Movieline Online

If the success of 1969's Easy Rider proved one thing, it's that Hollywood had no idea what it was doing. The studios were playing catch with an audience that was one step ahead of them and an accidental windfall like the Peter Fonda / Dennis Hopper counter culture phenomena wasn't going to happen every week. So they handed over the creative reigns to a generation anxious to do something different resulting in a watershed moment for American cinema in the early '70s. But sometimes, those responsible for such creative innovation got left behind. For his directing debut, Peter Fonda probably couldn't have chosen a more risky project than The Hired Hand (1971). The low-budget affair wasn't financially precarious, but saddling up in a genre that his famous father pretty much owned was a far cry from his previous success as a pot-smoking, motorcycle-riding rebel. And, as an actor, Fonda pales in comparison, cutting the same lanky, dramatic figure, but wit...

Horror, as a genre, is infinitely adaptable; meaning the same story can be repurposed by different filmmakers with entirely different results. For example, Impulse (1984) and Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988) share a government-conspiracy, environmental disaster plot line that is nearly identical. Yet the style, tone and execution of each script veer in wildly different directions. Produced well-before the cinematic zombie renaissance, Impulse feels like the illegitimate love-child of George Romero's The Crazies and Cronenberg's Shivers mixed in with a few chapters of Stephen King's The Stand for good measure. But despite those better-known inspirations, director Graham Baker's film has a leg up on all of them by virtue of its superior cast and production values. Arriving in the small town of Stubbenfield, big city power couple Jennifer and Stuart immediately notice that something is amiss: people are becoming emotionally unhinged, acting upon their ...

Sure, Prozac and Zoloft are a miracle of medical science. But for a natural pick-me-up, you can't do much better than My Sister Eileen , a zippy 1955 musical from Columbia with a screenplay from Blake Edwards and cutting-edge choreography by none other than Bob Fosse, who's also one of the co-stars in this story of two Ohio sisters trying their luck on the mean streets of Manhattan. With an emphasis on footwork over catchy songs (although it has a couple of those, to boot), director Richard Quine's film puts plenty of razzle-dazzle on the screen...and a good amount of stars, too! Arriving from Columbus with dreams of making it big, Ruth Sherwood (Betty Garrett) and her sister Eileen (Janet Leigh) have no job prospects and a quirky apartment full of equally quirky - but encouraging - residents. A natural beauty, Eileen tests the waters as an actress with the help of a local soda jerk (Fosse). Ruth, used to playing second best, attracts the attention of a playboy publ...

Though its poster promises monumental entertainment the likes of Ben Hur and similar Hollywood historical epics, 1965's Genghis Khan is a really nothing of the sort. Sure, there are a pair of battle sequences involving hundreds of armored extras, swordplay, stuntmen and stunt horses, set against an impressive widescreen landscape. But they're almost presented as afterthoughts in this story of Temujin, a Mongol boy raised as a prisoner of war who rises to power by uniting the warring tribes of central Asia, eventually earning the title Genghis Khan: ultimate ruler. Director Henry Levin's take on things is much more character (or in some cases, caricature ) driven, starting with Tauzin’s escape from captivity and recruitment of new soldiers to establish his empire from the ground up. Traveling to China, he finds a world of wisdom at his fingertips, but chafes at his position as second in command. Ambition drives him further west, swallowing up new recruits and conqu...

Relationship movies - specifically romantic ones - offer seemingly infinite variations on the theme of love. Maybe that's because, besides our own emotional hang-ups, society is always introducing new speed bumps in the path of true happiness. Such is the case with 1970's Take A Girl Like You , a romantic comedy that runs head first into the sexual revolution and comes back with a bit of a concussion. Set in a small English town, professional bachelor Patrick Standish (Oliver Reed) sees his seduction of the new teacher in town, Jenny (Hayley Mills), as just another conquest. But when she thwarts his sexual advances on the grounds of retaining her virginity, Patrick begins, first, to question "why"....then to question the very lifestyle that he - and the new social mores of free love and sexual liberation - have taken for granted. An odd mixture of meet-cute clichés (set to saccharine-sweet pop songs from The Foundations, no less) and serious emotional pathos, di...

There's really no defense for a movie like Doom Asylum (1987) - a prefabricated cult horror/comedy that typifies the straight-to-video market of the era. With a cast of ex-centerfolds (Patty Mullen), genre veterans (Ruth Collins), up and comers (Kristin Davis of Sex and the City ) and a slew of one-and-dones, the film should have simply vanished into VHS purgatory. But there's something so left-of-center about director Richard Friedman's slice of '80s cheese that it survives as a bizarre shared experience, like a cinematic chain letter no one wants to end. After a car accident, Mitch Hansen winds up on the coroner's table. Trouble is, he's not quite dead. Mad with grief over the death of his hot girlfriend, he kills the technicians about to cut him open and takes up residence in an abandoned asylum where he become the stuff of local legend. 10 years later, a pack of wandering partygoers fall right into his lap, providing a new supply of victims for h...

At its peak, the Italian film industry had no qualms about cannibalizing a successful genre until there was nothing left but a picked over skeleton. But in 1971, Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage was still a ripe source of material (and titles) for producers to emulate, pushing the giallo format to new levels of onscreen sex and violence. The Case of the Scorpion's Tail is actually more restrained than some latter titles, but still offers up one heck of a bonkers screenplay by Ernesto Gastaldi and energetic direction from Sergio Martino, the two of whom would collaborate several more times in the coming decade. After the death of her husband, Lisa Baumer travels to Greece to collect on the million-dollar insurance policy. But her every move is watched by a greedy mistress out for a piece of the fortune and an insurance agent, Peter Lynch (George Hilton) who suspects it's all a big scam. After a series of murders - and an attempt on his life - Peter...