Movieline Online

“A southern gothic lesbian vampire story.” That’s co-star Kylie Brown’s description of The Unwanted , an unfortunately vague title for this modern updating of the Sheridan Le Fanu vampire story Carmilla which was adapted (multiple times) by Hammer Films in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when the studio looked to sexually adventurous material as their financial savior. It didn’t work then. And the results aren’t much better now. Writer/director Bret Wood avoids most of the obvious exploitation elements one would expect in a lesbian vampire movie; of which there are a surprisingly large amount to compare with, from Jose Ramon Larraz’s hypnotic Vampyres (1974) to the high-profile softcore sequence between Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger (1983). But the question is, Why ? Especially when, in the moments the film does give in to temptation, it’s a welcome and (let’s face it) expected bit of sexy bloodletting. Actually, The Unwanted isn’t sure it’s a vampire fil...

Wes Craven has the sort of name recognition other director’s dream about. But for a man with 29 projects on his resume he’s a curiously generic filmmaker. Much like Ron Howard, Craven seems to adapt to the demands of whatever movie is next on the docket. While that’s certainly not a bad thing, it’s out of character in the horror genre, which seems to produce low-budget auteurs on a fairly regular basis. But it’s actually the selling point for The People Under the Stairs , the second film in Craven’s two-picture deal with Alive Films that gave him complete creative control and a chance to recapture his mojo between the two franchises that would cement his reputation: Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream . Fool (Brandon Adams) is fighting a losing battle for a normal childhood in the LA ghetto. His mother is dying of cancer, his sister is turning tricks on the street, and her boyfriend/pimp (Ving Rhames) is planning a burglary that calls for a kid just his size. The target is th...

With X-Men: Days of Future Past , director Bryan Singer essentially plays a cinematic game of Jenga: carefully pulling out characters from one reality and stacking them precariously upon another. When it works, it’s a thrilling bit of gamesmanship. But it does leave an awful lot of holes! One supposed that the extra scenes included in the new Rogue Cut , which re-inserts a subplot involving Anna Paquin’s character, would fill some of the gaps and makes the entire structure a bit more stable. It doesn’t. But it does add some worthwhile moments that strengthen the relationships between the film’s characters, which, after all, is at the core of what the X-Men films are all about. Despite all the narrative razzle-dazzle, DOFP has a relatively clear-cut agenda for viewers to follow: Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) is sent back in time to prevent a future apocalypse in which all mutants are hunted by shape-shifting machines called Sentinels. In 1973, the man most directly responsible fo...

It’s should come as no surprise that The Black Stallion (1979), director Carroll Ballard’s poetic masterpiece of “kid friendly” filmmaking, has been added to the prestigious Criterion Collection. What is surprising is that it took so damn long! After a terrifying shipwreck, the only two survivors washed ashore on a deserted Mediterranean island are a young boy, Alec (Kelly Reno), and the wild Arabian horse that towed him to safety. Bonded by the experience, both boy and horse are rescued and returned to America where a chance friendship with a retired jockey (Mickey Rooney) pits Alec’s “Mystery Horse” in a race against the world’s fastest. The Black Stallion can be summarized with very little effort. But despite the simple story, broken essentially into two distinct halves, Ballard’s film is beautifully rich in both visuals and characters. Only his first feature, the director leans on his documentary background to capture a natural world still full of the mysteries and wonder...

Zone Troopers (1985) had very little chance of becoming anything other than a video store curiosity. Produced at a time when most kids were only interested in renting the goriest thing on the shelves, writer/director Danny Bilson’s homage to B-grade war movies and schlocky sci-fi was a poor match for tastes at the time. And, quite honestly, it’s still a bit of an odd duck now ! Given the chance to direct his own project after writing several hits for Charles Band (of the Empire and Full Moon dynasty), Bilson and co-writer Paul De Meo shot entirely in Italy with no supervision and came back with an endearingly earnest tribute to WWII TV shows like Combat! crossed with an Invaders from Mars twist that finds a squad of American GIs fighting to keep alien technology out of the hands of the Nazis. Tim Thomerson ( Trancers ) is the “Iron Sarge,” leading his surviving squad members behind enemy lines to safety. But their discovery of a crashed spaceship – and a surviving bug-like co-...

Mixing and matching monsters ( Frankenstein vs The Wolf Man vs Dracula ) always seemed to have successful results, particularly during the prime years of Universal’s gothic throwdowns. But pairing the men who played the monsters? Not so much. There were several attempts to provide horror stars like Peter Cushing, Boris Karloff, Christopher Lee and Vincent Price a venue in which they could all shine without being buried in make-up, but most (like Roger Corman’s The Raven ) were played for laughs rather than scares. Madhouse (1974) was the last collaboration between Vincent Price and American International Pictures, who had developed a mutually beneficial relationship that lasted nearly two decades and cemented Price’s reputation as the “gentlemen scholar” of fright flicks. Although, as a stand-alone picture, it’s far from the movie one would want to go out with, adding old pro Peter Cushing to double-down on the marquee value makes the movie somewhat of a nostalgic swan song for ...

If one is an admirer of lost studio classics (a category that Twilight Time has made enjoyably collectible for those of us who lean that direction) then The Young Lions is a very pleasant way to spend three hours. Starring a trio of top-billed names (Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin) drifting through the beginning, middle and end of WWII in various states of patriotic fervor, cowardly retreat and psychological trauma, director Edward Dmytrk’s film is unquestionably beautiful but often heaps on the pathos with a trowel to build its brick and mortar melodrama. Splitting the story into three tangents that must inevitably coverage, Christian (Brando) is an ambitious German soldier who begins to question the orders he’s forced to carry out. Michael (Martin) is a Broadway crooner who fights his impending draft with every personal favor he can call in. Meanwhile, Noah (Clift) agreeably enters basic training despite leaving behind a new bride and enduring constant ant-Semit...

“Keep it simple, stupid.” Although the mantra wasn’t meant for Hollywood, it’s unfortunately applicable in many a cinematic failure. Producer Sam Spiegel, however, subscribed to an entirely different sort of logic, specializing in grandiose pictures ( The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia among them) that featured sprawling international casts and difficult shooting locations in an effort to put every ounce of spectacle on the screen. The story at the heart of 1967’s The Night of the Generals is on a much more intimate scale: the investigation of a brutal murder in German occupied Warsaw whose chief suspect is an unidentified Nazi officer. But Spiegel can’t resist amplifying it with familiar A-list faces, overblown sets and even an elaborate plot to assassinate Hitler, none of which really supports the central narrative. But it does make for a compelling example of “big idea” filmmaking in an era when most stories were going small. Major Grau (Omar Sharif) i...

No offense to Roger Corman, but most of his best work was accidental. As a producer, his financial success was always a numbers game. But his creative success usually came at the hands of hungry young filmmakers who jumped at the chance to make a film their way within the boundaries of the Corman aesthetic. Pit Stop (1969) should have been nothing more than a down and dirty stock car picture designed to play drive-ins throughout the south, but writer / director Jack Hill had art film aspirations and gave Corman’s assignment a complete overhaul. Drag racer Rick Bowman (Richard Davalos) is recruited by track owner and master manipulator Grant Willard (Brian Donlevy) to compete on the chaotic figure-eight circuit, where drivers cross a deadly intersection twice every time around the track. Part demolition derby, part suicide run, the races are ruled by Hawk Sidney (Sid Haig), a gonzo competitor who takes an instant dislike to Rick. Willard uses their natural animosity to concoct...