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 […]

There are many dichotomies concerning movies.  For example, you can be a fan of both Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, but everybody prefers one or the other.  Similarly, you can like Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, but you can love only one of them.  I am solidly in Camp Karloff, but one can’t deny the […]

One of my favorite recurring characters in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series of books is Death.  It talks in all capital letters.  There is also a death of rats, an appropriately-sized rodent skeleton in a hooded robe and bearing a tiny scythe.  It also talks in all capital letters, though all it can say is, “SQUEAK.” […]

I have seen many news articles lately about subpar movies being dumped to streaming services.  These sound to me like the kind of pictures that, back in the days of Blockbuster, one would rent on a Friday night when all of the most desirable titles weren’t available.  Even if the film was enjoyable, you would […]

Train stations make for great locations in noir pictures, and I love to see real locations used in such films.  In a way, these films serve as a time capsule of an era not long before rail stopped being the primary mode of long-distance travel in the US. 1950’s Union Station takes place largely in […]

Ingmar Bergman had Liv Ullman.  Aki Kaurismaki had Kati Outinen.  Luciano Ercoli had Nieves Navarro.  1972’s Death Walks at Midnight is one of three movies I recently saw by Ercoli starring Navarro.  All three were on Arrow Video’s Giallo Essentials (Blue) blu-ray box set.  I was under the misunderstanding Giallo always meant horror films, but […]

It will be difficult to write about 1985’s After Hours without spoiling anything.  By that, I don’t just mean ruining the ending for those who haven’t seen it yet.  I mean any of the surprises in it, while are plentiful and begin almost immediately. The safest summary I can provide is Griffin Dunne plays an […]

I went into 1974’s Night of the Sorcerers completely blind.  Given how bad this film is, it is obvious I need to start doing some research before watching just any old thing. There’s a company logo at the start of the picture I haven’t seen before, and that was for Victory Films. I assume the […]

Most people don’t realize how much brighter the full moon used to be.  Fortunately, we have so many movies from earlier eras (especially the 1970’s) where we can see how often night looks like full daylight, only with the camera irised down.  Sure, there’s cars with their headlights on, but we can just barely see […]

If 1958’s Step Down to Terror seems familiar, it’s because it is supposedly a remake of Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt.  That didn’t occur to me while I was watching it, but I was nagged by the feeling I had seen something very similar before. Charles Drake plays a man on the run who seeks […]

It is given that possession movies will be 1) about possession by a demon and 2) centered around the Catholic concepts of such.  There will usually be an exorcism, or at least an attempt at one.  So I was surprised to discover a movie that not only was released a year before The Exorcist, but […]

Funny how I remember dragging my mom to take me to see Spies Like Us in its first run in 1985.  I’m not sure why I was so dead-set on seeing it.  If I had taken any time to think about the movie in the nearly four decades since then, I doubt I would have […]

I’m amazed by how much goodwill I feel towards every person who appeared in the Pee Wee’s Playhouse Christmas Special.  I have always respected Grace Jones, but I definitely became more aware of her from her bizarre appearance there.  And you can’t have Jones in something without capitalizing on the weirdness she exudes.  1986’s Vamp […]

I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about 2010’s The Town while watching 1955 noir Six Bridges to Cross.  I think it is largely because both are crime pictures set in Boston and both use as a plot point the sudden closure of the city’s many bridges immediately after a heist. Aside from that development, the […]