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Before he reinvigorated Universal Studios’ with his action-adventure take on The Mummy in 1999 (and proved a flick could open big before the official summer movie season), director Stephen Sommers did a dry run with the underappreciated Deep Rising , a tongue-in-cheek giant monster movie about a cruise ship under attack by an oversized squid. With obvious references to Ray Harryhausen stop-motion classics combined with a screwball comedy sensibility, the film established a formula that served the director well…until the well ran dry on Van Helsing . Still, there’s some appeal to this kitchen-sink creature feature that stars Treat Williams as an Indiana Jones-style mercenary who gets stuck on the ship with some bad guys with guns. But all the bullets in the world can’t stop the tangle of tentacles that seem to have dragged every living passenger to their doom…except for Famke Janssen ( X-Men ) who makes for a lovely and lively comic foil. The CG effects were supervised by stop-mot...

The beautiful thing about horror and science-fiction is it allows filmmakers to make a “message” movie without being so blatant about it. Movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Dawn of the Dead bury their agendas in subtext that doesn’t interfere with the surface level enjoyment of the genre. But They Live actually disposes with the subtext entirely and puts its political commentary front and center. Sure, there’s some gunplay, aliens and one wicked mano y mano brawl, but mostly this is director John Carpenter’s condemnation of Reagan-era consumerism disguised as an action movie starring ex-wrestler “Rowdy” Roddy Piper. A good-natured drifter (Piper) stumbles upon a group of guerilla fighters operating out of a homeless shelter. Their goal? Wake up the sleeping masses to the people that are really running this country: Aliens! These bug-eyed invaders have covered their tracks by hypnotizing us with TV signals and subliminal advertising. We can only see them for what...

Successful movies pull off a delicate balancing act of meeting and defying expectations. Too predictable and things get boring…too bizarre and audiences get uneasy. It’s easier to play things safe; that’s why most major motion pictures follow a pattern. But the direct-to-DVD market has a little more leeway. That’s how you get films like Airborne , which will earn very few “thumbs up” but at least doesn’t take you on the same ride you’ve paid full price for so many times before. On a late-night transcontinental flight from London to NYC filled with only ten passengers, things are getting mysterious. The flight attendants are acting squirrely, folks in coach start disappearing, and it all has something to do with an ancient Chinese vase stuck in the cargo hold. From the pictures and description on the box, one would might expect zombies or a virulent parasitic outbreak…or both. But Airborne doesn’t choose any of those options. To reveal more would ruin part of the guessing game...

Survival stories are a reliable Hollywood staple. Man against the desert. Man against the Arctic. Man against…the sauna?! That’s right, in 247º F three yahoos get themselves stuck in a steamroom thanks to a fourth yahoo who’s passed out drunk upstairs. Apparently this was based on a true story, but I don’t blame any of them for not stepping forward. It’s not the kind of accident that will earn you much sympathy. However, it does make for a surprisingly engaging movie. Four mismatched friends hook up for a good time at their uncle’s cabin. After a few beers and some skinny dipping it’s off to the custom-made sauna for some relaxation. But minutes stretch to hours when the door refuses to open. Ideas are tossed around, arguments ensue and finally panic sets in as the heat continues to rise. For a direct-to-DVD title, 247º F is way above the curve. It’s situation, while implausible at first, becomes genuinely frightening and invites viewers to play the “what would you do...

Halloween 3 spent most of the past 30 years being despised by a fanbase that simply couldn’t understand why in the name of holy hell Michael Myers wasn’t onscreen killing more teenagers. The plot concerning some sort of Celtic apocalypse involving robots, Stonehenge and Halloween masks is admittedly ridiculous. But it’s also so gloriously convoluted and preposterous that it makes the movie stand out in a field of cookie-cutter slasher sequels that pride themselves on being as un original as possible. Producer John Carpenter gambled on audiences looking for something new…and lost. The original idea was to make a different scary movie each year with the Halloween moniker. However, this wasn’t exactly clear when Universal advertised the film back in ’82. Fans responded by making it the most reviled Halloween film in the series, which got quickly back on the monotonous Michael Myers track soon afterward. Directed by Tommy Lee Wallace and shot by long-time Carpenter collaborator D...

Horror movies rely on stupid people doing stupid things. And you can’t get much more stupid than signing up for an “extreme tour” of the Chernobyl disaster site. Not only is the residual radiation a potential health hazard, but those rabid dogs and leftover nuclear mutants are a bitch! Produced by Oren Peli, the Paranormal Activity mastermind, at least we should be thankful that Chernobyl Diaries doesn’t use the found footage approach, opting instead for a more traditional scary story format as stupid teens and their tour guide are stranded in the radiation zone after dark. Soon, shadowy figures emerge from the rubble of the surrounding town and drag our characters to some off-screen hell. Or maybe everyone is just in the basement drinking vodka…I’m not really sure! And that’s the real problem with the film. The setting is unique, unusual and more than a little creepy (with one jump scare that’s guaranteed to do its job). But there are no ground rules laid out. We don’t kno...

Let this be a lesson to all aspiring filmmakers. After you’ve finished your low-budget horror masterpiece do not forget to add the little copyright symbol in the credits! That minor mistake cost George Romero and company the bulk of the profits from the original Night of the Living Dead , which ended up falling into public domain and filling up bargain bins for years on VHS and DVD. Obviously, losing out on all those millions must have rankled Romero to no end. So much so that in 1990 he reshot his original script (with longtime make-up vet Tom Savini behind the camera this time) for purely financial reasons. Before anyone jumps in to argue, “that’s no reason to make a film!”…actually it’s the reason pretty much every film is made. At least Romero was honest about his intentions, and, as remakes go, this new version of NOTLD is a respectable do-over with just enough new twists on the material to make it worthwhile. The set-up is the same: three men, three women and one soon...

Universal Studios is sitting on a cash cow of classic monsters and they know it; Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Creature from the Black Lagoon, all with trademarked make-up effects just waiting to make someone a fortune. But to date, no one has found a way to crack the safe. 2004’s Van Helsing was supposed to do the trick, combining all the famous faces for one big monster mash. But when it crashed and burned at the box office, everything went back into the vault. Now we have Werewolf: The Beast Among Us , essentially a direct-to-video sequel to Van Helsing but without all the overhead costs (like expensive Australian actors). Instead Ed Quinn leads a team of monster hunters into a small European hamlet – which oddly enough seems to accept accents from any country – plagued by a string of werewolf killings. Young Daniel (Guy Wilson) volunteers to protect the town and impress his girlfriend and winds up in the thick of the furry battle. There’s nothing about Werewolf that is pa...

No offense to anyone who enjoys the films, but I consider the Saw franchise one of the crowning achievements of crap cinema. So I was all the more surprised when the director of Saw 2 – 4 , Darren Lynn Bousman, came up with the movie that actually impressed me: Mother’s Day , with Rebecca De Mornay. That was two years and three films ago (the guy is nothing if not productive). Now we have The Barrens , starring True Blood superstar Stephen Moyer as a dad trying to reconnect with his broken family during a camping excursion in the New Jersey wilderness. Don’t worry, it’s not a drama. At least, I don’t think so. Trouble is The Barrens isn’t really sure what it’s about either. There’s a third act twist that explains Moyer’s dramatic mood swings and strange hallucinations of a Jersey Devil stalking his family. But there’s a second twist that after that that makes everything even more confused than before. And how to explain the strange 5-minute cameo from Shawn Ashmore ( X-Men ...

Serial killer movies are a hard sell as “entertainment” these days unless they’re wearing a hockey mask or returning from the dead. The perpetrators of child abductions, torture and shallow graves are a little too top of mind to be much use as escapism. That’s what makes Jennifer Lynch’s Chained such a hard movie to recommend, despite being an excellent piece of filmmaking in general. Vincent D’Onofrio turns in another unforgettably transformative performance as a Bob, a slovenly cab driver (with a lisp) who drags certain female passengers to their doom at his isolated home. One passenger also brings along her 9-year-old son, who the killer chains to the wall and treats as a houseservant, forced to clean up after his murderous nocturnal activities. Yet as the boy becomes a man, Bob feels the urge to pass on his knowledge from father to son. Lynch (the daughter of famed director and all-around weirdo David Lynch) has been relatively unproductive since drawing a firestorm of criti...

The Cabin in the Woods has had more praise heaped upon it by mainstream critics than pretty much any horror film in the new millennium. Yet most of that praise is earned in the final twenty minutes of the movie - which is likely the best final twenty minutes of any post-modern horror film in history. What comes before is a whole lotta set-up and genre clichés designed to be upended by Joss Whedon ( The Avengers ) and Drew Goddard’s clever script. They’re necessary, but a bit of a slog to sit through. However in this case, patience is its own reward. Headed to an isolated cabin for a weekend of beer, sex and debauchery, four college students unwittingly awaken a family of zombies who proceed to do what zombies do best. If you want to go into Cabin “spoiler-free” then stop reading right now. (pause). Ok, for everyone else, we quickly realize that our victims are being “controlled” by a small army of government workers prodding these sacrifices towards their predetermined fate....

Directors like Mario Bava are the reason cult movie fans exist. Working under miniscule budgets with fly-by-night foreign producers who distributed the final product under a seemingly endless amount of alternative titles, often just tracking down the muddy lineage of Bava’s work is a genealogical case study unto itself. But it’s the thrill of the chase that fans enjoy most, sifting through the pseudonyms and cinematic dead-ends to unearth something truly special from a man who was 40 years ahead of his time. Well, Kino Classics has done most of the work for you in the form of The Mario Bava Collection, three titles (with more presumably to come) including one of Bava’s most notable and celebrated works: Black Sunday. The director’s most complete vision, Black Sunday (1960) was relatively uncompromised by creative interference or budget troubles, something that would wreak havoc on later productions. And the film’s gothic setting, still in favor at the time by rival filmmakers at Hammer...

There’s an art to making a really good creature feature. You can’t be too silly (like Piranha 3DD or recent Roger Corman / SyFy Channel dreck such as Sharktopus ) or too depressing (like recent remakes of Thing and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark ). It’s a fine line between ludicrous and ludicrously amusing. And even when a film hits the nail on the head, the best it can hope for is pleasing an audience of like-minded weirdos. For those searching for that kind of entertainment, Bait is just such a movie. It starts with a premise so preposterous you have to read it twice. After a tsunami hits a seaside Australian resort, a few lucky survivors stay above water in a flooded supermarket. Yet the underwater aisles are now patrolled by a pair of great white sharks who have their eyes on something fresher than whatever’s left in the deli case! So, just to review, that’s great white sharks eating people in a supermarket. If that synopsis alone makes you want to watch, then you won’t b...

Although Mother’s Day (1980) pre-dates the creative peak of Troma Films - which fans would probably target as 1984’s The Toxic Avenger - it firmly establishes producer Lloyd Kaufman’s sick sense of humor, anything-for-a-buck mentality and all-in-good-fun attitude. And that’s no mean feat considering Mother’s Day , directed by Lloyd’s brother, Charlie Kaufman, features equal amounts of rape, dismemberments and random violence. This ain’t no knock-knock joke, people. Holed up in the New Jersey wilderness, Mother and her two sons – Ike and Addley – take great pride in their murderous pastime. And when three sorority sisters on a reunion vacation fall right into their laps, they proceed with their usual routine of torture, torment and eventual death with great enthusiasm. All with Mother’s seal of approval, of course. The only question is, who will survive…and what will be left of them? If you didn’t catch the reference, that last bit is a tagline from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre...

Prior to the current trend of adapting graphic novels, self-help books and board games into major motion pictures, literary masterpieces used to be Hollywood’s bread-and-butter. One might choose to interpret that as a condemnation of today’s movie-going society as unsophisticated, bottom-feeders. But in all honesty, it’s tough to “do-right” by the classics. And one would be hard-pressed to find a producer today who would take on the challenge of adapting William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury , a multi-layered, multiple narrative monstrosity that had to be practically rewritten from the ground up to make it to the screen – even in 1959. The focus here is on Quentin Compson (Joanne Woodward), the illegitimate daughter of a once-proud Southern family. Although only a small part of the novel’s structure (as liner notes by Julie Kirgo point out), the filmmakers chose a more direct coming of age route as Quentin rebels against small-town life and her controlling step-uncle, Jason, p...

It’s seems redundant and more than a little tiresome to provide a brief history of Hammer Studios yet again, and the impact they had on horror cinema worldwide from around 1957 until the company fell apart during the late ‘70s. Especially considering that from a technical standpoint, most of the creative personnel responsible that success were long gone by the time Hammer House of Horror aired as a British television series in 1980. A classic anthology series featuring a different hour-long story each week, House did feature a few notable appearances from Hammer vets like Peter Cushing, director Alan Gibson ( Dracula A.D. 1972 ) and soon-to-be-famous British actors like Pierce Brosnan and Brian Cox. As is usually the case with shows of this type, the quality of each episode varies depending on the talent involved. Cushing’s role in The Silent Scream is sure to attract the most fan attention as a pet-shop owner who keeps a dangerous menagerie in the back room. But The House th...

Sometime around 1986 (perhaps when Emilio Estevez was shooting a Green Goblin semi-truck with a rocket launcher in Maximum Overdrive ) having Stephen King’s name above a movie title stopped being a good thing. A prolific writer, King’s work has a about a 50/50 failure-to-success ratio. Films adapted from the work: perhaps around 80/20. So that fact that 1991’s Sleepwalkers , based on King’s original screenplay, came and went without much cultural impact is probably to be expected. Yet the fun thing about home video is rediscovering titles you missed, slept through or flat-out ignored. And while Sleepwalkers is certainly no lost classic, there’s more to appreciate than you might think in this story about mother-son shape shifters who share an Oedipal relationship and a strange fear of housecats. The new kid in town, Charles (Brian Krause), pursues a relationship with the cute girl next door ( Twin Peaks ’ Madchen Amick). But his intentions are much more mysterious, involving ...

As you can tell from the title, there’s nothing subtle about Piranha 3DD . That’s “double-D” like the bra size, in case the humor was too sophisticated for you. A quick cash-in on the relatively successful (and equally offensive) 2010 remake whose most memorable moment was the amputation of Jerry O’Connell’s own member, director John Gulager ( Feast) does his best to mix SyFy Channel corniness with Cinemax-style skin. This time around, it’s an “adults-only” waterpark that is invaded by the prehistoric piranha who, according to guest-star Christopher Lloyd, are evolving quickly to withstand chlorinated water and perhaps even life on land (foreshadowing an obvious sequel). The leaves a smart but sexy marine biologist (Danielle Panabaker) and a nerdy waterpark worker (Matt Bush) the only thing standing between a day of family fun and a skinny-dipping massacre! Piranha 3DD is a joke from start to finish. You can laugh with it or at it…but either way those with a suitably sick sense...

Art is of its time. And even though the best examples of cinema are “timeless,” it’s awful hard to reproduce the magic behind those classics in the first place. Actors, writers and directors reach a creative peak, and then fade into the Smithsonian of pop-culture (if they’re lucky) or unheralded anonymity (if they’re not). French director Jean Rollin only enjoyed appreciation for his work decades after it was released. But that late success provided him the chance to return to his favorite filmic themes with Two Orphan Vampires – a film produced in 1995 but existing somewhere in the director’s mid-70s oeuvre. Critics might contend that Rollin never had all the much skill to begin with. But even so, his ability to pick up exactly where he left off in terms of style, ideas and execution is pretty amazing. The film itself is much like his tone-poem vampire entries Fascination and Lips of Blood but more restrained in terms of violence, sexuality and budget. Henriette and Louise a...

Even The Living Dead Girl (1982), probably the closest the director ever came to making a genre film (along with his zombie tale The Grapes of Death) defies any real categorization. There’s gore, but few scares as our undead heroine, Catherine, is brought back to life by some toxic waste dumping grave robbers. Compelled to kill, she meanders through her after-life with little purpose until her childhood friend pledges assistance – which includes securing some very unwilling victims. The flashes of violence likely put this at the top of the list for certain Rollin fans. But they exist in a separate world from our lead character, who commits most of her horrendous acts with no emotion or scathing self-hatred. Some English language scenes and a larger than usual budget hint that this was Rollin’s one last shot for genre success. But that’s like hiring a plumber to fix your car; they’re both experts, but in two separate professions.

Like that A-Team lunchbox that begins life as a utilitarian novelty but becomes a treasured kitsch collectible, Bye Bye Birdie is much easier to appreciate 50 years after the fact. The clothes, the hair, the songs, the moves, the pop culture popularity all combine for a fabulously entertaining cumulative effect showcasing the talents of one Ann-Margret. There are other names in the cast – big ones like Dick Van Dyke, Janet Leigh and even Hollywood Squares regular Paul Lynde – but they are completely eclipsed by her rising star quality and schoolgirl sexuality. Adapted from the Broadway show,

It takes skill to play a convincing psycho. Anthony Perkins was immortalized for it Anthony Hopkins won an Academy Award for it. Then there’s Joe Dallesandro, aka “Little Joe” from Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side. The ex-Andy Warhol factory superstar and crotch model for the Rolling Stones is essentially a slab of beef with basic vocabulary skills. And Madness (1980), an Italian import directed by crime-genre specialist Fernando Di Leo, matches him in terms of presenting crude, raw, unshaped exploitation material. In fact, Madness is so sparse in terms of dialogue, camera angles and visual flourishes that it could have been produced in the Warhol factory. With a steamrolling late ‘70s rock score (complete with jazz flute solos) laid over top of every scene, there’s certainly an effort to make the film seem exciting. But even by exploitation standards, Madness seems desperate. Escaped thief and murderer Joe Brezy returns to an isolated cabin in the countryside to recover hi...

It seems like we’ve been waiting for the second-coming of Bruce Lee as long as we’ve been waiting for the actual Second Coming. There have been so many promises - from unsuccessful understudy Chuck Norris to legit contender Jackie Chan – that we should probably all come to terms with the fact that no one will ever match Lee’s skill, style and on-screen charisma. Meanwhile, films like Indonesian import The Raid: Redemption go for the team approach, showcasing the impressive abilities of its star, Iko Uwais, but surrounding him with what appears to be every able-bodied kung fu artist in Jakarta. The result is a non-stop beat down set against the pulsing music of Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park (replacing the traditional score that played with the film during its festival run). For all the impactful punching, kicking and knifing going on, it’s actually director Gareth Evans smooth visual style that makes the film memorable. Perhaps taking a cue from John Carpenter’s early indie Assaul...

There are gearheads and there are propellerheads. Director Ken Annakin is the latter. He even parlayed that obsession into an epic feature-film comedy – 1965’s Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines , a farcical celebration of early 20th century aviation in which an international cast of pilots compete for the grand prize in a London to Paris air race. Each of the planes is as unique as the competitors themselves, which makes for a whimsically entertaining spoof both in the air…and on the ground. Determined to fly, but forbidden by her high-society father who’s sponsoring the event, Patricia Rawnsley (Sarah Miles) winds up in a love triangle between two experienced airmen: her stuffy fiancé (James Fox) and a rule-breaking cowboy from Arizona (Stuart Whitman). As both men vie for her affections, the other contestants search for ways to get a leg up on the competition…up to and including sabotage. As amusing as the film’s comedic set-ups may be, Those Magnificent Men only...

Although it’s pointless to reminisce about Hollywood’s good ‘ ol days (agents, remakes and $100 million dollar budgets aren’t going away anytime soon), there’s something refreshing about watching Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly sing and dance their way through 1944’s Cover Girl . In a world where Rock of Ages is the best imitation of a classic Hollywood musical you can get, even a lesser-known film without a single recognizable song wipes the floor with it. The rising star of a New York nightclub, Rusty (Hayworth) auditions for a cover model contest on a lark. But when she attracts the attention of the magazine’s editor (who just so happens to have had a thing for Rusty’s grandmother ), she’s catapulted into a world of bright lights, Broadway and worldwide attention. That doesn’t sit so well with her boyfriend , Danny (Kelly), who thinks they’ve got a good thing going right there in Brooklyn. Directed by Charles Vidor (who would reteam with Hayworth for Gilda ) and choreographed b...

While classic horror fans are still waiting for Hammer titles like Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein to make their Blu-ray debuts, one of the studio’s later productions has sneaked its way onto the hi-def format courtesy of niche label Synapse Films. From 1971, Twins of Evil is the third chapter in a pseudo-trilogy based on Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampiric story of Carmilla , which predated Bram Stoker’s Dracula by some 25 years. Literary pedigree aside, at this point in the studio’s history, Hammer was only interested in one thing: putting butts in seats. The traditional gothic horror film was an endangered species. Scrambling to up the ante of gore and nudity for a rapidly changing audience and more lenient film censorship, Hammer was quick to embrace the “lesbian vampire” film: The Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, Countess Dracula …reworkings of the classic gothic ingredients with an erotic edge. Yet Twins of Evil , despite starring a pair of identical ...

In rock ‘n roll terms, Harold and Maude (1971) is the Velvet Underground of movies: it might not get much play, but those who seek it out are inevitably left inspired. The story of a barely 20-something Goth kid (a full decade before the term Goth was even invented) who finds an unlikely soul mate in an 80-year-old woman, director Hal Ashby’s film stretches the May-December romance well past even Hollywood’s liberal standards. And yet by the time the film is over, even those who initially find the idea of “sagging, wrinkled flesh comingling with a fresh youthful body” morally and physically repugnant will find a surprisingly uplifting life philosophy. What comes first, though, is dark comedy. For amusement, Harold (Bud Cort) stages frequent and elaborate phony suicide attempts to annoy his stuffy, aristocratic mother who casually ignores them. Antisocial and unresponsive to psychotherapy, Harold drives a hearse and attends stranger’s funerals for fun. It’s here that he meets Ma...

There’s a point about 20 minutes into Smokey and the Bandit (1977) in which Burt Reynolds, having just successfully left another inept local cop in the dust, leans halfway out of his tricked-out TransAm convertible, looks up at the camera and cracks an ear-to-ear grin, his famous moustache curled up in smug celebration. That shot encapsulates all one ever needs to know about the appeal and success of the film, which in most other respects is one of the most simplistic, juvenile, sexist and just plain stupid movies ever made. It was also one of the highest grossing movies of 1977, right behind beloved classics like the original Star Wars , Close Encounters and Saturday Night Fever . So what was the appeal? In a word: Reynolds. Already a proven sex symbol (he appeared nearly nude on the 1972 issue of Cosmopolitan ) and a man’s man thanks to roles in Deliverance and The Longest Yard , he was that unique star that appealed equally to both sexes with a country-fried sense of humor...

For mass audiences, Sergio Leone’s legitimization of the spaghetti western begins and ends with his Clint Eastwood Dollars trilogy; more specifically their final collaboration, The Good, The Bad and the Ugly , where Clint’s signature squint and poncho became enshrined in American pop culture. And yet Italian filmmakers found just as much inspiration in the character of Taco (played by Eli Wallach), an egomaniacal outlaw who served as both the film’s comic relief and a self-styled “man of the people,” embodying all the ambitions of the huddled masses. A Bullet for the General doesn’t even register as a blip on the average western fan’s radar, and yet in many ways it’s a much more successful film than Leone’s bloated epic. The film is set during the Mexican revolution and stars Gian Maria Volonte as “El Chuncho” (the savage), a bandit who steals guns from the army and sells them back to the revolutionaries. During a well-choreographed train heist, he crosses paths with a soft-spoke...

European films have never really felt the obligation to provide audiences with a beginning, middle and end; the sort of cohesive narrative that American audiences, by and large, expect and demand. Working off the newfound freedom of the French New Wave, Jean Rollin’s The Rape of the Vampire started life as a quick commercial cash-in, but was expanded and evolved into an experimental art film with leftover gothic clichés. As part of the second wave of Rollin titles released by Kino-Lorber under the Redemption label, Rape isn’t really a must-watch for anyone except those who purchased the previous set which repeatedly referenced the film in the original liner notes. It is less a coherent work than a document of Rollin’s education as a filmmaker. The plot - involving a family of vampires, their queen and some unsuspecting visitors - is broken into two parts, neither coalescing into anything conventionally logical. But the director’s fascination with the science behind the super...

The golden age of Hollywood produced relatively few big-budget fantasy and science fiction pictures. With prohibitive costs for special effects and an audience of mostly children (or so the suits said), genre pictures were left in the low-budget gutter. But from time to time a studio like Fox was adventurous enough to put their full financial and creative weight behind a project like Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth . It certainly helped that Disney had scored a huge hit with another Verne adaptation ( 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ) a few years earlier. Fox even went so far as to carry-over the same leading man – the inimitable James Mason – in this story of a scientific expedition racing to become the first team to reach the Earth’s core. While Verne’s novel is a tough read today, obsessively bogged down as it is with scientific minutia, the film’s screenplay is an expert balance of adventure and wit. Among the subterranean dangers our heroes face are constant t...

By 1973, the venerable Hammer Film studio was headed for disaster. Their patented brand of gothic horror was fast going out of style against more modern films like The Exorcist . It seemed no matter how much blood, how many boobs or how high the budget, nothing would turn the tide. Which probably sealed the theatrical fate of a movie like The Asphyx (1973), which worked within Hammer’s well-defined conventions (science and the supernatural run amok in a Victorian setting) but didn’t have the benefit of a Christopher Lee or Peter Cushing to put on their poster. Yet, as it turns out, the film’s relative obscurity and un conventional menace actually works its favor some 40 years after its release. The asphyx itself is an invisible spirit (brought to life in the film through a combination of practical puppetry and optical effects) that carries away a person’s soul at the time of death. When a pair of scientists discover a way to capture the little bugger and lock it up in a sealed ...

When director Robert Zemeckis decided to shoot both of his Back to the Future sequels back-to-back, industry spin played it up as a risky and revolutionary idea. Risky, maybe ( Part 2 ’s only reason for existence is that cool hoverboard), but revolutionary: hardly. In fact, Demetrius and the Gladiators , the sequel to 1953’s biblical epic The Robe, was shot before its predecessor had even wrapped up production in order to take advantage of the enormous sets and elaborate costumes. The irony is, even though it was a seat-of-your-pants production, Demetrius is a far more entertaining film. Victor Mature plays Demetrius, an original Christian charged with the safekeeping of the robe Jesus wore on the cross. But fate tosses him into the Roman arena where his Christian vows of “Thou shalt not kill” are put to a very serious test. Meanwhile, his beliefs attract the attention of Messalina (Susan Hayward), a morally corrupt temptress who takes pleasure in leading our hero astray and in...

Vampire movies typically fall into three categories: traditional gothic (think cobwebs and capes), modern twists ( Twilight or Lost Boys if you’re old school) and erotic lesbians. No joke, the lesbian vampire film has a long and storied history, about on par with the Nazi zombie sub-genre (what…you’ve never heard of that either? Sheesh!). Yet the work of French director Jean Rollin defies all categorization. Early on you can probably credit that to a lack of filmmaking talent in general. But as his work evolved so did the man behind the camera, leaving behind a catalog of films that exist outside of any typical horror film structure, but resonate in your mind like a half-remembered dream. Dream-like is the term probably most often thrown at Rollin’s work. And Redemption Films and Kino Lorber have put out a dreamy series of five Blu-ray Rollin titles. The Nude Vampire is rough going. Provocative title aside, it’s simply too clumsily made to overlook its faults. But it do...

Whether it’s a sign of the times or a passing fad, staging the end of the world has become de rigueur for all fashionable filmmakers these days. Typically at the hands of some sort of undead zombie horde (see above). But writer / director Cornel Wilde’s No Blade of Grass (1970) is much more environmentally-minded, laying the blame in humanity’s own lap by overdosing the atmosphere with pollutants that destroy most of the plant life on earth. Without the ability to grow food, every country in the world descends into chaos and anarchy. Even in jolly old England, the bloom of civilization fades quickly as citizens arm themselves to survive. Leading his family towards a secret sanctuary, John Custance (Nigel Davenport) must elude soldiers, roving bands of thugs and his own descent into irredeemable savagery. It all sounds much more exciting that it is. No Blade of Grass is the kind of film where the end of the world happens mostly off-screen. That means, other than a few mob sce...

A Darryl F. Zanuck production of a John Huston film - with Errol Flynn in his last significant role – The Roots of Heaven is yet another example of the popular Hollywood expression “the story behind the film is more interesting than the film itself.” Shot in Chad over the course of six months, the perpetual heat and diseases took their toll on cast and crew, requiring a constant stream of replacements. Both Zanuck and Huston’s biographies feature anecdotes about the experience and Flynn’s excessive drinking (the actor would die a year later). How could any fictional movie compete with that sensationalist reality? Roots does have its strong points, but they’re a long time coming. Trevor Howard plays an idealistic elephant defender who uses guerilla tactics to defend the continent’s dwindling herds. A famous media personality (quick cameo by Orson Welles) turns him into an international celebrity and his cause is co-opted by other indigenous revolutionaries who use him for their ...

Last House on the Left , director Wes Craven’s debut feature, made such a stink in 1972 that he was spit on by strangers offended by the film’s overt sadomasochism. But that spit was actually a compliment. In the exploitation game, anything that can generate a reaction - especially outrage or disgust - means big money. And rival producers quick to spot a trend saw lots of potential in Craven’s down and dirty plot. Night Train Murders (1975) takes the same torture porn scenario but adds a few levels of dramatic and technical sophistication that House lacked, making it the superior film…but arriving three years too late to earn the same exploitation immortality. Margaret and Lisa hop a train to spend Christmas vacation with Lisa’s parents in Italy. But during the trip they run afoul of two thugs and a perverse older woman who revels in their sexual degradation. Like Last House, Night Train Murders is not a pleasant film to watch. Its goal is to make you extremely uncomforta...

Whatever ideas you have about DRIVE, I can almost guarantee you won’t get the film you’re expecting. Sure, the synopsis sounds like a typical genre action pic: mechanic / stunt man Ryan Gosling, who moonlights as a getaway driver, takes on a job to help out his next door neighbor (Carey Mulligan). When said job goes bad, Gosling and the girl come under fire from some angry underworld types (Ron Perlman, Albert Brooks) who want to cover their tracks. But director Nicolas Winding Refn doesn’t ever let his movie take the predictable route…for good or bad. From the opening hot pink ‘80s font and corny keyboard score, to the jarring moments of extreme violence, right down to refusing to give his lead character a first or last name; DRIVE is essentially a big middle finger to the Hollywood establishment. And that fits right in with Gosling’s post- Notebook career, which seems to be equal amounts Marlon Brando eccentricity and Steve McQueen cool. Gosling has a chip on his shoulder,...