I’m finally starting to notice that books on fringe cinema, in combination with blu-ray sales, have resulted in some unfortunate additions to my movie library.  First, I read P.J. Thorndyke’s excellent Satan in the Celluloid: 100 Satanic and Occult Horror Movies of the 1970s, then there was a Target 3-for-2 sale, and so I came […]

Never underestimate a one-armed man.  For example, nobody believed Richard Kimble in The Figutive when he tries to convince them such a man murdered his wife.  I’m not exactly sure what the singularly limbed guy in Twin Peaks is all about, but he’s pretty creepy. Ernest Borgnine is a thug in a very small desert […]

1966’s Eye of the Devil is a curious film.  It anticipates the folk horror genre which would only kick into gear a few years later.  It has the feel of Polanski’s workaround that time. Strangely, he is two degrees of separation away from this production, at best, as his future wife Sharon Tate is in […]

As the end credits rolled for 1990’s Crazy People, I said aloud a one-word assessment to my wife, a word I do not believe I have ever used before in describing a movie, and that was, “Neat.”  That there was a sing-along-with-the-bouncing-ball bit happening over those credits only reinforced this feeling. I’ll admit that is […]

Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman pick up a quick paycheck in 1977 telefilm Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo.  It looks like they’re going to be the stars of this, except they’re out of the picture in about 15 minutes or so. These two had been flying a plane full of coffee out of Ecuador, after taking […]

For as brilliant as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle supposedly was, his belief in fairies made him seem like a bit of a nutjob.  Of course, the only reason his name is still in the public consciousness is for the Sherlock Holmes stories.  But he wrote other stories as well, and some of those are less […]

Gary Merrill had once been married to Bette Davis, after they fell in love on the set of All About Eve.  He had been separated from her for five years when he starred in 1965’s Catacombs (later retitled to The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die), a movie where he conspires to kill his financially successful but […]

A curious subgenre of noir is that where the investigation is to find carriers of a disease before it can spread into an epidemic.  A couple of such films I have seen before include Panic in the Streets and The Killer that Stalked New York.  1949’s Chicago Deadline is in a similar vein as those, […]

Since starting this blog, there are few movies I watch which I do not consequently write about.  So it’s odd I did not feel any need to comment on the first five films in the Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray boxed set Columbia Noir #5: Humphrey Bogart.  In total, the set has six Bogie-related films I have not […]

I read something recently about how many conspiracies can be dismissed out of hand because 1) people inherently have a compulsion to talk, and 2) the more people in on a secret makes it that much more difficult to keep it under wraps. I am reminded of the old adage that two can keep a […]