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It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to say that Moulin Rouge ! (2001) single-handedly saved the Hollywood musical. At the very least, it proved that the genre was still commercially viable, which might be its biggest accomplishment in the long run. But much of the credit for that accomplishment is due to director Baz Luhrmann’s visual and structural re-invention of what a movie musical could be outside the restrictions of its frequent Disney-animated shackles. Curiously enough, director Michael Ritchie ( Fletch, The Bad News Bears ) was pursuing his own path towards the same ends six years earlier in 1995, adapting the long-running off-Broadway play The Fantasticks . Yet, unlike the stage production, which stripped everything down to the essentials (including a bare stage and two-man orchestra), Ritchie’s version is more akin to a revival than a re-invention; embracing the sort of grandiose scenery of classics like Oklahoma and shot with an eye that flatters the work of wide...

Director Yasuharu Hasebe’s Massacre Gun (1967) was a well-photographed but laconic rip-off of American film noir, set in smoky jazz clubs and dingy backrooms. His follow up for Nikkatsu, Retaliation (1968), gives those same ingredients an invigorating kick in the ass! Another in a long line of yakuza crime thrillers, the set-up might be familiar, but almost everything about the film’s visual style is unique. With a street-level POV, peeking through traffic, pedestrians or blades of grass, Hasebe’s camera is nearly always watching the action through some sort of clever obstruction. It’s a directorial conceit that might have been annoying, but instead gives Retaliation an artful authenticity that makes even the most mundane conversation interesting; a style that crime films in the U.S (like Bullitt and The French Connection ) would soon adopt for themselves. The story is yet another twist on Yojimbo with Jiro (Akira Kobayashi) planning to move in on a new territory by pitting to...

Produced just before the gooey practical effects boom went bust, Society (1989) is a bit of an anomaly amongst the ‘80s horror genre. Sure, there were others that had the same “anything goes” explosion of latex monstrosities ( TerrorVision ) and even a few that bothered to criticize Reagan-era economics ( They Live ). But Society is more of a throwback to the enjoyably paranoid plots of the Twilight Zone , preferring to keep things on a low boil of social class conspiracies…until the lid pops off in the final 15-minutes, resulting in a hot mess of bizarre creations dreamt up by Japanese effects artist Screaming Mad George which has kept the film’s cult reputation simmering for over 25 years. Bill (Billy Warlock) feels like an outsider, even though he’s from an elite family and one of the most popular students at Beverly Hill High. His weekly therapy sessions don’t seem to be helping and some strange occurrences keep piling up. When a friend finally confronts him with audio evid...

The common theory that mystery writers come up with the ending of their story first, then write their way backwards may or may not be true. But in the case of Arrow Video’s special edition of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Obsbourne , starting with the supplements before watching the movie itself is most certainly the way to go. Particularly for those who only have a cursory knowledge of Polish director Walerian Borowczyk, who filmed himself into a corner with a trio of scandalous soft-core French exports in the 1970s. DVD co-producer Michael Brooke provides a half-hour overview of Borowczyk’s career, complete with the director’s cinematic beginnings in animation (with a cut-paper style reminiscent of Terry Gilliam) through his far more notorious – and profitable – sexploitation films Immoral Tales and The Beast , which combined an art film aesthetic with copious amounts of sex, nudity and bestiality. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Miss Osbourne hits some of the sa...

2001: A Space Odyssey set a new precedent for realistic special effects in science-fiction films. In fact, it set the bar so high few studios or filmmakers were willing to take a chance on competing with its meticulous craftsmanship, fearful that audiences would snicker at the attempt...not to mention the risk of losing money, time, and effort spent trying to duplicate the model-sized masterpiece. But the trippy final act of Kubrick’s film had distinct coattail riding possibilities. No one was really sure what it was about, but the “kids” all seemed to dig those psychedelic visuals and cosmic philosophies. So it’s likely that angle (and the success of Deliverance ) that gave writer/director John Boorman the green light for Zardoz (1974); one of the more willfully bizarre movies ever released outside of the experimental film circuit. Set in the year 2293, mankind has evolved into a race of Eternals, perfectly coifed debutantes who live forever in a bubble-enclosed paradise....

Even cult film aficionados could be excused for asking, “Who the hell is Pete Walker and why does he have his own collection ?” The name doesn’t have the same buzz factor as Romero, Argento or even Ed Wood. But that’s part of what makes the horror genre so damn interesting: there’s always some clique that’s ripe for rediscovery and, potentially, a new addition to one’s collection. In the case of Pete Walker, a British director who worked the seedier side cinema during the ‘70s, this would be his second introduction for North American audiences after Kino / Redemption released their first Pete Walker Collection on Blu-ray last year. And like that previous set, The Pete Walker Collection Volume 2 contains an eclectic mix of genres mixed with a pair of the director’s earliest double-bills. For causing such a row in its native country, Frightmare (1974) is, like many British horror films of its era, rather polite about the sex, violence and cannibalism it presents onscreen. In...

Aussie exploitation began – and pretty much peaked – with the Mad Max (1979), director George Miller’s nasty revenge drama set in a dystopian semi-future where the roads are ruled by delinquent motorheads barely kept in check by an undermanned police force, including their top interceptor: Max Rockatansky (Mel Gibson). But the worldwide phenomenon of Max’s popularity didn’t kick in until the sequel – The Road Warrior – was released in 1981, starting an avalanche of copycat apocalyptic action movies that inevitably paled in comparison. Having seen what the franchise has become, it’s interesting to look back on how small the first film began, not just from a budgetary perspective but also in the scale of its storytelling. Mad Max is an origin story in the truest sense, introducing its hero with a sort of cinematic curtain raising; somewhere between the birth of a Greek god and Smokey and the Bandit . Certainly, no one had ever captured high-speed vehicular destruction like this b...

As a child, one uses a completely different set of criteria to judge Ray Harryhausen movies: namely the “monster-to-dialogue” ratio. If characters spend too much time pleasantly chatting and not enough time running for their lives from stop-motion animated creatures, it’s considered an epic fail. And by that standard alone, First Men in the Moon (1964) is probably the effects-master’s least satisfying film, with nearly 45-minutes of running time spent before we get a glimpse of our first Selenite, an insect-like moon creature that, although designed by Harryhausen, is portrayed by (gasp!) a child in a costume. However, as adults, with an appreciation for Harryhausen’s particular set of skills, one begins to pick up on exactly what makes First Men in the Moon such an interesting aberration in his career and, in many respects, one of his most well-rounded productions. And Twilight Time’s latest limited edition Blu-ray is instrumental in proving the case. On the run from his credit...

Although it qualifies as an “Ozploitation” picture, Long Weekend (1978) is a film that doesn’t fit comfortably into any category. And it’s that very off-centeredness that makes it so unique; shot with a disorienting sense of unease that seems to suggest something truly horrible is lurking at the fringes of the screen. By simplest description, the film falls into the “ Nature Strikes Back ” sub-genre, which includes insipidly enjoyable trash like Day of the Animals and Food of the Gods . But in actuality it leans closer to Hitchcock’s progenitor, The Birds , with it main characters’ emotional states reflected back at them in a most violent and unexpected way. On the cusp of a divorce, Peter (John Hargreaves) and Marcia (Briony Behets) head to a deserted beachside campsite for a three-day holiday. Trading arguments with attempts at reconciliation, the couple begins to notice that nature isn’t exactly rolling out the welcome mat. Animals from land, air and sea begin to act strangel...

1994’s Bandit Queen is a punishing film. But it’s also a beautiful one. Which perhaps metaphorically explains the persistence of its main character, Phoolan Devi, whose life seems to be made up of one on torture after another, interrupted by only the briefest moments of joy. According to director Shekhar Kapur’s film, it’s a life many Indian women born into lower castes are forced to endure thanks to religious and social mores that equate the female gender on the same level as dogs and livestock. Based on the book India’s Bandit Queen: The True Story of Phoolan Devi , the movie doesn’t shy away from the graphic rapes, beatings and emotional scars, beginning with her forced marriage at the age of 11 to a 30-year-old man. Raped just days after her wedding, Phoolan flees from household, which marks her as a lower class whore into early adulthood by the higher-caste Thakurs. Exiled from her village, Phoolan crosses paths with a group of bandits living in the countryside. Rescued...

Arrow Video USA is making quite a statement with its first four titles released in North America. The company has a well-established reputation for delivering exquisite collector’s editions of cult and classic titles alike in European markets. But here in the States they’re competing with a number of niche entities with loyal fans of their own like Blue Underground, Shout Factory and Twilight Time. So, just like the first day of school, first impressions are important. And films like Massacre Gun , a Japanese noir-gangster entry from 1967, prove that the company isn’t going to succumb to peer pressure. Starring Jo Shishido ( Branded to Kill ) as weary middle-management gangster Ryuichi Kuroda, he begins the film by murdering the woman he loves. Although Kuroda pulled the trigger, he was following the orders of his boss, Akazawa. Things reach the breaking point when Kuroda’s brother, a boxer, has his hands crippled for speaking out, ruining his career. Push finally comes to shov...

Even though the company was struggling to remain relevant in the late ‘60s, Hammer Films still cast a long shadow upon the British film industry, particularly when it came to horror and exploitation features. Witchfinder General , produced by rival studio Tigon, made a splash in 1968 by pursuing a more adult audience and taking a less fanciful approach to its gruesome material. Mark of the Devil , shot in ’69 but unreleased until 1973 due to its graphic content, extrapolated all this to its most extreme – and extremely well marketed – conclusion. Shot in Austria by writer / director Michael Armstrong, who was pushed off the picture by producer Adrian Hoven, there actually is a plot amongst all the torture, rape, stabbing, flaying and stake burning…but it’s certainly not what earned the film its cult reputation. Mark of the Devil is a movie that knows exactly what its purpose is: to shock. And it still does that quite well 45 years later. Charged with cleaning house after the...

Rarely would a true cineaste ever listen to a commentary track before watching the film itself. But that’s something to consider when it comes to Blind Woman’s Curse , a Yakuza / samurai / ghost story that is so unconventional is helps to actually have someone describe what you’re watching! Director Teruo Ishii was one of the premiere film stylists of Japanese exploitation, often focusing on the macabre, grotesque and flat-out bizarre aspects of otherwise predictable genres. Case in point, this period yakuza release from 1970 which goes off the narrative deep end compared to similar action releases from the era, but does give star Meiko Kagi a dry-run as a tight-lipped professional killer, a role she would perfect in the Lady Snowblood and Female Convict Scorpion series a few short years later. Here she plays Akemi Tachibana, respected head of the Tachibana gang, fending off a pair of rivals encroaching on her family’s traditional turf. But even more troubling than that is her...

There are literally hundreds of Italian westerns still waiting for release on any home video format; most of them copycat productions that haven’t aged quite as well as the films of Leone, Corbucci and Sollima (the unofficial “holy trinity” of the Spaghetti Western genre). So one must approach any new title with a certain amount of trepidation, relying on the taste of cult film labels to pick the cream of the remaining crop. And Arrow Video USA nailed it right out of the gate with their first North American Blu-ray debut, Day of Anger (1967). Directed by Tonino Valerii, Leone’s early assistant director and co -director on 1973’s My Name is Nobody , the film falls into the “tutorship variation” narrative, with Lee Van Cleef as aging quickdraw artist Frank Talby who arrives in the small town of Clifton looking for a place to retire in comfort. But men like Talby aren’t able to hang up their guns easily, so he trains a lowly street sweeper, Scott Mary (Giuliano Gemma) to be his righ...

With the wealth of biographical attention lavished on Roger Corman over the past decade, it’s become obvious that his “do-more-with-less” approach to filmmaking is based less on circumstances than genetics. Even when blessed with the largest budget of his career and an entire back lot at his disposal, rumor has it Corman brought in his major studio debut – The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967) – under budget and days ahead of schedule. Old habits die hard…just like the unlucky victims in this recreation of the most infamous event of the gangster era. Using old photos and historical documents as a guide, Corman went out of his way to make the film as accurate as possible, even using a Paul Frees voice-over to introduce each major player as they pop up. While the effort is admirable – and miles away from the director’s usual exploitation story structure – it’s also needlessly complicated. So much so that it’s difficult to keep up with cast of characters since the script seems to g...

Although modern scientists surely have a clear picture of what’s going on in the center of the Earth, layer by meticulous layer, I bet none of them accounted for fire-breathing toads or telepathic birdmen. So until proven otherwise, I suppose there’s still a chance that Pellucidar, the cavernous kingdom created by Tarzan author Edgar Rice Burroughs, is still waiting to be discovered. This 1976 film adaptation, At The Earth’s Core , (1976) was pretty juvenile stuff at the time of its release…and remains so today, thank goodness. Full of floppy rubber monsters, mushrooms the size of skyscrapers and cave girls who speak perfect English, director Kevin Connor was an old hand at this sort of escapist matinee fare, having already produced the similar Land Time Forgot and People Time Forgot . But the psychedelic color scheme and creative set design gives Earth’s Core a retina-searing edge over its competition. On a trial run of their new drilling machine, Dr. Abner Perry (Peter Cushi...

Movie stars are an endangered species. Especially those of the female persuasion, whose careers are often – unfairly – limited to how long they can remain visually appealing. And the brightest stars burn out the fastest. Case in point, Barbara Steele, the darkly luminous queen of Italian Gothic horror whose debut in Mario Bava’s Black Sunday led to a string of similar starring roles, including the latest to debut on Blu-ray: The Long Hair of Death (1964). Cast in dual roles once again, Steele plays the daughter of woman falsely accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake by command of a morally corrupt royal family. Despite trading her body for her mother’s life, both women are murdered, leaving a younger sister, Lisabeth as the family’s sole survivor. Years later, Lisabeth is forced to marry the very man responsible for her situation, Baron Kurt Humboldt, a spoiled, lustful thug who drags her to the altar. But supernatural forces tip the scales of justice as a mystery wom...

The horror genre demands a constant influx of new blood. From writers, directors, cast and special effects crew, the genre is a springboard to bigger and better things. But, like working at McDonalds, no one is really expected to make a career out of it. So you have to give those continue to stay scary by choice a bit of grudging respect…if might be the last they ever get. Director Brett Simmons had momentum on his side after turning his short film Husk into a feature in 2011, debuting as part of the AfterDark Film HorrorFest. His fast-paced, slick story about killer scarecrows made an impact with fans and proved he had a talent for making the familiar frightening. Three years and two films later, Simmons is still working in familiar territory with Animal (2014), an old-fashioned body count monster movie, but has a more difficult time upping the fear factor. Alissa (Keke Palmer) and her closest pals hike to their secret family campground but lose track of the trail and wind u...

A project that grew out of his lengthy interviews with Alfred Hitchcock (published in book form in 1967), director Francois Truffaut subjugates his more artistic tendencies in The Bride Wore Black (1968), a hypnotic revenge story that incorporates many of Hitch’s trademark cinematic tricks and is even set to a matching Bernard Hermann score. But the end result is more than a sycophantic homage; it’s an in vitro thriller that plays to the cheap seats and art crowds alike. With no preamble, the story introduces us to Julie Kohler (Jeanne Moreau) as she murders the first of her five planned victims: Bliss, a self-confessed playboy who she shoves off a balcony during his own engagement party. Coral, a failed romantic, Morane, a callous politician, Delvaux, a common criminal, and Fergus, an arrogant artist are all next on her list of targets. The reason for Julie’s mercilessly methodical act of retribution springs from the tragic death of her husband on their wedding day, shot dead on ...

You’ve got classic auteurs like Bergman, Truffaut and Ford. Modern guys like Kubrick, Scorsese and Coppola. Even the quirky independent minded fellas like Cronenberg, Lynch, and Wes Andersen. But what the hell do you do with someone like Larry Cohen? Here’s a guy who arguably has put up just as impressive a body of work, but gets none of the credit. Laboring on genre pictures like blaxsploitation, shoot-em-ups, and monster-on-the-loose flicks, just to name a few, that garner little or no respect from mainstream critics. While the big names walk away with all the awards, Larry Cohen’s work is more subversive, changing the genre from within, adding a twist where another director would walk a straight line. And God Told Me To might just be the perfect example of what his unique style of guerilla filmmaking is capable of; a high-concept story of gods, demons, and extraterrestrials that most filmmakers with triple the budget would be wary of attempting. As the film beings, NYC is under sieg...

Everyone loves an underdog…especially the Academy Awards. And Breaking Away (1979), the story of a tight-knit group of Bloomington, Indiana townies who go toe-to-toe against a well-trained team of frat boy bicyclists, is a perfect companion piece to Rocky , which won Best Picture just three years earlier. So even if the film’s five nominations weren’t exactly unprecedented (it took home only Best Original Screenplay), director Peter Yates’ production still feels like a breed apart from all the sports films that came before and after. Obsessed with all things Italian, Dave Stoller (Dennis Christopher) dreams of racing at the highest level, despite his “son of a stone-cutter” background in an economically depressed small-town. He and his other “Cutter” buddies (including Dennis Quaid, Daniel Stern and Jackie Earle Haley) face an aimless future after high school, a fact that the local college jocks are only too keen to rub in their faces. But Dave’s remarkable racing ability gives ...

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...