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Watching Gidget (1959) in the modern era of women's rights issue and hourly sexual harassment scandals is a genuinely harrowing experience. What was most certainly an enjoyably empowering adventure about a 16-year-old tomboy blossoming into womanhood is now inescapably creepy. Male viewers will almost feel compelled to cover their eyes on the off chance they're held complicit with the film's multiple sexual predators competing for the affection of an obviously underage girl. Seriously. Of course any film produced in 1959 is bound to have its share of anachronisms. But this comic coming-of-age story, based on a string of popular books that also hit the small screen starring Sally Field, has incredibly bad timing, premiering on a 3000-copy limited edition blu-ray just when society has reached the breaking point when it comes to inappropriate, unwanted male-female relationships. And Gidget is full of them! Young Francie Lawrence (Sandra Dee) would much rather surf...

Horror, as a genre, is both timely and timeless. The shock tactics, as any fan will admit, are pleasantly predictable, but resource-challenged filmmakers tend to populate them with a fresh batch of pop culture references and trendy character quirks. In English? Horror movies make the most of the era in which they were made. Better Watch Out (2017) is no exception, starting with a done-to-death "home invasion" scenario then cleverly covering it tracks to attempt something fresh and new...relatively speaking. For her final babysitting job before leaving for college, Ashley (Olivia DeJonge) takes on her regular gig at the Lerner's with their son Luke (Levi Miller), a quiet 13-year-old she's been watching for years. Expertly fending off his misguided romantic advances, Ashley winds up fighting for both their lives when a stranger with a shotgun hunts them from room to room. But when the identity of the intruder is revealed, an innocent prank quickly escalates in...

Every bit as chilling, powerful and culturally relevant as better-known horror films like Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , 1974's Deathdream is an overlooked masterpiece in a genre that tosses the word around far too casually. But director Bob Clark ( A Christmas Story ) and writer Alan Ormsby deliver a legitimate shocker that also serves as a not-so-subtle commentary on the post-Vietnam experience. Anxious for word about their son, Andy, the Brooks family has dinner interrupted by a telegram announcing his death. Unwilling to accept the truth, Mrs. Brooks prays for his safe return; and her wish is granted, with terrible consequences. Andy's late-night arrival coincides with the brutal murder of a truck driver, and their son's behavior is nothing short of sociopathic. After Andy murders the family dog, Mr. Brooks calls on the local doctor for advice who quickly connects all the dots. Andy is actually "undead," injecting himsel...

A possession story that skews closer to Jekyll and Hyde than The Exorcist , 1976's J.D.'s Revenge is certainly an outlier amidst the usual action-oriented blaxploitation releases of the day. Lead actor Glynn Turman modeled his terrific performance after Spencer Tracey's turn as the tortured doctor in the 1941 adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's story. Here, a hardworking law student / taxi driver finds his personality overtaken by the soul of a 1940s numbers racketeer out for revenge against those who done him wrong. After participating in an onstage hypnotism act, Isaac (Turman) is tortured by flashbacks of memories that aren't his own. Inexplicably, the spirit of J.D. Walker, who was set up for the murder of his own sister, has been reborn, forcing Isaac to commit brutal acts against those he loves and hunt down the people responsible for his death 30 years ago. One of those people is Reverend Elija Bliss (Louis Gossett, Jr.), a former fighter turned evang...

While Hammer Films is known primarily as the "House of Horror" thanks to its long-running series of Dracula, Frankenstein and assorted monster films throughout the sixties and seventies, the studio actually branched out into other genres quite a bit during its history. 1962's The Pirates of Blood River is one of a few swashbucklers - including Captain Clegg and Night Creatures - that offered audiences a reprieve the onslaught of the undead. Here, Captain LaRoche (Hammer stalwart Christopher Lee) leads his motley crew through a deadly swamp in search of treasure hidden somewhere on a Huguenot farming settlement; treasure that even the settler's themselves claim doesn't exist! The film's genesis begins with producer Anthony Nelson Keys requesting a script from staff writer Jimmy Sangster, the man responsible for most of Hammer's early success. But the one big caveat? There's no money for an actual pirate ship . So The Pirates of Blood River...

No one plays cowboy better than Jeff Bridges. In fact, he's gotten so good a pulling off the toothless, beer-bellied, past-his-prime gunhand (see True Grit or Hell or High Water ) that it's getting difficult to picture him as anything else. Ironic for a California kid whose early roles were mostly freewheeling hippies with an infectious grin. And, although he'd dabbled in the Old West before, 1995's Wild Bill is one of the signposts for the second half of his career, directed with a sort of ruthless poetry by western aficionado and action specialist Walter ( The Warriors ) Hill. Hill's screenplay pulls material from several sources to create its own slideshow of the life of Wild Bill Hickok, a legendary figure of the American West whose exploits grow in stature with each telling of the tale. After stints as a soldier, a buffalo hunter, a lawman and a performer, Bill's legend finally comes to rest in the town of Deadwood, a pop-up gold rush community t...

The oft-repeated quote "Dying is easy... Comedy is hard" never really sinks in until you watch something that perfectly illustrates how difficult the genre can be to pull off. Whiskey Galore! (2016) is a remake of the 1949 British comedy from Ealing Studios that related the story (based on actual events) of a conspiracy among the thirsty population of an isolated Scottish Isle to pilfer the precious alcoholic cargo of a freighter stuck on the rocks just offshore. While the original managed to pull off a breezy bit of rebellious wit with a likable cast of characters, director Gillies MacKinnon only makes a passing attempt to do the same. Instead, his version feels very much like a stab at serious drama that doesn't deserve the exclamation point at the end of its title. Built around the actual wreck of the SS Politician, which ran aground during WWII off the north coast of Eriskay carrying 22,000 cases of whiskey - 7,000 of which the locals managed to swipe before it s...

Anti-war films weren't invented simply to accommodate the Vietnam experience. A quick perusal of cinematic history will find each major conflict (and plenty of minor ones) have been used as a backdrop for stories full of the horrors and hypocrisy of warfare. In fact this negative spin is a lot more common than the relatively short-lived, government-mandated patriotism of Hollywood's golden years. But 1967's The Dirty Dozen proved you could still have a good time doing it and paved the way for dozens of like-minded imitators. Play Dirty (1969) followed two years later with a title that made the connection embarrassingly obvious. But the production ran into problems even before it hit theaters. Richard Harris was the first to jump ship - reportedly due conflicts with co-star Michael Caine - then original director Rene Clement was fired and replaced by Andre De Toth who hadn't been behind a camera for six years. Yet despite the plagiaristic plot and shuffled cast...

It's easy to forget after the rise of Spielberg, Scorsese, and Coppola, but during Hollywood's golden years it was the producer who was king. The studio system didn't leave much room for individual artistic expression; the recipe for success was mustering the machinery's best resources in service of story that would put all that effort on the screen. And few did it better than Darryl F. Zanuck. Take for example Captain from Castile (1947), a frenetically paced, historical epic that jumps from the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition to the new-world adventures Cortez and his gold-crazy Conquistadores. As a accurate portrayal of actual events, things get a bit whitewashed, but as Hollywood spectacle it's practically a "how-to" demo reel of production savvy from the first frame to the last. The son of a famous ex-soldier, Pedro De Vargas (Tyrone Power) is stunned when he and his family are accused of heresy and thrown into prison. But he soon real...

Part of a wave of satanic-inspired films that began with Rosemary's Baby and continued to possess cinema screens throughout the rest of the '70s, The Devil's Rain (1975) is the most narratively-challenged film of the bunch. But viewed from a distance of several decades, director Robert Fuest's cast of old Hollywood pros (Ernest Borgnine, Ida Lupino, Eddie Albert, William Shatner), new faces (Tom Skerritt, John Travolta) and a highlight reel of hallucinogenic special effects makes for a bizarrely effective collage of stream-of-consciousness horror. Investigating the disappearance of his family, Tom Preston (Skerritt) and his ESP-enhanced wife (Joan Prather) wind up cornered by a cult of Satan worshippers who've taken over a desert ghost town. Led by Corbis (Borgnine), the reincarnation of a Salem-era warlock, his eyeless hordes are intent on recovering a sacred book that the Preston family has kept hidden for hundreds of years, thereby preventing him from sa...

Like many directors now indelibly linked with the horror genre, the late George Romero spent most of his early years trying to dodge the label slapped on him after the success of Night of the Living Dead . Understandable, considering it’s not a genre that commands the sort of professional respect (or golden statuettes) that come to those working in costume dramas, quirky independents or even the odd romantic comedy. When you work in horror, as far as the industry is concerned you’re only good for one thing…making more horror films. But there’s an upside. Horror fans are some of the most enthusiastic folks you’ll ever meet and will typically give almost anything by their favorite contributors to the genre a shot. Case in point, Arrow Video's new box set, Between Night and Dawn , which gathers three Romero films made after NOTLD 's breakout success and before his resurgence on the scene with Dawn of the Dead . While none of them follow the gory template set by the aforeme...

It's been fashionable of late to liberally lift the style and atmosphere of John Carpenter. Despite releasing his last movie in 2010, the director's influence has remained pretty much a constant on the horror genre since Halloween . But Dutch filmmaker Dick Maas got a big head start on everyone back in 1983 with his Carpenter inspired "killer elevator" movie - The Lift - the very same year Christine hit theaters. Called in to investigate a close call involving several passengers who were almost asphyxiated during a ride from the top floor, elevator mechanic Felix Adelaar (Huub Stapel) suspects there's something fundamentally wrong with the system despite finding no technical explanation. And he's proved right when the equipment continues to malfunction, almost seeming to have a mind of its own as it decapitates a security guard and lures more unsuspecting victims into the empty shaft. Joining forces with a pushy journalist (Willeke van Ammelrooy),...

Despite the promise of instant gratification by streaming services, there are thousands of films that will probably never show up on your Roku, bumped to the back of the line by the latest original content and data fillers. Those few companies still involved in the distribution of "physical media" are keenly aware of their audience: collector's who feel the need to own a piece of history and are willing to pay more for a respectable presentation. Beneath the 12 Mile Reef (1953), the second - or possibly third - cinemascope movie ever released is a niche title at best, showcasing the technical merits of a new technology that was still working out the narrative kinks. But it's a perfect example of the reasoning behind Twilight Time's 3000-copy limited edition release business plan, offering the casual, the curious and the die-hard collector a chance to put some Hollywood history on their shelf...even if it doesn't come back down all that often. With a padd...

For those who enjoy the work of Dario Argento but sometimes long for a little more logic, clarity and (let's be kind) narrative cohesion, Sergio Martino might just be the director for you. With sixty-six films to his credit, Martino has made a prolific career of emulating other's artistry, whipping out knock-offs of everything from Jaws (1979's The Great Alligator ) to The Road Warrior (1983's After the Fall of New York ) to Dirty Harry (1973's The Violent Professionals ). But his early work in the Italian giallo is probably his most memorable, using Argento's The Bird with the Crystal Plumage as a template for a series of violent, sexy thrillers that delivered the exploitation goods with no artistic aspirations to weigh them down. Yet, Martino's rough and ready style has its own appeal and offers up as much (or more ) "accidental" artistry as any other genre filmmaker working at the time. Case in point, The Suspicious Death of a Min...

At first glance, Night School (1981) seems to be an elitist slasher film, the sort that attempts to dodge any association with summer camps and spooky holidays, casting 30-somethings instead of 20-somethings and cloaking it all under the guise of a police procedural. Director Ken Hughes, whose last hit was the family-friendly Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in 1968, avoids showing a drop of blood and only chaste amounts of nudity despite being saddled with a story involving a string of decapitations at an all-girls college. Now that's some trick! But what's really amazing is that, upon closer inspection, Night School is even more twisted that most of the slasher franchises earning critical outrage at the time. We're talking not one but two predatory professors, male and female, a kinky tribal body paint shower scene, peeping toms, lesbian seduction and a ruthless leather-clad biker claiming people's heads with a sacrificial blade. When all it said and done, the movi...

You'd be hard pressed to find a more exciting opening scene in any movie from the '80s than The Hidden (1987). And, yes, that includes The Terminator , a film which was quite obviously the inspiration for director Jack Sholder's sci-fi / action hybrid about two aliens hunting each other amidst the teased hair, synthesized tunes and neon-soaked landscape of Los Angeles. From the creepy security camera footage under the opening credits to the ultraviolent car chase that follows, this is a film fueled by burnt rubber and latex monsters, a combination never executed so successfully before... or after! Kyle MacLachlan stars as FBI agent Lloyd Gallagher (three years before taking on the same job description in Twin Peaks ) who recruits reluctant L.A. cop Tom Beck (Michael Nouri) to help him put a stop to a deadly crime spree that kicks off the film. But Beck suspects Gallagher knows more than he lets on, particularly when a new suspect seems to pop up every time they tak...

It goes without saying that for a genre like the western, which pumped out title after title from the silent era through early '70s, the vast majority of its films are just...well, average . Even the studios were looking for an edge to separate themselves from the cinematic herd. And when 3D came into fashion, even the old-fashioned western wasn't immune to cashing in on a quick gimmick. Gun Fury (1953), directed by Raoul Walsh whose eye patch ironically prevented him from experiencing the optical process himself, takes advantage of the more obvious 3D clichés early on...then settles into a sort of classy middle-of-the-road revenge yarn that fits the bill for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Ben and Jennifer (Rock Hudson and Donna Reed) are an exuberantly engaged couple on their way to their quiet California ranch. Traveling via stagecoach with a trio of other passengers. one of the men is revealed to be notorious outlaw Frank Slayton (Philip Carey) who hijacks the stage, kidna...

It's not surprising that the story of the shootout at the OK coral has been told so many times in movies spanning almost every decade. What is surprising is that it's usually told so well . The feud between the Earps and Clantons is a cinematic goldmine of raw mythmaking material that bends to the will of each particular filmmaker, from John Ford's elegiac My Darling Clementine to George P. Cosmatos' action opus Tombstone . Each adaptation adds a few more details, real or imagined, that build upon one of the most oft-repeated tales in western history. But John Sturges' Hour of the Gun (1967) does them all one better, using the shootout as background noise for the opening credits then starting the story proper with the event's aftermath. It's a risky move, relegating the most famous gunfight in history to a cursory preamble. But Sturges had already done a straight version of the story 10 years earlier with Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster, Gunf...

Classic western icons like John Wayne and Randolph Scott seem chiseled out of the very rock of Monument Valley itself, like immovable objects of American's manifest destiny. They were men of few words and absolutely zero self-doubt. But time chipped away much of the genre's cinematic statuary to the point where 1971's Lawman , starring the equally hard-as-granite Burt Lancaster, revolves around a hero who lives by a code so rigid and inflexible that the justice he finally delivers feels more like cruel and unusual punishment. Director Michael Winner's film, working from a script by Gerald Wilson that gains more weight as it moves along, was almost certainly a reaction to the Spaghetti westerns that were cutting into Hollywood's bottom line. But the additional sex and violence (apparently a bit more of both exist in the international version) can't be dismissed as meaningless or exploitive. In fact, the stereotypical main street showdown, when it finall...

George Lucas is a convenient scapegoat for those looking to cast blame upon the current state of "revisionist cinema." But, in reality, he was only giving a media obsessed culture more of what they want. There is no "final cut" of a particular film anymore, only a funhouse mirror of infinitely edited variations, cut together whenever inspiration (or marketing necessity) strikes. But Lucas is simply a high-profile target for creationist criticism; in fact, the studios have been suffering from "special edition syndrome" for nearly 50 years now. Case in point, the Extended Cut of Richard Donner's Superman (1978) made its television premiere with over 40-minutes of story added to stretch the debut to a two-night event. Some bits and pieces of this expanded footage has turned up in various incarnations of the film on home video over the years, but we've never had the full 188-minute epic released on hi-def until now. Is it the final say on what ...

Sometimes a movie is made for all the wrong reasons. And that seems to be the case with Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Joseph L Mankiewicz's film adaptation of the Tennessee Williams one-act play. After the early cinematic success of Streetcar and more recent revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , it probably seemed like any Williams’s property was a hot one. Toss in a big name cast including Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, and Katharine Hepburn along with a script by Gore Vidal that all-but thumbed its nose at the aging Production Code and you've got a sure-fire success! Actually, that's true. The film made a tidy profit, scared up some scandals and even earned Oscar nominations for Taylor and Hepburn (who both lost to Simone Signoret, by the way). But from a modern perspective the film is as contrived as any recent superhero saga, pre-manufactured with an insultingly obvious bric-a-brac collection of high profile talent delivering showy monologues so longwinded...

Children of the Corn (1984) is not a good film. Even Stephen King was smart enough to keep the original down to a short story...and this from a guy who regularly puts out novels you can use as a coffee table! But there's something about the idea that's hard to resist: a small Midwest corn town overrun by killer kids who've murdered their parents and worship an unseen entity called "He Who Walks Behind the Rows." As written, there's a Twilight Zone episode worth of material at best. But that didn't stop producers from expanding the characters and mythology to accommodate six sequels, some of which are actually superior to the original now out in a Blu-ray special edition courtesy of Arrow Video. Burt and Vicky (played by a pre- Thirtysomething Peter Horton and pre- Terminator Linda Hamilton) are traveling cross-country for Burt's new med school internship when they run into trouble - literally - in the town of Gatlin, Nebraska. After acc...

In 1973's Theater of Blood Vincent Price plays a hammy Shakespearean actor who silences his critics in the most violent and permane nt way possible. Despite his rather extreme methods, the argument is sound: who are they to criticize all the blood, sweat and tears spent creating something from nothing? Which brings us to 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997), writer / director Tom Schulman's monumentally unfunny comedy starring Joe Pesci as a mafia deliveryman who mistakenly swaps luggage with an innocent med school student. Here is a film so misguided not a single joke lands in 90 minutes, despite Herculean efforts from a grab-bag cast. Schulman might get an "A" for effort, but the rest of his film is flat-out rotten. Toting the physical "evidence" of a recent mafia hit to his boss on the West Coast, Tommy (Pesci) hops on a plane out of New Jersey and winds up sitting next to Charlie (Andy Comeau), a nervous grad student headed to Mexico to meet his girl...

It's only natural to be intimidated of a movie as steeped in historical minutia as The Emperor in August (2015). Not only does it propose to dissect the Japanese decision to surrender to the Allies at the end of WWII, but does so from the Japanese perspective; a complex system of centuries-old traditions and cultural expectations that make the very concept of defeat grounds for ritual suicide. And yet Emperor Hirohito pushed for a peaceful end to the conflict to save his country from total destruction...while the army was planning a coup to save face. Director Masato Harada's film has a bit of a learning curve as we're introduced to the major historical players. Retired politician Kantaro Suzuki is talked out of retirement to become Prime Minister, handpicked by the Emperor to shepherd the war to a respectable resolution. But there are still those hungry for a "Decisive Battle," confident that a national kamikaze mission would ensure victory. Even Colone...

It's easy to take a film like The Long, Hot Summer (1958) for granted. After all, it has a wealth of talent onscreen and off, an impeccable literary pedigree and Paul Newman's steely blue eyes in its corner. But there are plenty of high profile studio productions from the same era that don't do half as much with their raw material as this one. Director Martin Ritt, in the first of five collaborations with Newman, tackles the Southern story of seduction, corruption, resentment and redemption with a minimal amount of melodrama and an unquestionable touch of class. Running away from a reputation as a "barn burner," Ben Quick's (Newman) arrival stirs up the sleepy town of Frenchmen's Bend, Mississippi, which is owned lock, stock and barrel by entrepreneur Will Varner (Orson Welles). Varner runs his family like he runs his business: with an expectation of return on investment. In this case, that return includes grandchildren who will pass on the fa...

With a voracious audience of cinema lovers at home and successful international distribution, the Italian film industry was always quick to spot a trend or rip-off a hit. So, although his name is most closely associated with horror, Mario Bava, like most Italian directors, was fluent in many genres, dutifully cranking out whatever was "hot" at the moment. And after The Vikings (1958) - starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis - raked in a hefty worldwide profit, Bava was charged with coming up with his own sword-and-sandal epic to duplicate the original's success...on a fraction of the budget, of course. Erik the Conqueror (1961) plots the same course of violent battle scenes, political betrayal and strained family ties but shuffles the deck and adds some signature Bava visual panache to boot. The film kicks off with the death of King Lotar on the shores of Britain as his fellow Vikings stumble to the sea in retreat. The King's young sons are separated during t...

Comedy is often a matter of taste...or lack thereof. John Cleese was an innovator in bad taste as part of Monty Python, brilliantly mixing rude humor with polite British wit. But as the decades passed, humor caught up with his genius, even surpassing it in terms of lowbrow laughs with BBC shows like The Young Ones . As timeless as Python's sketch material was, it just didn't feel fresh anymore. But the unexpected success of A Fish Called Wanda (1988) proved that clever comedy and vulgarity could still co-exist; in fact, they felt fresher than ever. Cleese plays Archie Leach, a sad sack of a British barrister stuck in a loveless marriage, whose life is re-invigorated by the appearance of Wanda (Jamie Lee Curtis), an American law student who finds him inexplicably attractive. Wanda's motives, however, are professional not personal. As part of the jewel heist that kicks off the film, she's milking Archie for information about his client - and her lover - Georges Th...