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This week on TCM Underground: Abar, First Black Superman (1977) and Shaft in...
This week on TCM:U, a double feature of blaxploitation… well, we really can’t call them classics, can we? But wait… The tale of a street corner activist (Tobar Mayo) transformed by science into a...
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Bob Peak: Poster Artist
Bob Peak (1927-1992) at work in his studio One of the best movie posters I own is a U.S. design for Joseph Losey’s Modesty Blaise (1966) featuring a gorgeous eye-popping illustration by Bob Peak....
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Deleting History at the Editing Table
A play can be changed from night to night, performance to performance. It’s a living, breathing piece of art that may play one way at a Sunday matinee and a completely different way at a Friday night...
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The American Artist
While vacationing in Paris recently I was struck by how much Parisians love their artists. The streets are named for major cultural figures, the city is awash in museums, and at the newsstand kiosks...
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The Front Page
Coming up this Wednesday TCM is offering up The Front Page (Lewis Milestone, 1931). This pre-code screwball comedy co-produced by Howard Hughes is based on a scandalous 1928 Broadway play by Ben Hecht...
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Ghoulardi: Cleveland’s Monster of Ceremonies
This semester, I covered a topic in my horror-science fiction course that I never addressed before—monster culture. Monster culture was that phenomenon that began in the 1950s in which young fans of...
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While the City Sleeps: Paris Belongs to Us (1962)
“The release of Paris Belongs to Us is a score for every member of the [Cahiers du Cinéma] team – or of our Mafia, if you prefer…For Rivette is the source of many things. The example of Le Coup de...
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This week on TCM Underground: Shock! (1977) and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)
Have you checked the children… for signs of possession?! After his Gothic magnum opus LISA AND THE DEVIL (1972) was recut by his American producer and dumped into the drive-ins and second run...
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Death Walks Twice: A Giallo Double Feature
The fine folks at Arrow deserve applause for their diligent efforts to release a number of exceptional giallo films on Blu-ray in recent years. Some of the giallo titles you can currently purchase from...
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The First Time I Ever…
Tonight TCM airs one of the all time classics by anyone’s yardstick, The Wizard of Oz. It’s a movie that occupied a great deal of my childhood imagination as its annual showing was a highlight of each...
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O Superman
So this is not a review of Batman V Superman. For one thing, TCM doesn’t take kindly to us Morlocks spending too much time on contemporary movies when there’s so much classic cinema yet to explore....
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Hitchcock’s One Set Wonders
Today, TCM runs one of Hitchcock’s biggest hits of the forties, the suspense wartime thriller with Tallulah Bankhead, William Bendix, and John Hodiak, Lifeboat. Lifeboat is notable for taking place...
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‘Midnight Special’ Coming Your Way
The 18th annual Sarasota Film Festival (SFF) has wrapped, and, as usual, I have mixed feelings about the event. But, I am always glad to attend because of the opportunity to catch indie, foreign, and...
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Group Therapy: Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Only Angels Have Wings keeps growing stranger with age. This studio-era classic is about a group of nihilist flyboys who enact their dreams of self-destruction out of an imaginary South American...
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This week on TCM Underground: The House by the Cemetery (1981) and Burnt...
Just when you thought it was safe to rent a creepy old country house at a surprisingly affordable rate… Cobbled together from bits and bobs cadged from Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe,...
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Barrymore Best: The Spiral Staircase (1946)
Ethel Barrymore & Dorothy McGuire in The Spiral Staircase (1946) This month Turner Classic Movies is spotlighting “The Best of the Barrymores.” The Barrymore family regularly appears on TCM but...
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Losing Track of the Later Career
Actors and directors have distinct career tracks much of the time. If they’re a big star, like Cary Grant, they have a type of role that works well for them, and they stick to it throughout their...
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Abbott, Costello, Jekyll, Hyde
So, this weekend TCM has got it into its corporate head to screen the 1953 comedy Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In case you didn’t already know, this is one of the lesser-regarded,...
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Forbidden Planet and other Shakespearean musings
Later today TCM is screening Forbidden Planet (Fred Wilcox, 1956), one of the best science-fiction films of all time. That last statement might ring hyperbolic, but anyone familiar with the movie...
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Check Out These Documentaries
I know very few people who do not like documentaries, which are produced by the hundreds if not thousands every year. Some of the most respected filmmakers lauded at film festivals are documentarians....
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