Nathan Rabin used to write a great recurring piece in the AV Club called My Year of Flops.  In this, he would present his musings on various unloved films from all eras of cinema.  He would end each piece with the decision as to whether it was a failure, fiasco or secret success.  With that […]

Let’s get this out of the way.  I know you came to this review thinking this 1940’s horror film was about the terrifying sales on the day after Thanksgiving.  Unfortunately, it is about something far less scary. Really, this vehicle isn’t much of a horror film at all, which is odd, as it stars Boris […]

There was a term I kept trying to recall while watching 1956’s The Unguarded Moment.  I looked it up afterwards and discovered it was “cognitive dissonance”.  Basically, this means holding two contrasting beliefs in one’s mind at the same time, usually leading to irritation.  It seems to me a couple of characters in this movie […]

Well, this was a weird one. I like made-for-TV movies, especially ones from the 70s.  It’s interesting how filmmakers had to devise innovative solutions to work in such a restrictive format.  For the most part, they had to be cautious of what would draw unwanted attention from censors.  On the other hand, they also tackled […]

I’m still surprised William Castle, famous for his gimmicky horror films, started out making noirs.  Pretty good ones, too, from what I have seen so far.  The first one I saw was 1949’s Johnny Stool Pigeon and now I have seen that same year’s Undertow.  Both films are similar in that each is solid, but […]

“That dyke cocksucker.”  This curious statement is just one of many made by Dustin Hoffman as part of the verbal diarrhea he spews throughout 1996’s American Buffalo.  This is a movie adaptation of the famous David Mamet play.  As always, his dialogue has a certain profane spark to it which you will either finding intriguing […]

The production code seriously handicapped some types of films when it went into effect in 1935.  The restrictions made it nigh near impossible for major studios to produce horror pictures.  So, what could Universal do, when they still had Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi?  These were actors whose fame was almost exclusively through their work […]

J-horror is a genre that hasn’t clicked with me yet.  The only such movie I have really liked so far is Ringu (remade to great success in the US as The Ring).  That movie and its sequels have way too many shots of women looking out on the sea.  When this one opened on a […]

Steve Guttenberg seems have an unwarranted taint to him, even in my mind.  Yes, he largely was the on-screen personification of the average American male in many mediocre films of the 1980’s and early 1990’s.  But he was basically doing the same shtick Tom Hanks was, though that actor was usually offered the better films.  […]

Mad Magazine was a big thing for me when I was the right age for it.  I especially liked the movie parodies in it, even if I had yet to see most of the films they skewered.  I find it funny the first movie to carry the magazine’s brand, Up the Academy, was correctly identified […]

They broke the mold in 1955 after Henri-Georges Clouzot made Diabolique.  In 1966, they took the few pieces of the mold they could find, crudely taped them back together and made Moment to Moment. This is a thriller without thrills.  At least half of it is little more than a filmed stage play taking place […]

“The Raven” is, obviously, one of Poe’s most famous works.  Even so, it is bewildering to me why studios have repeatedly thought there is a potential movie in that rather slight material.  I thoroughly enjoyed the 1963 Corman take on it, a comedy which uses the source material as merely a springboard for mayhem.  It […]

Have you recently experienced peeling skin, increased sensitivity to cold, sudden weight loss and skin that has become green and scaly?  Are you the actor Dirk Benedict?  If you have experienced all of these, you are likely suffering 1973’s SSSSSSS. Additional symptoms of SSSSSSS include an incoherent plot involving Strother Martin as a herpetologist trying […]

Many of the discs I own are partly for the special features.  Some titles I own are only for the special features. I wouldn’t say I bought the Scream Factory blu-ray for 1955’s This Island Earth solely for the special features, but they helped me to better appreciate a film that’s best known for being […]

The box of cereal was branded “Agatha Crispies” and had an illustration on it that appeared to be the author after a psychotic break.  This blink-and-you’d-miss-it moment was in Rob Zombie’s debut feature, House of 1,000 Corpses.  It was little things like that, and his encyclopedic knowledge of silent cinema, which had me wondering what […]