I primarily know Richard Dix from the run of Whistler movies he did, and he had an odd screen presence in those.  That slightly off demeanor servers him well in 1943’s The Ghost Ship. In this, he is the authoritarian captain of a large cargo vessel.  He makes such statements as “In San Pedro, I […]

I bet every culture around the world has some variation of the old American standard of parents asking their kids that, if their friends jumped off a bridge, whether they would follow suit.  Given that, I assume there is a British equivalent, and all I can wonder is whether the parents of the bikers in […]

Revolving restaurants are a strange concept.  I have only eaten at one once before and the allure of it was lost on me, even while taking in the 360 degree view. 1936’s Love Before Breakfast has an even weirder…um, spin on the concept, and that is the tables are on a rotating platform in the […]

We live with two black cats, one male and one female.  I am fascinated by how the male, Sebastian, regards anything which opens and closes a tray to play a media disc.  The blu-ray player is especially suspect, and we have come to think of it as his frenemy.  To the best we can tell, […]

Funny how people in movies that change into animals are almost always turning into wolves.  Sure, Wallace of Aardman fame may have been a were-rabbit in one film, but characters rarely turn into were-kangaroo or were-amoebas.  1955’s Cult of the Cobra is the only time I can recall seeing a woman who is a were-cobra. […]

2023 folk horror movie All You Need Is Death has a couple of hurdles to overcome, not the least of which is that stupid title.  Fortunately, this is a largely successful film which introduces a new twist on the genre. This fresh angle is a plot concerning collectors of old Irish folk songs.  There must […]

An irate John Heard growls at Mary Beth Hurt, “I’m gonna rape you”, in the allegedly romantic alleged comedy Chilly Scenes of Winter from 1979.  This is part of an argument between the characters, but the line is abrupt and weird that it only calls attention to itself. What was even more appalling to me […]

The current peace between Britain and Ireland has lasted longer than I think anybody had expected.  I wonder if I’m the only person who wonders exactly how permanent that might be.  1952’s The Gentle Gunman was made at a particularly difficult period of “the troubles”, and so I was surprised a UK studio would attempt […]

I have recently found myself obsessed with the video game Untitled Goose Game, where one plays a goose that goes around stealing objects from, and generally tormenting everyday people.  An element of the game is stealing a harmonica and honking through it, which never stopped amusing me. 1947 UK film It Always Rains on Sunday […]

Nathan Juran directed some lousy movies.  The first one that comes to my mind is Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, though I found some merit in that.  His career ended in the far worse The Boy Who Cried Werewolf.  What’s strange is his first time at bat, 1952’s The Black Castle, is possibly the […]

My wife recently clued me to the yet another contemporary phrase of which I was previous unaware and that is “Manson lamps”.  For those similarly uninformed, this means large crazy eyes, like how Charles Manson looks in seemingly every photo of him. Gideon Drew has that look throughout his turn as the villain in 1958’s […]

In the movie Dumb and Dumber, Jim Carrey is told by Lauren Holly that there is a one-in-a-million chance of them ever getting together, yet he positively glows when he replies, “So, you’re saying there’s a chance.” I’m betting I’m the only person to ever see 2020’s deadly serious sci-fi film Last and First Men […]

Foreign cinema can provide fascinating glimpses into other cultures and their folklore.  It can also reveal the similarities between societies.  Consider the 1973 Serbian film Leptirica, which goes to some length to demonstrate every place has large groups of mostly useless men who seem to do little more than sit around bullshitting and drinking. The […]

In the first two decades of the 21st century, I felt like I was the only person who wasn’t swept up in the wave of raunchy hard-R comedies of the time.  The appeal of The Hangover, to cite just one example, completely failed to connect with me, and that there were two sequels boggles my […]

As I write this, there has been much hand wringing by people in various professions who are worried their jobs will be eliminated soon by an evil which doesn’t even have hands, that being artificial intelligence.  1970’s Colossus: The Forbin Project has a supercomputer which goes one better, as it seizes control of the world’s […]