Have you ever noticed how most of the crime movies of the Coen brothers are either straight-up drama or black comedies?  Take Raising Arizona and No Country for Old Men, for example.  It’s hard to believe such drastically different works could have been the product of the same minds. But only a fool would try […]

Jordan Peele has made three fascinating features to date, though I admit I was reluctant to see the latest, 2022’s Nope.  For one thing, I thought his previous film, Us, had a great deal of potential that went largely unrealized.  Also, the media was quick to label this latest work as his “alien” film.  I […]

I’m depressed to learn about the recent demise of UK media distributor Network.  It seems we’re losing producers of physical media at a greater rate than new ones are forming.  Now that Network has ceased operations, I doubt anybody will pick up titles of theirs like 1942’s The Night Has Eyes.  This picture is simply […]

Do hetero women ever look at pornographic photos while hanging out together?  Does a woman of that orientation ever show nude photos of herself to another woman?  I doubt this, but this is portrayed as a completely natural activity in the 1970 giallo The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion.  Then again, this is […]

The opening credits of 1953’s A Lion Is in the Streets play out on top of footage of a lion in front of the Lincoln Memorial.  It walks back and forth in front of it, occasionally stretching up towards it and roaring.  Though I’m sure this was done a set, I wondered how they got […]

1996’s Joe’s Apartment had CGI cockroaches that sang and danced in extensively choreographed numbers.  And yet I was more surprised when the things spell out the last name of Bradford Dillman’s character in 1975 horror film Bug.  I hate to inform the filmmakers, but it had the exact opposite effect of what they intended.  I […]

1939’s Rio has five or six songs in it.  I lost count after a while, so I’m not sure.  I only know each song is more terrible than the one that preceded it.  The strangest thing is this isn’t technically a musical. The movie begins in England, where a group of excitable businessmen are waiting […]

“It’s completely deserted.  It smells of dead holidays.”  This isn’t the kind of dialog I expected in 1965’s Catch Us If You Can.  By all logic, this should have been a retread of A Hard Day’s Night, except starring The Dave Clark Five.  Mind you, the movie starts out in the vein of that film, […]

I’ve never stopped to think about it, but I never understood what the big deal was supposed to be about Kim Basinger in her heyday.  Having finally watched 1987’s Blind Date, I realize I hadn’t seen her in a genre she truly excels in, and that is screwball comedy. While filled with touches that firmly […]

The opening credits of 1950’s Spy Hunt say it was based on the novel Panther’s Moon.  I was willing to bet good money that title wouldn’t make any sense in regard to the movie it was adapted into. I would have lost that bet.  This quirky noir centers around two black panthers loose in the […]

I don’t consider myself to be much of a Clive Barker fan, though his work does have some distinctive elements which lend themselves to interesting screen adaptations.  Take Nightbreed, for example, which had a dangerous tribe of monsters living outside of society, and these were the heroes.  That isn’t too dissimilar to 1985’s Underworld, in […]

The band names read like they were the product of a random phrase generator: Black Swan Network, Synthetic Flying Machine, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sunshine Fix, Dixie Blood Mustache, Marshmallow Coast.  These were just a few of the acts that comprised the Elephant 6 collective. It is difficult to define exactly what this organization was, though […]

UPA should have been a winner, an animation studio to persist to this day.  Instead, it became a fairly obscure part of animation history, remembered at best for its Mr. Magoo shorts.  In addition to shorts and informational films, they produced two features, 1001 Arabian Nights (1959) and Gay Purr-ee (1962).  The former was crippled […]

I’ve noticed an increasing trend, especially with e-books, where the title tells you exactly what you’re going to get.  I can’t imagine who would be looking for “A Forbidden Age Gap Surprise Baby Romance”, but you’re in luck in you are, as My Secret Daddy was apparently written for you.  Then there’s the output of […]

Every once in a while, I will encounter a picture I categorize as a “laserdisc movie”, even if I never owned a copy in that format.  I apply this designation to movies of a kind that largely comprised the laserdisc library I once had, usually small indie films from the late 80s and early 90s, […]