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Even if one is able to separate Woody Allen’s personal life from his professional one, the majority of his films are categorically divisive. Not in the political or sociological sense. It’s purely about the jokes; you either get ‘em or you don’t. A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy is one of Allen’s final stabs at the free-form ensemble farce, produced in 1982 and marking the first appearance of Mia Farrow in his ever-expanding cinematic universe. Taking equal inspiration from Shakespeare and Ingmar Bergman with a predictably Borscht Belt bent, the film gathers three couples for a weekend in the country that turns into a partner-swapping debacle of ‘70s sitcom proportions. Sexually troubled couple Andrew (Allen) and his wife (Mary Steenburgen) play host to the soon-to-be-married Leopold (Jose Ferrer), a pretentious professor pushing seventy, and the much younger Ariel (Farrow), who Andrew let slip away a decade earlier and now pursues with puerile vengeance. Also in the running for...

In the early days of Universal, the studio made a killing combining their catalog of monsters: Dracula, the Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s Monster. They were all tossed in the ring like a cinematic cage match, satisfactorily vanquished and then resurrected again for another round. By 1983, most of the classic movie monsters had faded away. But the men who played them were still available. Which explains the all-star cast of House of the Long Shadows , director Pete Walker’s final film, which gathers Vincent Price, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee and John Carradine for an old-fashioned thriller set in a comfortably spooky old house where everyone has gathered for a family reunion. Only the guest list includes one family member who is out for bloody revenge! After betting his publisher he can knock out a book in 24 hours, writer Kenneth Magee (Desi Arnaz Jr.) sets up shop in an isolated country estate. But his plans are interrupted by a series of unexpected guests - the elderly members...

What George Romero did with zombies in Dawn of the Dead , director Marco Ferreri does with food in La Grande Bouff e (1973), a seriously satirical indictment of our culture of excess represented by four men at the top of their profession who make a suicide pact of the most unusual sort: death by overindulgence! Played by a quartet of Europe’s most well known actors at the time (Marcello Mastroianni, Michel Piccoli, Philippe Noiret, and Ugo Tognazzi), the characters gather in a decaying mansion to eat, drink and screw themselves to death. Their funereal celebration expands to include a trio of prostitutes and one chubby schoolteacher, Andrea, who accepts their invitation to dinner. As the days and nights pass, the constant parade of meats, soufflés and sex begins to take a toll on their physical and mental states. And, surprisingly enough, it’s the innocent Andrea who cheers them on towards their despairingly gluttonous demise. Ferreri’s film, which caused a stir at its Cannes pr...

For next generation cinephiles, Samuel Fuller is somewhat of an unknown, despite being the subject of study and praise by the Spielberg and Scorsese set. Likely because his films, while always profitable, were too disconcerting at the time of release to garner the sort of beloved popular attention that ensures multiple re-releases and TV air play. It wasn’t until the auteur theory broke big that Fuller’s films started to separate themselves from the pack. And House of Bamboo (1955) might be the best example of what the director was capable of accomplishing within the studio system, a reengineered remake of 1948’s The Street with No Name transposed to a post-war Japan still reeling from an influx of American GIs and a simmering culture clash. Charged with infiltrating a gang of ex-enlisted men who’ve staged a series of daring robberies in Tokyo, an army investigator (Robert Stack) takes on the false identity of one Eddie Spanier to earn the trust of the gang’s mastermind, Sandy (Ro...

No one stays on top forever. And the rise and fall of Hammer Films, one of England’s most prominent and profitable film production companies, has been well documented. There was plenty of blame to pass around for their eventual demise, but the most common excuse is the studio’s slow-moving Gothic horrors couldn’t compete with the modern excesses of films like The Exorcist . Great Britain was just too damn polite to wallow in pea soup! Jimmy Sangster should get as much credit as anyone for Hammer’s early success, with winning screenplay adaptations for all the early classics like Horror of Dracula and The Curse of Frankenstein as well as a slew of Psycho rip-offs. But even he wasn’t immune to getting stuck in a rut, if, by example, one is to use his script for 1978’s The Legacy , an outdated drawing room horror flick that seems to have been filmed 20 years too late. Pete and Margaret (played by real-life couple Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross) are lured to jolly old England for ...

The devil got blamed for everything in the ‘70s: impregnating newlyweds ( Rosemary’s Baby ), spinning heads ( The Exorcist ), baby swapping ( The Omen ), even chasing campers around Texas in a beat-up RV ( Ride with the Devil ). So creating a new scenario was almost as simple as shuffling a deck of cards and rearranging the plot points. At least, The Sentinel (1977) certainly feels like a film inspired by the satanic cinema trends that came before it, although the book by Jeffrey Konvitz was written several years earlier. (Spoilers ahead…browse carefully) Here our vulnerable fashion model protagonist, Alison (Cristina Raines), rents a brownstone apartment to prove her independence from longtime lawyer boyfriend, Michael (Chris Sarandon). Her neighbors are a motley crue of misfits, eccentrics and perverts, only too eager to get chummy with the new resident. But when Alison complains to the real estate agent (Ava Gardner), she’s told the entire building is completely empty …exc...

Criticized for its style over substance approach upon release, what most critics failed to predict about Tony Scott’s, The Hunger (1983), at the time was that it would worm its way like a virus into the very core of Hollywood filmmaking. Not only that, but truth be told, his music video aesthetic was a perfect match for the story of club-hopping, debutante vampires existing at the tippy-top of New York society. It may not be as well rounded or artistic as it pretends to be, but compared to other mainstream films from the era, The Hunger looks positively cutting edge. Opening with an exhilaratingly edited seduction sequence intercut with a performance of Bela Lugosi is Dead from the Goth-group Bauhaus , Miriam and John Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve and David Bowie) feed on their latest victims after luring them to their palatial apartment. But the fresh blood does nothing to rejuvenate John, who, at 200 years old, is finally beginning to show his age. Like the rest of Miriam’s longt...

I’m sure nearly every review of Police Story: Lockdown (2013) will comment on the advancing age of Jackie Chan, who, along with the other old school ‘80s action heroes, seem to be treating fans to one last gasp of authentic, smash mouth cinema before going quietly into the night. While Stallone and Schwarzenegger try to squeeze into their now ill-fitting iconic roles, Jackie rolls with the punches, delivering just enough of his familiar (but still amazing ) stunt work balanced in moderation with a more serious, subdued performance. In short, the guy still has the moves…just not as much endurance. Almost all the Police Story films, starting with the original in 1985, are stand-alone stories, bouncing from serious drama to comedic spy-kitsch. But Lockdown is perhaps the darkest of the bunch, with a Rasho mon -style flashback structure used to add some depth what would otherwise be a fairly derivative Die Hard rip-off (we haven’t seen one of those in a while!) with Jackie cast as...

Although he hasn’t made a film since 2003’s Basic and spent a year behind bars on a perjury conviction, director John McTiernan can still brag about stringing together one of the hottest hat tricks in Hollywood history: Predator, Die Hard and The Hunt for Red October . Produced back to back, it’s an astonishing cinematic accomplishment that essentially set the tone for modern action movies. But just one year before he was sweating it out in the jungle with Arnold, McTiernan was writing and directing a small supernatural thriller – Nomads (1986) – with Pierce Brosnan as a French anthropologist who discovers that the punk rockers stalking around his neighborhood are much more (and less ) than they appear to be. A recent AFI graduate, McTiernan’s debut is a showy mess of flashbacks and flash-forwards, purposefully pretentious in a film school sort of way. But for all its flaws, Nomads is a uniquely engrossing experience, making great use of Bill Conti’s keyboard and guitar music s...

Even if most fans won’t admit it, it’s getting harder and harder to defend some of the broadcast TV creature features many of us grew up with. Re-watching 1950s “monster on the loose” flicks with fresh eyes (and a discriminating child or two) one begins to notice the plodding pace, rampant sexism and (gasp!) half-baked special effects. We still collect them, treasure them, study them and display them. But do we really enjoy them? In the case of The Monster that Challenged the Word (1957): absolutely! Closely mirroring the plot of Them! (the 1954 classic about atom-age ants that tunnel their way towards Los Angeles), this time around it’s radioactive snails that emerge beneath the Salton Sea and slither their way into the irrigation canal system. The usual military bigwigs and put-upon scientists must come up with a plan to eradicate the oversized threat before the sea slugs reach civilization and spread their eggs across the globe! The Monster That Challenged the World d...

Sally Field makes a habit of playing underestimated characters. From Norma Rae to Steel Magnolias , even her part as the runaway bride in Smokey and the Bandit rose above a typical love-interest to become a full-on partner in crime. But no role gave her more to work with than Edna Spalding from Places in the Heart , writer/director Robert Benton’s autobiographical story of a central Texas family destroyed by tragedy and rebuilt by sheer force of will. Set during the Depression, the film introduces Edna as a woman who defers most responsibilities to her husband, the local sheriff. But his accidental death at the hands of a young black boy puts her in the precarious position of disciplining the kids, repairing the home and - most importantly - paying the bills all on her own. With the large sum due at the bank in a few short months, Edna takes a chance on partnering with Moze (Danny Glover), a wandering thief who claims they can grow cotton quick enough to pay back the loan. The...

The World of Henry Orient (1964) is an embarrassingly enjoyable coming-of-age story set against the backdrop of a charmingly naïve New York City. Manhattan serves as the world’s biggest playground for a pair of 14 year old girls, Marian and Valarie, who pursue (or in the more criminal vernacular: stalk ) a layabout, lothario of a pianist - the titular Henry Orient - as part of their imaginary adventures. Dated in some ways, timeless in others, director George Roy Hill’s film biggest accomplishment is capturing the quirky appeal of its two main characters in loving detail. Only a year or two away from discovering the truth about true love , Marian and Valarie (played so unpretentiously by unknowns Merrie Spaeth and Tippy Walker) are still entertained by fantasies and friendship, despite the emotional turmoil of their respective broken families. Marian has no father, but a loving home. While Valarie is caught in the midst of her parents’ failing marriage, brought on by her mother’s...

“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...

Today the chest-bursting scene from Alien easily ranks as one of the most shocking in cinema history. And it was even more impactful when it was just released in 1979. So it’s no wonder that someone tried to build a whole film around that 90-second sequence; logic, budget and artistic integrity be damned! That sort of semi-sequel coattail riding was exactly what the Italian film industry did best, especially with horror and science fiction properties. Contamination (1980) doesn’t make any apologies for lifting the more affordable ideas from Ridley Scott’s film. It simply provides as many non-sensical bloody bodies as the budget allows. Sent out to investigate a ghost ship that turns up in New York Harbor, Lt. Tony Aris (Marino Mase) barely escapes with his life after the cargo of exploding “eggs” splatters toxic goo on the rest of the team, producing a chemical reaction that causes them to explode within seconds! Recruited by a tough lady colonel (Louise Marleau) to discover...

Yet another graduate of the unofficial Roger Corman film school, director Jack Hill is responsible for more than his share of minor classics in the exploitation genre including The Big Doll House, Foxy Brown and Switchblade Sisters . But while most of his work was predictably commercial enough to make money and appease the drive-in crowds, Spider Baby (1968) is cut from a different cloth entirely. The film introduces us to the Merrye family, whose surviving members suffer from a syndrome that mentally ages them in reverse as they approach puberty. Elizabeth and Virginia are seductively functional baby dolls while their older brother Ralph is a feeble-minded gimp…and even more dangerous inbred relatives lurk in the basement. Their caretaker, Bruno (Lon Chaney Jr. of The Wolf Man ), protects them as best he can but when distant relations and their attorney arrive with plans to inherit the family wealth, bad blood starts spilling in the Merrye household. Shot in twelve days in 196...

In the charming gutter vernacular of its main character, Kingsman: The Secret Service has piss poor timing. With the James Bond franchise riding high on a series of ever more successful adventures, one couldn’t pick a worse time to pronounce 007 a cinematic dinosaur, making way for a new generation of superspies who weren’t born into the profession. And yet the film proved there is room for more than one franchise featuring explosive gadgets, tailored suits and megalomaniacal supervillans, elements that Bond seemed too embarrassed to include in his most recent outings. One of the gentlemen agents of a super-secret, well-funded apolitical spy organization, Harry (Colin Firth) feels the exclusive club could use a facelift. So when one of his compatriots is assassinated by a quirky internet billionaire named Valentine (Samuel L. Jackson), Harry proposes a lower-class kid with potential take his place alongside the other silver spoon candidates. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) also happens ...

Let’s make something clear, this isn’t a box set…but it might as well be. Because, as the saying goes, you can’t eat - or watch - just one of these Italian knock-offs. Stealing as much as the budget allows from films like The Warriors, Escape from New York and The Road Warrior , director Enzo Castellari crams the screen with as many slow-motion stunts, customized vehicles and badly dubbed New York accents as possible. We might just be looking at the pinnacle of second-generation Spaghetti sci-fi actioners from the ‘80s. What does that mean? Well, lots of unintentional humor mixed with enough impressive technical credits to make each rip-off its own animal. And it all starts with 1990: The Bronx Warriors (1982), set in the now-isolated borough that has been overrun by creatively costumed street gangs. Our main character, Trash (Mark Gregory), rescues the runaway daughter of a Manhattan millionaire, only to lose her once again to some rival thugs. His mission to enlist the hel...

It may very well be that, like big band music and fedora hats, the appeal of films like The Land that T ime Forgot has been relegated to a select clique of nostalgic monster movie supporters who lovingly display their collections…burdened with the knowledge that there are very few left with whom to share them. After all, the Allosaurus is obviously rubber, the Pterodactyl flies on strings and the cavemen are wearing more make-up than Lady Gaga. That the film, one of several adaptations based on the on the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs, is nothing but a corny adventure for kids is a given. But within that framework, it works exceedingly well, beginning as a WW1-era submarine thriller that gives Das Boot and U-571 a run for their money! One of the passengers aboard a freighter sunk by a German U-boat, Bowen Tyler (Doug McClure) survives to lead a hijacking of the enemy sub. Low on fuel and water, they land on the lost continent of Caprona which is full of extinct animals and pr...

By the very nature of the medium, the written word delivers a more personal, detailed and satisfying version of the same story adapted into a film. Which is just a fancy way of restating the common expression, “The book is almost always better than the movie.” You can find a few agreed upon exceptions ( The Godfather, Jaws, 2001 ), but you’ll rarely ever hear Wolfen (1981) brought up in the same conversation. Why? Because adapting a tattered horror paperback into a Hollywood thriller isn’t the sort of accomplishment that attracts much attention. I’m here to argue otherwise. Director Michael Wadleigh’s adaptation of Whitley Strieber’s 1978 novel isn’t just a little better; it’s a massive structural improvement on every level. Sharing the central idea of an ancient race of super-intelligent wolves struggling to survive in modern New York City, the film proceeds to use little else from the story besides a few character names. Instead, Wadleigh widens the scope to take on global ...

H.G. Welles’ 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau was considered scandalous science-fiction at the time, with its titular mad scientist playing God by creating man-like mutations out of test animals through vivisection. The 1932 film adaptation, Island of Lost Souls pushed the envelope with not-so-subtle suggestions of bestiality and a sadistic streak that flaunted itself in the face of the newly minted production code. By comparison 1977’s The Island of Dr. Moreau feels like a TV-friendly version of the same shocking story…which is ironic since that’s probably where most fans first experienced the film. Burt Lancaster takes over as the obsessive scientist who turns the unexpected arrival of a shipwreck survivor, Braddock (Michael York), into an opportunity to test the legitimacy of his “manimal” creations. Introducing the young interloper to his beautiful ward (Barbara Carrera) and hired gun (Nigel Davenport), Moreau quickly comes clean about his experiments and insists Bradd...

Although he laid a big radioactive goose egg with Godzilla (2014), director Gareth Edwards debut feature, Monsters (2010), was a clever character piece set amidst a laconic alien invasion as oversized creatures mysteriously stomped across every nation on Earth. It worked for several reasons: solid acting, believable writing and convincing special effects. But it didn’t scream for a sequel. Few movies ever do. Yet Monsters: Dark Continent struggles to be a worthy successor, ambitiously combining the pathos of a modern war film with leftover herds of marauding aliens. It’s failure isn’t due so much to artistic overreaching, just misjudgment about who fans of the original film were in the first place. Opening with a tight-knit squad of Detroit homies who ship out together to the Middle East, the film establishes itself as a metaphor for the Iraq / Afghanistan conflicts from frame one. In fact, with the creatures relegated to so much background noise, a few digital tweaks would t...

The silent, stoic western hero is part and parcel of the genre’s mythology. Which essentially just means a hard land breeds hard men. But most of the traditional western stories – popularized by John Ford and Howard Hawks - spent a great amount of effort attempting to civilize those men; teaching them table manners, dance steps and how to treat a lady. Whether the end result was successful or not, usually the subject was agreeable to learn . In Hombre (1967) Paul Newman plays John Russell, a former Apache captive who returns to the dying tribe of his own free will, unable to stomach the hypocrisy of white society. Here is a man who had a chance to return to civilization and spat right in its face. As the film begins, Russell has yet another chance to put himself on “the winning side” when his adopted white father dies and leaves an inheritance for him to collect in the town of Sweetmary. Spurning his chance to earn an easy living – and some romantic chemistry with Jessie (D...

We’ve had space westerns, horror westerns, comedy westerns, existential westerns and some that combined all of the above (1972’s El Topo ). As a genre, it’s had to be malleable to survive. But Man, Pride and Vengeance (1967) might be the only western based on an opera – or more specifically a novel better known as an opera. Starring Franco Nero, one of the most iconic European gunslingers, paired with a filmmaking team that included cinematographer Vittorio Storaro ( Apocalypse Now ), the film never breaks into song, but manages carry Prosper Merimee’s story of Carmen in its saddlebags with unexpected eloquence. Don Jose (Nero), a dutiful soldier, is duped by a charming peasant girl, Carmen (Tina Aumont), who winds up throwing his career into disgrace. Her mental and emotional manipulations drive Jose mad with passion to the point where he kills a superior officer in a fit of jealousy, forcing him to become an outlaw to survive. Committed to his life of crime – as long as he c...

It’s getting tedious re-introducing director Mario Bava for each new Blu-ray that arrives (and we’ve had a lot lately). So consider this fair warning: if don’t know who Bava is by now, do your own research while the rest of us celebrate the release of Evil Eye (1963) and its original Italian-language version The Girl Who Knew Too Much. While much of the director’s catalog consists of gothic terror and straight-faced suspense, his sense of humor is much more evident here...although it depends on which version you watch first. Distributed by AIP, Evil Eye is Bava’s first foray in the Italian genre he was credited with inventing: the gialli, mystery-thrillers that in later years became famous for mixing sex, blood and perversity. This first go-round however is much more innocent in its execution and leans more toward classic whodunits with case of the “cutes.” Nora Davis (Leticia Roman) is an avid reader of lurid crime-thrillers who witnesses a murder while vacationing in Rome. Or maybe n...