As prelude to what will hopefully be a massive ten-part series by Cinemart on the infamous giallo subgenre, here’s a taster with Mario Bava’s The Girl Who Knew Too Much (La ragazza che sapeva troppo, 1962) also known as The Evil Eye and released by American International Pictures for the US market where they also [...]
No one could ever accuse an Italian exploitation outfit of slow-witted thinking when it came to a genre opportunity. The release of George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, as the re-titled Zombi, unleashed a wave of films. Some were good, some were very bad and there would be plenty of ugly ones. Yes, most [...]
Bryan Singer’s much hyped Superman Returns, released 2006, was not a failure at the box office. It made money for the studio – a lot of it – but it was nowhere near approaching the billion mark many had anticipated. Neither is it a ‘bad film’. Fans were probably still a bit miffed the director [...]
Clint Eastwood’s first western (as director), High Plains Drifter, remains one of his best films, although, at the time of release in 1973 critics wrote it off as him riffing on Sergio Leone and his other collaborator Don Siegel. Without doubt both artists would have a huge impact on Eastwood’s growing style as a filmmaker. [...]
The first remarkable fact about Freaks is MGM produced the feature. The studio had noticed horror films were doing amazing business and popular with audiences. However, it seems almost beyond comprehension they, whose policy was to deliver high-class, high quality dramas and boasted “more stars than there are in the heavens”, released this mad film. [...]
Dino De Laurentiis produced Orca (also known as Orca: The Killer Whale) as an attempted to get on the Jaws bandwagon. Yes, there was something fishy going on. Italian cinema, although in decline compared to its 1960s heyday, always liked to reproduce titles based on bigger hits. However there’s a fatal error of judgement. Great [...]
This edition of Out of the Past features a special guest. Last year I was ranting and raving about Ti West’s The House of the Devil to anybody who would listen. I even ranted and raved to people who weren’t listening. It was in my official Top Five Movies of 2010 which I drew up [...]
Author, director, producer, lecturer. John Russo has many labels to his cinema career bow. He’s probably most famous for co-writing and producing a little 1968 flick called Night of the Living Dead. You know, that iconic work about flesh-eating ghouloids attacking a farmhouse in the countryside. Russo directed Midnight from his own novel entitled The [...]
This week’s Out of the Past takes a look at a sad but courageous interview horror icon Bela Lugosi gave in 1955 upon preparing to leave a sanatorium where he’d been lying low to kick an addict to morphine. Tim Burton’s 1994 classic, Ed Wood, had Lugosi played by Martin Landau in an award-winning performance. [...]
Alan Parker’s New Orleans set flick is ripe for re-discovery beyond its cult circle. Angel Heart, released in 1987, wasn’t a flop, but hardly a suceess either. Yet its blend of film noir, horror and gumshoe mystery is a treat. The cast is headlined by Mickey Rourke as P.I. Harry Angel and Robert De Niro [...]
