So far, I have only seen Angela Pleasence in two movies: From Beyond the Grave, which is one of those Amicus anthology films, and 1974’s Symptoms.  From those performances, I would have thought she would be a very weird, socially awkward and slightly off-putting person in real life.  Lord knows she’s creepy enough in these […]

Most of the most innovative pictures leave a series of imitators in their wake, and it is inevitable the majority of those will be inferior.  Consider the legacy of Pulp Fiction, where we had at least a decade of excessively verbose and profane ne’er-do-wells and chronologically jumbled timelines.  Then there’s 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, […]

In 1955’s The Court Jester, Danny Kaye had a great recurring shtick with a tongue-twister he has to remember to keep from getting poisoned.  I have a feeling the creative team behind 1961’s On the Double were aiming for similar comedy gold when Kaye’s spineless enlisted man finds a great many occasions to muse upon […]

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 […]