An eleven-year-old Brooke Shields is wearing all white while holding a sparkler and reclining on a padded stretcher being held aloft by an adult on each end, paraded around a dining room where a group of wealthy men are appraising her.  This feels like something out of Pasolini’s Salo as, like something out of that […]

Some movies stretch to find content to occupy the screen for 90 minutes.  Then there are films such as 1932’s Chandu the Magician which cram so much into 71 minutes that you feel like you have just watched every installment of a serial of the time, but in one sitting. In fact, almost every aspect […]

One of the extras accompanying 1982’s Tootsie on the Criterion Collection blu-ray is an interview with Dustin Hoffman where he says the film hasn’t dated at all.  I challenge that statement, given the increased focus on the struggles of trans actors in recent years, as the plot of this movie has him pretend to be […]

My favorite era of Hitchcock’s film is his 50’s run from Rear Window through to North by Northwest.  There are some outliers in that period, the time in which his associated with television began with Alfred Hitchcock Presents. The sensibilities of television inform one of the most distinctive entries in his oeuvre, 1955’s The Trouble […]

I primarily know Richard Dix from the run of Whistler movies he did, and he had an odd screen presence in those.  That slightly off demeanor servers him well in 1943’s The Ghost Ship. In this, he is the authoritarian captain of a large cargo vessel.  He makes such statements as “In San Pedro, I […]

I bet every culture around the world has some variation of the old American standard of parents asking their kids that, if their friends jumped off a bridge, whether they would follow suit.  Given that, I assume there is a British equivalent, and all I can wonder is whether the parents of the bikers in […]

Revolving restaurants are a strange concept.  I have only eaten at one once before and the allure of it was lost on me, even while taking in the 360 degree view. 1936’s Love Before Breakfast has an even weirder…um, spin on the concept, and that is the tables are on a rotating platform in the […]

We live with two black cats, one male and one female.  I am fascinated by how the male, Sebastian, regards anything which opens and closes a tray to play a media disc.  The blu-ray player is especially suspect, and we have come to think of it as his frenemy.  To the best we can tell, […]

Funny how people in movies that change into animals are almost always turning into wolves.  Sure, Wallace of Aardman fame may have been a were-rabbit in one film, but characters rarely turn into were-kangaroo or were-amoebas.  1955’s Cult of the Cobra is the only time I can recall seeing a woman who is a were-cobra. […]

2023 folk horror movie All You Need Is Death has a couple of hurdles to overcome, not the least of which is that stupid title.  Fortunately, this is a largely successful film which introduces a new twist on the genre. This fresh angle is a plot concerning collectors of old Irish folk songs.  There must […]

An irate John Heard growls at Mary Beth Hurt, “I’m gonna rape you”, in the allegedly romantic alleged comedy Chilly Scenes of Winter from 1979.  This is part of an argument between the characters, but the line is abrupt and weird that it only calls attention to itself. What was even more appalling to me […]

The current peace between Britain and Ireland has lasted longer than I think anybody had expected.  I wonder if I’m the only person who wonders exactly how permanent that might be.  1952’s The Gentle Gunman was made at a particularly difficult period of “the troubles”, and so I was surprised a UK studio would attempt […]

I have recently found myself obsessed with the video game Untitled Goose Game, where one plays a goose that goes around stealing objects from, and generally tormenting everyday people.  An element of the game is stealing a harmonica and honking through it, which never stopped amusing me. 1947 UK film It Always Rains on Sunday […]

Nathan Juran directed some lousy movies.  The first one that comes to my mind is Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, though I found some merit in that.  His career ended in the far worse The Boy Who Cried Werewolf.  What’s strange is his first time at bat, 1952’s The Black Castle, is possibly the […]

My wife recently clued me to the yet another contemporary phrase of which I was previous unaware and that is “Manson lamps”.  For those similarly uninformed, this means large crazy eyes, like how Charles Manson looks in seemingly every photo of him. Gideon Drew has that look throughout his turn as the villain in 1958’s […]