Author: placelogohere

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 […]

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 […]