ArticleEva Malmborg, Crime Reporter
Swedish actress Harriet Andersson is best known for her many film collaborations with director Ingmar Bergman but, even after she became a celebrated star in the mid-fifties with her breakout role in...
View ArticleResistance Begins at Home
In 1940 after France had fallen to the German army, journalist Jean Bruller and his wife, who lived outside Paris, were forced to share their home with a Nazi officer for an extended period of time....
View ArticleWhat’s Worse Than a Typhoon?
The 1970s may have been the era of the disaster film with such box office hits as Airport (1970), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), The Towering Inferno (1974) and Earthquake (1974) but the genre has been...
View ArticleThe Vice Merchants
In January 1950 U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver launched an investigation into organized crime across America that exposed rampant corruption, racketeering and illegal practices being committed within...
View ArticleNot a Beauty Treatment
It’s not likely that a Poverty Row horror film like The Face of Marble (1946) will ever end up on anyone’s top ten list – unless the category is guilty pleasures – but that’s what distinguishes a movie...
View ArticleClass Conscious
Family holidays can be a joy or an ordeal depending on the family. In British director Joanna Hogg’s second theatrical feature, Archipelago (2010), the Leighton family start their holiday on an upbeat...
View ArticleThe Rotten Are Coming for You!
For my annual Halloween horror pick, I am highlighting a contemporary film, one that is currently playing in theaters, and not a horror classic from the past. Cuando Acecha la Maldad (U.S. title, When...
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