Never underestimate a one-armed man. For example, nobody believed Richard Kimble in The Figutive when he tries to convince them such a man murdered his wife. I’m not exactly sure what the singularly limbed guy in Twin Peaks is all about, but he’s pretty creepy. Ernest Borgnine is a thug in a very small desert […]
Movie: Eye of the Devil (1966)
1966’s Eye of the Devil is a curious film. It anticipates the folk horror genre which would only kick into gear a few years later. It has the feel of Polanski’s workaround that time. Strangely, he is two degrees of separation away from this production, at best, as his future wife Sharon Tate is in […]
Movie: Crazy People (1990)
As the end credits rolled for 1990’s Crazy People, I said aloud a one-word assessment to my wife, a word I do not believe I have ever used before in describing a movie, and that was, “Neat.” That there was a sing-along-with-the-bouncing-ball bit happening over those credits only reinforced this feeling. I’ll admit that is […]
Movie: Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo (1977)
Tom Atkins and Howard Hesseman pick up a quick paycheck in 1977 telefilm Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo. It looks like they’re going to be the stars of this, except they’re out of the picture in about 15 minutes or so. These two had been flying a plane full of coffee out of Ecuador, after taking […]
Movie: The Mark of the Whistler (1944)
1944’s Mark of the Whistler is the second film in a series that began with The Whistler. Once again, it is a standalone tale, only a few minutes longer than an hour, and with a title character who only serves as an occasional narrator and observer. Oh, and all we ever see of him is […]
Music: One Chord to Another (Sloan, 1996)
Some of the music I love is not by the innovators, but by those who were influenced by them long after the fact. Take a whole bunch of Nuggets-worthy garage bands, add few a measures of Revolver-era Beatles, then a couple of spoonfuls of the White Album, maybe a whiff of Emmit Rhodes’s debut album, […]
Movie: Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936)
It’s odd how some very dark moments in history can become popular stories in later eras, ones that are told over and over again. In the fourteenth century, there was a French barber killing the wealthiest customers and stealing their money, only to turn their bodies over to the pastry chef next door for fresh […]
Movie: The Whistler (1944)
I had never heard of The Whistler before buying the Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray box set Columbia Noir #6: The Whistler. However, this is a series of movies labeled as noir, so I was doubtlessly going to exposed to these sooner or later. And this would be the way to do it, what with Indicator’s focus on […]
Movie: The Lost World (1960)
For as brilliant as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle supposedly was, his belief in fairies made him seem like a bit of a nutjob. Of course, the only reason his name is still in the public consciousness is for the Sherlock Holmes stories. But he wrote other stories as well, and some of those are less […]
Movie: Maria Marten, or the Murder in the Red Barn (1935)
Movies have taught me the best reaction to some questions or statements is to turn and run. Consider “What are you doing here?” If you even have to ask that question, you should already have turned heel and booked it instead of saying anything. Worse still is if somebody asks for confirmation that nobody knows […]
Movie: Catacombs (aka The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die) (1965)
Gary Merrill had once been married to Bette Davis, after they fell in love on the set of All About Eve. He had been separated from her for five years when he starred in 1965’s Catacombs (later retitled to The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die), a movie where he conspires to kill his financially successful but […]
Movie: Chicago Deadline (1949)
A curious subgenre of noir is that where the investigation is to find carriers of a disease before it can spread into an epidemic. A couple of such films I have seen before include Panic in the Streets and The Killer that Stalked New York. 1949’s Chicago Deadline is in a similar vein as those, […]
Movie: The Harder They Fall (1956)
Since starting this blog, there are few movies I watch which I do not consequently write about. So it’s odd I did not feel any need to comment on the first five films in the Powerhouse/Indicator blu-ray boxed set Columbia Noir #5: Humphrey Bogart. In total, the set has six Bogie-related films I have not […]
Movie: Race with the Devil (1975)
I read something recently about how many conspiracies can be dismissed out of hand because 1) people inherently have a compulsion to talk, and 2) the more people in on a secret makes it that much more difficult to keep it under wraps. I am reminded of the old adage that two can keep a […]
Movie: Hidden City (1987)
A couple of days after watching 1987’s Hidden City, I’m wondering how it could have gone so wrong. There’s actors I like in the cast, such as Charles Dance, Bill Paterson and Richard E. Grant. The plot centers around a forbidden film, a literary and cinematic trope I’m a sucker for. There’s even a government […]