Comedy and film legend Elaine May first achieved fame as a comedic duo with future The Graduate director Mike Nichols.  Later, she was one of Hollywood’s most sought-after script doctors.  She has also directed four feature films to date, writing three of those.  One of those films completely astonished me, and it sure as hell […]

What a strange time we live in, where it seems a great many otherwise sane people are so easily swayed into believing the craziest shit, usually from information posted on social media by somebody they don’t even know.  I write this as we approach a presidential election which has me filled with outright fear, as […]

1971’s How to Frame a Figg was the last of the feature films Don Knotts starred in for Universal Pictures.  He had an interesting run of five films for the studio, starting with The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, which many regard as the best of the lot.  I didn’t find any of these films to […]

When did we stop making movies set in the future that made it look like a better place than the present?  I used to love movies with such a grim outlook back when that was the less popular view, such as how poorly Blade Runner was regarded in its initial release.  Now, every film sci-fi […]

1969’s The Love God? is the only one of the five films on Shout Factory’s Don Knotts collection that is rated higher than a G.  I was very surprised to see it is rated PG-13.  Now, having watched it, I’m even more surprised it is rated higher than a PG.  Typical of the other films […]

As we learned from a legendary Monty Python sketch, nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.  I especially wouldn’t expect it in Italy, but yet there’s the mysterious red-hooded and black-cloaked figure in 1972’s The Devil’s Lover.  At least, it sure looks like an Inquisitor.  Instead, it is only the devil (Edmund Purdom) dressed as one—so, somebody […]

While watching 1968’s The Shakiest Gun in the West, I couldn’t stop thinking about The Avalanches’s song “Frontier Psychiatrist”.  It is a track made of all kinds of crazy samples, including one I’ve always wondered the source of, where a guy is saying, “and he made false teeth”.  Don Knotts may not be a psychiatrist […]

When my father-in-law died, his eulogy included a mention of his cat Fang, which was short for “fangool”.  There were ripples of laughter in the crowd of mourners, as many were in the know that this is Italian for “fuck you”. The only time I can recall hearing the word in a film is 1974’s […]

I find it odd I wasn’t weirded out by Robert Newton keeping Phil Brown chained for weeks on end in an abandoned building.  What I did find unnerving was the white line on the floor he had put down in advance, making the farthest Brown can reach.  Not exactly sure why, but I was reminded […]

Parental expectations can be a cruel thing.  Just look at WWI war veteran Arthur O’Connell and how he treats his son Don Knotts.  His rearing of Knotts was apparently militaristic in nature, with him being literally marched around the house at his father’s command.  Then he sends in an application to NASA for Knotts to […]

The forbidden film arrived in the mail years after buying it.  The unlabeled, burned blu-ray arrived in a paper sleeve.  I felt unclean just owning this, as if I was part of a tape trading community for some horrific form of pornography. It seems surreal to me one can walk into a Barnes & Noble […]

1974’s Sugar Hill is a weird beast, a hybrid of zombie, gangster and Blaxploitation genres.  It is truly number one in a field of one. Marki Bey stars as the title character.  She’s hellbent on revenge for the murder of husband Larry Don Johnson, emphasis on “hell”.  With the assistance of an old voodoo woman […]