The choice of lens one puts on a camera is critically important for each shot in a movie.  Most wide-angle lenses have a certain amount of fish-eye effect to them.  Objects in the center of the frame will be correctly proportioned, while those on the periphery will be abnormally thin.  This is why usually, when […]

I love the different ways that some low-budget movies come up with innovative solutions to overcome their lack of funds.  One way that can be effective is to have a character imply something is there which we can’t see.  This is what 1958’s The Return of Dracula does in some of its best moments. The […]

The House the Mouse Built was in a sad state in the 1980’s.  Its attempts at slightly more mature live-action films (such as The Black Hole, Tron and Watcher in the Woods) had underperformed to different extents.  Its animated feature The Black Cauldron was a massive financial failure which wasn’t very well-received critically, either.  Disney […]

Billy Wilder wrote or directed some of the best movies of the twentieth century, often handling both duties for the same film.  Movies like Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity and Some Like It Hot.  I felt he started losing his way in the 1960’s and, for most of the time I was watching 1964’s Kiss Me, […]

William Powell and Ann Blythe star as the titular characters in 1948’s Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid.  I like both actors, and I thought this was going to be a light and breezy comedy.  Instead, I got something that I’m imagining was awkward in its original release, and will keep getting more uncomfortable over time. […]

The Los Angeles branch of the Secret Service needs to have a training program for its agents, to educate each of them to never go on a mission alone.  If 1985’s To Live and Die in L.A. is to believed, the agency loses an employee almost every time this happens. I couldn’t think of a […]

When I say one can learn more about films from the worst movies than they can from the best, I can think of few better examples of this logic than 1972’s Beware! The Blob.  This is a movie that has some aspects filmmakers with more experience, or better taste, wouldn’t have allowed.  And this picture […]

When you watch enough noir, you get used to seeing somebody tailing another and suddenly having to duck behind something.  Usually, the pursuer conceals themselves behind the corner of a building, or a pillar, or in a doorway.  But 1954’s Cry Vengeance has the only occurrence I have seen of somebody hiding behind a totem […]

The first three movies in the blu-ray box set Cold War Creatures: Four Films from Sam Katzman truly astonished me.  One was a unique horror/sci-fi/noir hybrid, another reinvented the werewolf trope. The last was a feature about undead pirates and which had the dreamlike vibe of I Walked with a Zombie.  The fourth picture is […]

Is there anything more instantly noir than trains?  Probably the only genre with a stronger association with that mode of transport is the western.  1951’s Cry Danger has its opening titles over various footage of trains in motion.  It is a signal we are in noir territory, and the film that follows is one of […]