Movieline Online

Between the 4th and 5th installments of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, Robert “Freddy” Englund wound up scoring the role of his dreams. Pitched as a modern horror update to the classic Gaston Leroux novel, The Phantom of the Opera (1989) was filmed on recycled sets with a rushed schedule that took advantage of the then-popular Budapest tax breaks. Bookended with a pair of modern-day scenes, but mostly working within a period setting interrupted with flashes of gore straight out of the slasher genre, the film vacillates between a classy Hammer Films-style and Fangoria extremism. What should have been a complete disaster – and was a box-office dud – wound up as a vibrant and vicious retelling of an oft-repeated story. Lifting elements from the source novel, direct film adaptations and De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise , director Dwight Little ( Halloween 4 ) gives the film an unexpected bump in quality right out of the gate and isn’t afraid to emphasize the more artistic...

I imagine every filmmaker also considers themselves a movie fan . But when they succumb to the temptation to make a movie about the movies, things can get dicey. Tarantino, for example, seems to have lost himself in self-reflexive homages whose only function is to validate his inspirations. Meanwhile, back in 1985, Woody Allen took a right turn into pure fantasy with The Purple Rose of Cairo , a tender yet tragic story of the golden age of cinema brought to life…quite literally. Living hand-to-mouth during the Depression, Cecilia (Mia Farrow) finds escape from the drudgery of a boring job and a bad marriage at the local movie theater, which projects exciting, romantic and heroic exploits that provide a sort of temporary amnesia. One evening during her third or fourth screening of The Purple Rose of Cairo , starring charming up-and-comer Gil Shepherd (Jeff Daniels), the character he plays, Tom Baxter, steps right out of the screen and sweeps her off her feet. Multiple repercussio...

Much like its main character, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969) is deceptively dangerous. With a title and setting that suggests an inspirational ode to the wonders of a private school education, director Ronald Neame’s film (adapted from the novel by Muriel Spark) is instead a frightening profile of a woman whose abuse of power and politics in the classroom is a corrupting influence on all those around her. All the more shocking is the culprit behind this scandalous state-of-affairs: one Maggie Smith, currently the Dowager Countess of Grantham on Downton Abbey . Once the viewer adapts to the idea of Smith as the haughty, desirable Jean Brodie, a well-traveled connoisseur of the arts who passes on her love of culture to her students often at the expense of other academic pursuits, the story becomes a tragedy in the making…but exactly whose tragedy is the real question. Brodie, as a character, is a fascinating mix of contradictions, professing her commitment to her students wi...

Although its purpose for most is pure entertainment, cinema can make a most persuasive argument when called upon to do so. Case in point, Stanley Kramer’s 1960 film production of Inherit the Wind , based on the successful play which in turn was based on the highly publicized Scopes “Monkey” Trial of 1925 in which a Tennessee teacher was charged with breaking the law by introducing the concept of evolution to students in his classroom. The resulting media circus made headlines from coast to coast as the “backward” beliefs of the Bible belt were presented in 30-point font for all the world to see. Kramer’s film is decidedly biased (as was most of the country then and now) towards Darwin’s theory of man’s evolution from our slouching ape-like ancestors. Creationism - the idea that God planted humankind on Earth fully formed - is a hard pill to swallow. But Inherit the Wind wisely tackles an even bigger issue: a man’s right to think, to innovate, to argue, to disagree and, most impo...

Oliver Stone might very well have the most impressive string of films produced over the course of 10 years in the history of cinema. Starting in 1986 with Salvador and Platoon (released amazingly enough in the same year) all the way up to Natural Born Killers in 1994, the man could do no wrong. It was as if God had granted him a certain amount of time get his message across and the director was damn well going to make the most of it. Transitioning from standard Hollywood storytelling to an MTV shorthand that kept him one step ahead of his contemporaries, Stone only had one real dud in the whole decade: the third film of his Vietnam trilogy, Heaven & Earth (1993). Based on the memoirs of Le Ly Haslip, her story begins in an idyllic Vietnamese village that is quickly ravaged by the horrors of war. Caught between the seemingly patriotic ideals of the Viet Cong and the influx of American soldiers, her family is torn apart and forced to survive however they can. Le Ly (Hiep T...

The recent passing of director Mike Nichols heralded a celebration of his work, starting with his Oscar winning counter-culture hit The Graduate through his two-dozen odd credits on Broadway. Much deserved compliments abounded, not the least of which was the rather obvious statement, “the man knew how to make a hit.” Surprisingly, The Fortune (1975) wasn’t one of them. Starring the hottest properties in Hollywood (Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty) and a behind the scenes crew responsible for some of the ‘70s most celebrated films, the film nevertheless sank into the sort of obscurity even basic cable didn’t have the heart to recycle. In an effort to dodge the Mann Act of 1910 which prohibited transporting a woman across state lines for “immoral” purposes, Nicky (Beatty), a married man, convinces a naïve heiress, Freddie (Stockard Channing), to marry his partner-in-crime, Oscar (Nicholson), and run away as a threesome to California. While patiently working on his divorce, Nicky ...

Cinematic failures always seem to draw attention. There’s the catastrophic sort; the big budget, high profile vanity project that audiences slow down and gawk at like a freeway accident. And then there’s the quiet sort like Supernova (2000) that are released almost as an afterthought, flagged for failure by a studio just mitigating its losses. Responding to a deep space distress signal, a medical rescue team is met by a single survivor, a suspicious treasure hunter ( Twilight ’s Peter Facinelli) who brings a glowing inter-dimensional relic onboard that bestows youth and super strength on whoever comes in contact. As acting Captain, Nick Vanzant (James Spader) must rally his crew (including medical officer Angela Bassett) to dispose of the intruder and his device before they’re all sucked into the gravitational pull of a giant sun. Directed by Walter Hill ( The Warriors ) who shepherded the Alien franchise as a producer, Supernova works from a remarkably similar story…or maybe n...

If you don’t mind a quick digression, let’s take moment to lament the lost art of liner notes. While the ‘70s graced us with beautiful album covers often accompanied by informative introductions and anecdotes, the death of vinyl all but killed the written word when it came to music. Home video never even had glory days to wax nostalgic about, unless you count a few deluxe laserdisc titles. But niche DVD labels like Criterion and the short-lived NoShame resurrected the practice of including well-researched, entertaining essays that served as a gateway to the often outré material contained within. What’s the point, you ask? I’m paying to watch a movie, not read some chump’ s opinions . True, but chances are if you’re buying something like Slaughter Hotel or Werewolf Woman you’d likely appreciate the camaraderie of a fellow fan…not to mention a little back story on the production, which Raro Video’s new Blu-ray releases do quite well thanks to liner notes by Fangoria’s Chris Alex...

When a director’s name is used as an adjective it’s safe to assume they’ve reached the peak of cinematic immortality. Kubrickian, Spielbergian, Hitchcockian: one-word descriptions that provide a general feel for the work or its influences. While Otto Preminger never achieved such elevated status, he cultivated his reputation as a taboo-challenging director whose films were worthy of critical acclaim and big box-office returns, much like Hitchcock who seems to be the major inspiration behind Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), a progressively engaging mystery which used the same “no one admitted while the clock is ticking” gimmick as Psycho …as well as an inventive title sequence by Saul Bass. After dropping off her four-year-old daughter at a new school that morning, Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) returns for pick-up only to find her child, nicknamed Bunny, is missing. But not only is Bunny gone, the staff claims to have no knowledge of her whatsoever. The London police launch an investigat...

You don’t have to be a film critic to recognize the common elements in Terry Gilliam’s work. Beginning with his contributions to Monty Python and the Holy Grail , the director always seemed to gravitate to the more ridiculous aspects of our society. For Gilliam you’re either swallowed by the industrial machine or in a constant state of revolt against the same. Neither option seems to be a good theme for a kids’ film, which, based strictly on circumstantial evidence, Time Bandits in generally agreed to be. Gilliam’s second solo feature film is often disturbing, complex and mean-spirited. But it’s just as often hilarious, goofy and unarguably clever. All the ingredients are there for a fracturing of the classic fairy tale: seven dwarfs, magical maps, kings, queens, giants and ogres. But unlike Shrek , which simply littered its story with pop-culturisms for shock effect, Time Bandits goes much deeper down the theological rabbit hole. Kevin (Craig Warnock) is a curious kid who g...

Evil Dead 2 might just have been the most influential movie of its generation. Sam Raimi’s visually tricked-out action-horror spoof contained more imagination than all the other movies released in 1987 combined. And his anything-goes approach inspired a legion of up-and-coming directors who lifted bit and pieces but could never quite equal its inspired lunacy (except for perhaps Peter Jackson who shared the same sense of humor but with more blood and guts). While Raimi’s style has gone mainstream there are still a few aspiring auteurs of the grotesque looking to one-up the original. Norwegian writer/director Tommy Wirkola scored some cult acclaim with his 2009 Nazi zombie flick Dead Snow that stood out in a crowd of undead cash-grabs. Funny, energetic and unapologetically gory, the film became a word-of-mouth hit in the horror community and landed Wirkola a chance at the big time with 2013’s Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters . With a worldwide gross of over $200 million, the d...

Prison movies seem to strike a communal nerve, as if we were all pleasurably whacked on the knee by a tender old physician. Which is odd considering the genre itself is so uncinematic , playing out behind iron bars, brick walls and razor wire that limit our sense of scale and movement. But inherent is almost every screenplay in that longing for freedom - both physical and spiritual - that excuses a somewhat philosophical approach to what should be a soul-crushing scenario. This resonates quite clearly in 1962’s Birdman of Alcatraz , starring Burt Lancaster as the real-life (if somewhat sanitized) prisoner Robert Stroud, a convicted killer who experiences an unlikely transformation while serving his life sentence. Entering Leavenworth prison as an angry, unrepentant sociopath, Stroud runs afoul of the warden (Karl Malden) who promises to add whatever new punishment the law allows after Stroud murders a guard. But as the years slip by, Stroud begins to soften thanks to his adopted p...

Screenwriter Lem Dobbs sums up the significance of Elvis’ performance in Flaming Star (1960) quite succinctly as “the path not taken.” Rather than coast by on his good looks and a rousing theme song, Presley was determined to change the course of his acting career in this his first movie role after returning from the Army. Playing the “half-breed” younger son in a frontier family, the character of Pacer Burton afforded him the opportunity to actually emote alongside his fellow actors rather than just shake his hips. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the sort of performance audience’s had in mind for the King of Rock n’ Roll. Directed by Don Siegel, one of the few noteworthy directors Presley ever worked with, Flaming Star deals with the uncomfortable issue of racism packaged in a comfortable western format. The Burton family’s idyllic Texas range life is torn apart when a savage attack by a Kiowa Indian tribe upon their neighbors stirs up bad blood. Pacer and his full-blooded Kiowa mot...

Call it bad luck, bad karma or just bad timing; some folks never get the credit they deserve. Arch Oboler began his career with a breakout success on the 1936 radio program Lights Out , a weekly horror play that aired on NBC at midnight which allowed for much more edgy content. Oboler parlayed that success into a career in Hollywood and hit the jackpot again in 1952 with Bwana Devil , the first color 3D film that unleashed a tidal wave of imitators. But these accomplishments never made Oboler a household name, despite the fact that many of those inspired by his ideas and innovations (Rod Serling and Stephen King among them) did just that. Perhaps because Oboler, although quick to spot a trend, never took full advantage of the film medium. 1966’s The Bubble is a perfect example, shot with a new 3D technology that allowed for much simpler filmmaking techniques (and set the standard for every 3D film for the next 30 years), but burdened with a storyline that is a poor match for the ...

The Vanishing (1993) was blasted right out of the gate for simply attempting to replicate the eerie appeal of the original 1988 Dutch version, even though both films were directed by the same man, George Sluizer, who restages the story with a big-name cast, one major new character and a Hollywood ending that had critics crying foul. With a couple of decades of perspective, one can afford to be a bit more unbiased. And the truth is, the American version isn’t just bad by comparison, it’s bad all by itself. After a lover’s spat, Jeff (Kiefer Sutherland) and Rita (Sandra Bullock) pull in to a busy truck stop to refuel for their road trip. Rita, however, never comes back to the car. Years later, Jeff is still racked with guilt about her disappearance and obsessed with getting closure. His loyalty (and haggard appearance) wins the sympathy of a pretty waitress, Rita (Nancy Travis), who soon becomes his first follow-up relationship. Meanwhile, the film introduces us to Barney Cousin...

After debuting Demons and Demons 2 on Blu-ray in an exclusive steelbook format, Synapse Films has released a slightly less collectible but equally spectacular looking pair of stand-alone editions that epitomize the gonzo ‘80s Italian horror aesthetic. Produced by Dario Argento ( Suspiria ) and directed by Lamberto Bava (son of Mario), you won’t find a more silly, sick and visually slick double feature of Euro-splatter anywhere! Just don’t expect it to make any sense. At this point in his career Argento had drifted into a pattern of disconnected imagery tied with the loosest of narrative threads, designed more like Fangoria photoplays than linear stories. And apparently he developed Demons and its sequel along the same lines, packaging both films with a prefabricated heavy metal soundtrack built around some outstanding make-up effects by Sergio Stivaletti. There’s a screenplay in here somewhere, but it’s practically non-essential. Demons begins with a disfigured servant of Sa...

Shock Waves has been lying undiscovered in the cult movie ocean for decades, much like the undead Nazi soldiers in the film itself. Even Blue Underground’s original 2003 release on DVD didn’t generate the sort of attention the film deserved for creating a fever-dream atmosphere quite unlike any zombie film before or since. But with zombies still firmly in command of our movies, TV and video games, director Ken Wiederhorn’s prune-faced corpses are rising from the depths in a brand-new Blu-ray edition that’s destined to win over new fans. Shipwrecked on a small island off the Florida Keys, a group of tour boat passengers and her crew search for shelter in an abandoned hotel only to be greeted by a former German SS commander (Peter Cushing) who tries to scare them off. His warning, however, comes too late as some sort of natural disaster has awoken his troop of super soldiers just offshore. Now these unstoppable killing machines are stalking everyone on the island, intent on draggi...

In the ‘80s movies were bit like top-40 radio, you got a little of everything. Oscar bait such as Gandhi and Out of Africa existed in a comfortable box-office balance with escapist summer fare like Return of the Jedi …much the same way Casey Kasem could play Lionel Richie and Men At Work back to back without missing a beat. But even in this glorious melting pot of an environment, a film like Under Fire was probably out of touch with what audience’s were willing to pay for. With CNN broadcasting about the chaos and corruption in Central America 24 hours a day, the story of a trio of journalists caught up in those same explosions and petty politics probably felt more like “bad news” than a good time at the movies. In the film’s defense, Under Fire does a fine job of making the situation understandable and personal . Nick Nolte, whose disheveled-look was working in his favor here, plays Russell Price, a hardcore news photographer who specializes in getting the shots no one else ...

Satan worshippers have been a literary and cinematic standby for ages. But in the real world could all those demonic conspiracies really operate undiscovered? Think about it; if the finale of Breaking Bad can’t be kept on the down low for 24 hours, what chance does Lucifer have of quietly conquering the world?! Which just goes to show that one’s suspension of disbelief is severely put to the test in The Believers (1987), starring Martin Sheen as a police therapist whose family is targeted by a rogue cult with connections reaching into some of the highest levels of corporate America. Mark Frost’s script – based on a novel by Nicholas Conde – makes no bones about his condemnation of the rich and powerful, characterizing the lot as ruthless elitists willing to exchange their first born for a golden ticket to the 1% club. It’s a timely criticism (then and now ) exaggerated to almost comic effect. But it’s also a predictable one that never colors outside the lines, despite having a...

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then Jennifer (1978) is practically drooling over Brian De Palma’s Carrie . The details are tweaked just enough to avoid a lawsuit, but the story follows the same general trajectory: mousy outsider is teased relentlessly by a gang of mean girls at an elite prep school until a psychic powered rampage evens the score. Only this time, the telekinetic connection is between a girl and her snakes ! Despite the copycat plot, Jennifer works remarkably well until the big finale. Actress Lisa Pelikan has the same sort of timid appeal as Sissy Spacek (and even manages a Southern accent) while the cast of bullies, led by Amy Johnston, is wonderfully despicable. There’s a reason so many films rely on the tortures of high school social status: because no matter how ridiculous the hazing gets, it’s still sickeningly believable. There’s no pig’s blood here, but Jennifer suffers from plenty of nasty frame-ups, dead pets and even nude photos of her...

The late ‘80s was a great time to be a cinematic serial killer. Not only were you a menace to society when you were alive , but you were even more dangerous after you were dead ! Part of a natural progression of the slasher genre, Shocker and The Horror Show both introduced villains who returned from the grave with supernatural powers to continue their bloody business. Peter Jackson’s The Frighteners (1996) eventually took the whole thing to a big-budget extreme, but wedged somewhere in between is The First Power (1990), starring Lou Diamond Phillips as an L.A. cop who has to catch the bad guy again after his spirit returns for a post-mortem rampage. More action movie than straight-up horror, the film gets a ton of mileage out of actor Jeff Kober as Patrick Channing, the Pentagram Killer, who believes his status as one of the devil’s favorite disciples will grant him “the first power:” resurrection. And, what do you know, it does! Which leads to him body swapping all over t...

Not every antique is worth money. And not every black-and-white film is a classic. In fact, early Hollywood pumped out scads of films that weren’t worth the celluloid they were printed on. Which is why it’s such a pleasant surprise to discover an uncut gem like 1932’s The Death Kiss amongst all that costume jewelry. Carrying over much of the cast from the previous year’s Dracula - including Bela Lugosi in a small but important role as an executive at a movie studio whose big star is gunned down on the set of his latest picture - The Death Kiss is a fun little murder mystery set against the backdrop of the burgeoning Hollywood system. David Manners plays the smart-mouth screenwriter who stays one step ahead of the police in an attempt to keep his leading lady (Adrienne Ames) out of trouble while Lugosi leads a parade of possible suspects that includes the head gaffer, penny-pinching producer, and the director himself (Edward Van Sloan, aka Abraham Van Helsing). The Death Kiss ...

While one might think that professional film critics (of which there are but a handful remaining who earn a full-time paycheck) take an unofficial oath to be impartial, objective observers of the cinematic arts, nothing could be further from the truth. The late Roger Ebert, arguably the most transparent and relatable critic of his time, fawned over some of the most frowned upon genre fare out there…and even wrote some pop trash of his own ( Beyond the Valley of the Dolls ). People who watch movies for a living sometimes fall in love with them just like you do…and often have an equally hard time justifying why. With a film like My Darling Clementine (1946), justifying one’s admiration is easy. Not a decade has gone by that John Ford’s sentimental retelling of the gunfight at the OK Corral hasn’t landed in the top five Westerns of all time…usually fighting for space with the director’s other masterpiece, The Searchers . And while Clementine saddles up same western clichés, it doe...

Unless you’re a 6 year-old girl, there’s nothing particularly terrifying about worms. So as a late entry in the Nature Strikes Back genre that kicked off in the post- Birds era - including Food of the Gods and the giant mutant bunnies from Night of the Lepus – writer / director Jeff Lieberman really has his work cut out for him with Squirm (1976). Working with a cast of New York unknowns and non-actors hired on location in Georgia, the films’ real star is a swarm of flesh-eating earthworms brought up to the surface by downed electrical wires. In the extras on Scream Factory’s new collector’s edition Blu-ray, Lieberman claims he had a tongue-in-cheek approach in mind from the very beginning. But most of the humor is of the unintentional variety, the sort that winds up featured on MST3K (in fact, Squirm was roasted by the ‘bots in episode 12 of Season Ten), headlined by some atrocious acting from the local yokels who wind up as part of the slimy buffet line. Mick (Don Scardin...

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) paired two of America’s most handsome and profitable stars and became the template for buddy-action-comedies everywhere. Meanwhile, the Italian film industry, always quick to cash in on a trend, released Companeros (1970) the very next year, teaming up their hottest homegrown western stars - Franco Nero and Tomas Milian – for a similarly playful adventure set amidst the chaos of the Mexican Revolution. Actually, Companeros lifts a lot of material from a lot of different movies, especially the political-minded Spaghetti Westerns of Damiano Damiani like A Bullet for the General . Heck, it even recreates the slow-motion machine gun finale from The Wild Bunch not once but twice ! But even though it’s built from a lot of spare parts, director Sergio Corbucci’s film seems to have only stolen from the best. Which makes for a familiar but always entertaining collection of greatest hits. Drifting into the middle of a war zone between a capita...

Character actors do most of the heavy lifting in Hollywood. A little more rough-around-the edges than the primped and pampered leads, their job is to provide detail without distraction. So it’s rare to find one elevated above their station like James Woods is in Salvador (1986), Oliver Stone’s pre- Platoon dramatic thriller set against a Reagan-era backdrop even more politically confusing than the situation in Vietnam. To be fair, Woods was on quite a roll in the ‘80s. Despite a face one would never call traditionally handsome (or maybe because of it), he was cast as the flawed protagonist in several critically acclaimed productions including Videodrome , Once Upon a Time in America and True Believer . Like a lot of character actors, Woods never seemed to be acting at all …he simply blended in like a pre-existing cinematic condition. But Salvador gave him the chance to lay it all on the table with a character unlikable enough to be the villain in almost any other movie. A pe...

Frederick Forsyth’s The Dogs of War (1974) was not so much as novel as a “how-to” guide for aspiring mercenaries, detailing the complicated minutia of planning, staging and executing a corporate-financed coup d’état in the fictional African country of Zangaro; its characters roughly sketched stand-ins moving around the globe like chess pieces waiting to make their strategic moves. As compelling as that process can be on the page, a movie adaptation demanded a few changes, most notably in the lead character of Jamie Shannon, played by Christopher Walken, whose unique and magnetic presence gives weight to a role that’s still underwritten. Opening with an explosively dramatic escape from an African airfield, Shannon and his team make it back to civilization and part ways waiting for their next job. It comes in the form of a mysterious executive-type who hires them to replace a brutal dictator with a more amenable leader of their own choosing. Although the reasons aren’t made quite cl...

Catalog releases of studio classics have officially become a niche product. So where does that leave titles like The Killer Elite (1975), which, despite being directed by Sam Peckinpah, don’t qualify for the sort of classic status that would demand a hi-def release of any kind? It’s actually a perfect fit for Twilight Time’s limited edition business model, delivering 3000 copies into the hands of collector’s and then gifting them with a true rarity in the form Peckinpah’s Noon Wine , a 1966 TV production never before available on any home video format. The Killer Elite fits nicely amongst the covert conspiracy films that seemed to propagate in the post-Watergate era. But the complicated plot, which involves a CIA shadow company hired to protect defecting foreign diplomats while on American soil, is so much smoke and mirrors. The only narrative thread that matters is the one involving Mike Locken (James Caan) and George Hansen (Robert Duvall), former agents and partners now pla...

For a bio-pic about the meteoric rise and tragic death of Ritchie Valens, it’s curious that La Bamba (1987) chooses to shift the focus to a different tragedy altogether. Lou Diamond Phillips makes for a charismatic – if a tad too squeaky clean – leading man. But it’s co-star Esai Morales who has the more compelling role as his brother Bob, a tortured, alcoholic trouble-maker who sinks even further into despair when Ritchie hits it big. Unlike its companion piece, The Buddy Holly Story (1978), La Bamba isn’t really about the music. Writer / director Luis Valdez emphasizes the broken families and harsh conditions that kept Latinos trapped in their basement barrios with little hope of moving up and out. It’s not subtle, but it gets its point across. Ritchie bears the burden of everyone’s dream for a better car, a better home and a better life. Everyone except Bob, that is, who resents his brother’s success and favored status in the family. Morales’ portrayal of the conflicted pr...

The sneaky truth about most ghost stories is they’re more concerned with the hauntees than the haunters . The supernatural seems to have more influence over those who are already a bit disturbed to begin with. Which describes the heroine of 1961’s The Innocents , based on Henry James classic The Turn of the Screw , to a tee. Miss Giddens is a sheltered pastor’s daughter who secures her first position as governess for a pair of precocious children, Flora and Miles, on an isolated country estate. From her very first day strange occurrences begin to peek through the idyllic façade: whispered voices, pale figures and odd behavior by her two young students. A bit of detective work reveals that the previous governess met an unfortunate end…right after her lover, the estate’s valet, did the same. And Miss Giddens begins to suspect that the children were not only under their evil influence when they were alive , but even more so now that they’re dead . The Innocents is a perfect ghos...

As the disaster movie phase of the ‘70s was winding down and the sci-fi craze was just heating up, someone finally came up with the peanut-butter and chocolate inspired idea of putting both together in the form of Meteor (1979), starring Sean Connery and a supporting cast of aging studio stars as they attempt to nuke an asteroid hurtling towards earth. It’s a good idea that was recycled (twice!) in 1998 when Armageddon and Deep Impact battled for box-office supremacy. Meteor delivers more political scuffles than worldwide destruction, though, in a film that seems to have had little budget left for special effects after writing all those zeroes on Connery’s check. But it might have been worth it. Connery’s permanently pissed-off expression is the most dramatic thing about the movie. As Paul Bradley, an ex-NASA scientist whose armed Hercules satellite and its Russian counterpart is mankind’s only hope, the former 007 manages to make the extinction-level threat seem convincing ev...

Italian horror director Michele Soavi is a third generation copy, the recipient of a symbolic torch passed from Mario Bava ( Black Sunday ) to Dario Argento ( Suspiria ) to himself. So it’s not necessarily his fault if the torch was getting a little dim by this point. Italian horror itself had run the giallo into the ground and been trumped by the profuse amount of copycat American slashers. Soavi, an actor who worked his way behind the camera, gleaned just enough from his mentors to make Stage Fright (1987) a cut above similar titles of the day…but not enough to top the films that inspired him. Set amongst a bickering troupe of stage actors rehearsing for an upcoming show, the murder of a crewmember changes the course of the production, with the dictatorial director locking the cast inside for an all-night rewrite session. Unfortunately, the killer is locked inside with them ; a psychotic actor with 16 deaths already on his resume who dons an oversized owl mask and starts makin...

It goes without saying that not every film is a classic. In fact, most are pretty routine. But even amidst a formulaic thriller or a teenage melodrama there are moments of cinematic inspiration than peek out of the mediocrity. The Secret of Santa Vittoria (1969) is a better than average studio picture made in an era when studios were struggling to find their place. Weighed down with romantic subplots and a manufactured sense of Hollywood cheer, it nevertheless captures one glorious moment that makes the entire film a worthwhile viewing experience. That tide turning moment comes about halfway through a picture that struggles to find its footing. Anthony Quinn stars as Bombolini, the resident drunk of a quiet Italian village on the brink of German occupation during the end of WW2. With a cellar full of more than a million bottles of wine, Santa Vittoria’s supply is sure to be stolen by the Germans unless a plan can be hatched at the last minute. But with Bombolini elected mayor ...