Sun Ra has intrigued me for decades now.  I am not a huge fan, but I discovered his work around the same time I became aware of artists like The Residents, and I suspect there many fans of the latter who are also those of the former.  For those not in the know, Ra claimed […]

One of the best music box sets I own is Rhino’s four-CD Girl Group Sounds: One Kiss Can Lead to Another.  I already liked tracks by such groups before buying it, but I was largely aware only of Phil Spector’s productions.  This set greatly expanded by musical education. It was like radio from a parallel […]

Record Store Day used to be a really big deal to me.  I still look forward to each new occurrence, but I no longer camp outside overnight like I used to.  For one memorable installment, my brother-in-law was there with me.  To pass the time, I brought a portable DVD player and he brought the […]

I haven’t seen every Audrey Hepburn film, but I thought I was at least aware of each of them.  So, I was intrigued when a blu-ray was announced of 1964’s Paris When It Sizzles.  What is this movie and how had I not heard of it before?  It reunites the actress with William Holden, her […]

1970’s The Man Who Haunted Himself is weirdly prescient in regard to a single line.  Roger Moore, still three years away from his debut as Bond, says of corporate espionage that there are more forms of espionage in form alone than what is in the Bond movies.  Here, Moore is an executive of the type […]

The old blues song “Motherless Children” rattles off one family member after another who can’t properly fill the void left when a mother dies.  1950 noir Gun Crazy shows us something the song fails to mention and that is, while an older sister tries to do the best she can, she can’t keep a kid […]

1955 noir Crashout opens with a prison escape, a staple of the genre.  The first shot is of prisoners stampeding towards the camera.  Then we cut to a shot over the fortification in the other direction, where prisoners have somehow gone through the wall and are now outside the facility.  We are not shown how […]

Susan Tyrrell must have led an interesting life.  Being Oscar nominated for Best Actress for 1972’s Fat City didn’t dissuade her from going on to do Andy Warhol’s Bad or playing Queen Doris in Richard Elfman’s deeply weird Forbidden Zone.  In 1981, she starred with Jimmy McNichol in the off-beat horror film Butcher, Baker, Nightmare […]

I wonder if anybody excited to see 1978’s Gray Lady Down thought they were about to watch a geriatric take on Deep Throat?  Instead, it is a sub that is the “gray lady” that goes “down” after a collision with another vessel. This is the kind of film where the captain of that sub is […]

Jaws spawned so many bad imitators, but 1977’s Orca: The Killer Whale might have the most unusual crew.  The S.S. Bumpo (no, really) is captained by Richard Harris (who I will always first associate with the horrible song “MacArthur Park”), with Keenan Wynn as his second (and I will always associate him with Dr. Strangelove) […]

You might think Fingerman is an obscure Marvel superhero, but you’d be wrong.  The first indicator is because this is a film noir from 1955. The film starts with the obligatory narrator, as Frank Lovejoy says, “My name…let’s just say it’s Casey Martin”.  Not sure why he acts like he’s using an alias as we’re […]

Pre-code horror is always a special thing, especially since it was such a brief period.  That timeframe was from roughly the advent of sound cinema at the tail end of the 1920’s, through to 1935, when the Production Code went into effect and essentially neutered the movies. Universal’s 1932 take on Murders in the Rue […]

1985’s Trouble in Mind is a critically-praised 1985 neo-noir recently issued as a limited-run blu-ray from Shout Factory.  Ebert gave it his highest rating.  The description on the Shout site has little information.  I only wish they put the full text from the back of the case on their listing.  Consider: “Littered with gangsters and […]

I love the movie Cabin Boy and it is partly because of the weird sub-genre of cinema it lovingly parodies.  The 1954 Disney version of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is very likely one of those inspirations.  It has a large creature; albeit, a giant squid and not a giant store manager.  It […]