Movieline Online

With the release of his fifth feature film, Deep Red (1975), Dario Argento was probably starting to believe his own hype. As the “Italian Hitchcock,” he’d proven himself a bankable director of international thrillers (and one obscure Western) who’d inspired hundreds of imitators in his own country and abroad. The competition was getting fierce. So Argento fired off one last salvo into the crowded giallo genre that would end the debates and put him firmly back on top. Deep Red is one of those films that catch a director working at the top of his game working with deceptive ease. David Hemmings, in a variation of his role in Blow Up , is the witness to a brutal crime who believes he saw a vital clue to the killer’s identity…but can’t quite recall the evidence of his own eyes. With the help of a nosy reporter (possible killer #1) and a fellow musician (possible killer #2), Hemmings stays one step ahead of a string of vicious murders that target anyone involved in the crime. Unl...

Inspired by the "bystander effect" documented after the 1964 rape and murder of Kitty Genovese where 37 witness allegedly did nothing to stop the attack, The Incident (1967) is constructed like a modern-day disaster film, introducing a eclectic cast of subway passengers who find themselves tormented by a pair of loose cannons (played to the hilt by Tony Musante and Martin Sheen) on a late-night ride to Times Square. As the duo pokes and prods for weak spots, no one bothers to lift a finger, content to allow the verbal and physical abuse to continue until someone else intervenes. It's a shameful game of chicken amongst strangers who count on anonymity as their only precarious protection. Shot in authentically urban black and white, but actually filmed on a clever subway set, The Incident does a wonderful job setting the stage for its stop-start morality play. Nicholas Baehr's script takes its time arranging each passenger's personal baggage then lets its a...

Much like the early work of Tim Burton, the films of director Frank Henenlotter exist in their own twisted universe. Only instead of a gothic suburban fairyland, Basket Case (1982) puts down stakes in a seedy Times Square hotel populated by an endearingly colorful collection of hookers, thieves and pimps. The newest tenant is Duane Bradley (Kevin Van Hentenryck), a naive upstate import whose most defining characteristic is the large wicker basket he carries under his arm. What's in the basket? Why, his separated Siamese twin, Belial, who looks more like a stumpy octopus, on a mission of revenge against the doctors who performed their illegal operation and "broke up the band," so to speak. Inheriting the "Midnight Movie" mantle from Rocky Horror (it had a two year run at one famous NYC theater), Basket Case wormed its way into the horror genre like a venereal disease. But Henenlotter's film has a DIY aesthetic that's charming even when it's...