Movieline Online

Director Paul Lynch gives star Jamie Lee Curtis 75% of the credit for Prom Night ’s success. And he’s not being overly generous. After Halloween , which became one of the largest grossing independents ever, having Curtis’ name attached to another film in the horror genre was like winning the lottery. And Prom Night (1980) got the most out of her girl-next-door image as a masked killer stalks the students of Hamilton High during their disco-themed special night. A prologue introduces us to young Nick, Wendy, Kelly and Jude who accidently push one of their playmates from a three-story plate glass window. They take a vow of silence to never reveal what they did. But fast forward six years later to senior prom: someone knows who was responsible for the tragedy and is making sure they pay the price. Prom Night is more of a mystery than a slasher per se. There are no on-camera kills until the final 30 minutes and even those are relatively tame by later standards (with one notable...

When it came to his adventures on the big screen, Elvis Presley was at the mercy of forces largely beyond his control. He was a “performer,” not an actor. And nearly every project he appeared in was manufactured to reinforce a well-established image. But sometimes the right material comes along at just the right time. Such is the case with Follow t hat Dream , the 1962 musical which takes a detour from the traditional Elvis formula, blessed with a amusingly laconic performance from Presley with no hip-shaking required. In fact, the King is pretty darn sedentary as Toby Kwimper, one member of an adopted family of modern-day pioneers who run out of gas on a new stretch of Florida highway. When government officials try to run them off, Pop Kwimper (Arthur O’Connell) decides to homestead the land, building a rudimentary house, malfunctioning privy and successful start-up charter fishing business. Their success lures other opportunistic folks hoping to take advantage of the loophole i...

One could view Gary Busey as a casualty of today’s celebrity obsessed culture or a shrewd manipulator of the same. Like a reality TV star, his fame springs from a twisted version of his own personality. Just how twisted is the question. A motorcycle accident in 1988 left him with serious brain damage and his eccentricities began to define him more than the roles themselves. So much so that popular culture has almost wiped his best performance, as Buddy Holly in The Buddy Holly Story (1978), from its collective consciousness. Rebounding from a cancelled project that had cast him Holly’s drummer, the actor lost 33 pounds to take on the lead role as the rock and roll phenomenon who died in a tragic plane crash at the age of 22. The film’s most energetic scenes feature Busey performing several of Holly’s songs live in various settings. No lip-synching, no back-up tracks, just Busey and his fellow actor / musicians (Don Stroud and Charles Martin Smith) belting out raucous versions ...

Despite good intentions and decent box-office returns, the latest American attempt to reboot Godzilla (2014) was a self-important dud. Director Gareth Edwards got the monster right, but saddled him with human sub-plots that were worse than just about any film in the series to date. Even the 1998 Matthew Broderick version at least cracked a smile now and then. Almost forgotten in the annals of Godzilla history is Godzilla: 2000 (or Godzilla: Millennium in Japan), the big guy’s onscreen comeback that kicked off a new series of releases in his native country before he officially “retired” in 2004. Part of Sony’s hi-def Toho Godzilla Collection, the film gets a spiffy new blu-ray edition that includes both the longer Japanese cut and the re-edited, re-jiggered American version which made its way into a limited theatrical release across the U.S. Neither version of the film manages to elevate the material above average, but it’s a treat to see both edits finally pop up…on hi-def, no ...

There’s something wildly exciting about watching a Brian De Palma movie. Of all the USC gang to emerge from the 1970s – including Spielberg, Lucas and Scorsese – his early films were the most revolutionary and counter-culture connected. But it wasn’t until he gave into his show-off Hitchcock obsessions that audiences began to take notice. After his attention getting thriller Sisters , the director moved on to a long gestating project, Phantom of the Paradise (1974), which was his last real middle finger to Hollywood before embracing the industry with open arms. Winslow Leach (William Finley) is a sheltered composer who passes along his life’s work to a diminutive but larger-than-life record producer, Swan (Paul Williams), who promptly passes off the material as his own. In an attempt to get revenge, Winslow is horribly disfigured and sabotages the grand opening of Swan’s new musical venue, The Paradise. But in a Faustian twist, he makes a new deal with the devilish producer to...

In the extras for Synapse Films’ new blu-ray special edition of Curtains , actress Lesleh Donaldson describes the Canadian slasher - filmed in 1980 but reshot, recut and finally released three years later - as an “endearing mess.” The same could be said for a lot of horror movies of that era, but Curtains is a true melting pot of old-school melodrama, art house aesthetics and typical teenagers in peril. The fact that there’s no possible way to make sense of it all only sweetens the deal. Samantha Eggar ( The Brood) plays an accomplished actress who has herself committed to an insane asylum as research for an upcoming role. But the film’s director (John Vernon) leaves her on the inside, staging an invite-only casting call at his snowy northern estate for six other actresses instead. Only five arrive, the other falling victim to a masked psycho accompanied by a creepy doll who seem intent on crashing the party…and killing off the competition. Shot with a surprising amount of panac...

Oh, Blue Underground, where have you been?! There are only a handful of independent home video companies that have weathered the digital dust-up of the last few years. And the very idea of collecting movies seems to be going the way of vinyl, consisting of either die-hard film aficionados or newly converted hipsters who snatch up collectible covers and limited editions with a gleeful giddiness that rivals the laserdisc era. Blue Underground was one of the first to bring Italian horror obscurities to the masses, but things had gotten pretty quite for a while there. So the blood-soaked Blu-ray double feature Hell of the Living Dead and Rats: Night of Terror is like a siren call to those who seek out bad cinema with the best presentation possible. Although both films credit director Vincent Dawn, the man behind the camera is actually Bruno Mattei, the Italian filmmaker also responsible for Women’s Prison Massacre and a slew of other genre knock-offs. His pseudonym was supposedly...

“What I really want to do is direct!” It’s a quote attributed to pretty much everyone in the film industry, from screenwriters to extras to craft services employees. But after creating the visual effects for Aliens and Predator back to back, Stan Winston actually earned his shot in director’s chair with Pumpkinhead (1988) . Truth be told, Winston had nothing to prove and a lot to lose, especially considering he was working in C-movie territory with no stars and a low budget. But his little under-the-radar horror movie shows he had skills that went beyond the latex workshop that made him an industry legend. Somewhere in the deep South (which looks conspicuously like California), Ed Harley (Lance Henriksen) is a humble country grocer who ekes out a living with his young son running a roadside stand. Their peace is interrupted by a noisy group of vacationers on their way to a family cabin. As fate would have it, Harley’s son winds up dead and he begins a quest for vengeance that...

Even though he doesn’t have much name recognition outside of the field, Richard Matheson was a giant in the supernatural, fantasy and science-fiction genre, having been responsible for some of the most memorable Twilight Zone episodes in the ‘50s, the Vincent Price / Edgar Allen Poe films in the ‘60s, Steven Spielberg’s Duel and Somewhere in Time in the ‘70s, not to mention the myriad attempts to adapt his novel I Am Legend to the screen. And if you still need some convincing, he was also one of the few novelists Hollywood-savvy enough to bring his own work to the screen on a regular basis. Such is the case with his screenplay for The Legend of Hell House (1973), based on his own novel published two years prior. Like much of Matheson’s work, the supernatural elements of the story are mixed with a modern approach, sending a scientific team of ghost hunters into the “Mt. Everest of haunted houses” with the goal of proving life after death. For their troubles an eccentric millio...