Despite being an American citizen, and by birth on U.S. soil with two natural-born citizens as parents, the present administration’s obsession with deportation has me apprehensive of leaving the country, for fear I might not be allowed back in.  This may be needless worry, but I still thought of this when seeing how easily Ray […]

1940’s The Fatal Hour is the fourth movie in which Boris Karloff would play San Francisco detective Mr. Wong.  For those who haven’t seen the previous installments, this poverty row production puts him in makeup that lengthens his eyes.  Fortunately, he doesn’t do an Asian accent.  Still, it is understandable if actors in yellowface is […]

Fire is a serious threat, which is why we have the age-old example of certain necessary restrictions to free speech, that being yelling “FIRE!” in a crowded theatre.  In 1971’s The Andromeda Strain, each of four scientists are visited by government officials who inform them more formally, and rather free of emotions, that there has […]

Never underestimate the power of connections.  The only way I got a foot in the door which led to my current employment was through a relationship I maintained with a co-worker from over a decade, and two jobs, earlier. The 1947 poverty row noir T-Men has U.S. Treasury Department agents Dennis O’Keefe and Alfred Ryder […]

Among the many types of animals with which I feel an affinity, I like turtles.  They seem to me to be the personification of passive resistance.  When you have an exterior like that, you don’t have to actively fight off much. And so, I wasn’t thrilled when Ralph Bates, as Dr. Frankenstein, kills one in […]

Not like I have given it much thought, but I have wondered on occasion exactly how difficult it might to be completely impersonate somebody.  It would be one thing to try to appear to be somebody else around those who have not actually met that person before, but I can’t imagine successfully impersonating another around […]

Before watching any of the series where Boris Karloff plays Chinese detective Mr. Wong, I was worried it would be like the kind of yellowface characters parodied in Murder by Death.  In that film, Peter Sellers plays a character clearly patterned on Charlie Chan.  He says of a moose head on the wall through which […]

As I write this, there is an odd government crusade against diversity policies.  I fear we are headed back to the days of blatant discrimination.  Back when lawsuits against age discrimination probably had more of a chance in the courts, Ed Begley would have had a solid case, as an executive on the board of […]

In 1960, it likely still felt relatively recent that a plane had broken the sound barrier, so it is only logical a sci-fi film would explore a jet pilot going Beyond the Time Barrier, in a low-budget picture of that name from that year. Robert Clarke stars as a pilot who travels to that distant […]

I was a deeply annoying shit when I was a little kid–a liar, an exaggerator, a coward and a jerk.  If I had been somebody else around the time, I would have hated myself—I mean, that kid.  Almost as obnoxious as I recall myself being is 12-year-old Pat Cardi in 1966’s Let’s Kill Uncle.  He’s […]

Even as a child, I was fascinated by what was then The Iron Curtain, a dividing line that made a huge part of the world a secret to the other half.  The more I learned about life behind that line, the more grateful I was to have just happened to have been born and raised […]

I wonder if anybody has ever truly enjoyed playing charades.  For a dinner party they’re throwing, wealthy couple Morgan Wallace and Dorothy Tree have arranged an unusual twist on it called “Indications”.  These will be rather elaborate set-ups, each of which are meant to to represent the title of a book, movie or song.  The […]

When Austrian director Fritz Lang fled WWII Europe for America, there was a sea change in his style.  Gone were the extreme touches of German Expressionism which had been the most distinctive aspect of such masterpieces as Metropolis.  That isn’t to say he stopped making significant films when he started working within the Hollywood production […]

An interesting gimmick employed by Hitchcock in most of his films was his inevitable cameo.  Often, these would be some sort of minor joke.  In 1956’s The Wrong Man, he makes it impossibly easy, as he addresses the audience directly before the opening credits.  It’s like a Where’s Waldo with that character being the only […]

Passive-agressiveness goes to extremes I have not seen before in 1970’s Bartleby, a UK adaptation of a story I was shocked to learn was written by Herman Melville.  I’m tempted to seek out that original short story, but I doubt whatever I find there would be as much of a shock as when I found […]