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Adults Only: House on Straw Hill (1976)
In the early 1980s British home video stores found themselves in the center of a storm when moral panic swept through the U.K. Religious leaders, parents and politically motivated individuals created...
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I’m in a fightin’ mood!
Oooh, I’m spoiling for a fight today… a real knock-down, dust-up, take-no-prisoners, no-quarter-given, apocalyptic barney. My knuckles are itching to bite into a set of teeth and my teeth are itching...
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2B/not2B (or, Lubitsch vs. Hitler)
The repetition of certain lines of dialogue is one of the defining characteristics of Ernst Lubitsch’s cinema. Lubitschean characters repeat certain lines as a way of creating double-entendres on the...
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Crawford’s Fire of Unknown Origin
What was it about the script for Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945) that caught Joan Crawford’s eye? And why does the finished product, a film that is a perfect fusion of film noir and melodrama,...
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Never a Bad Hair Day: Memorable Movie Hairstyles, ‘dos, and Cuts
Last week, I was reminded of Louise Brooks when someone on Facebook noted that it was her birthday. As a film historian, I should have immediately recalled her best films—Pandora’s Box, A Girl in Every...
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Siege Mentality: Assault on Precinct 13 (1976)
The violence in Assault on Precinct 13 is a result of simple geometry. Director and writer John Carpenter sets up four narrative lines that collide at a soon-to-be-shut-down police station. Taking...
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Let Us Now Praise Shamus Men
In 1972, the legendary film historian and archivist William K. Everson released his seminal book, The Detective in Film, of which I proudly have a first edition copy with its slip cover still in good...
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Mourning in America
Tomorrow (November 22nd) is the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and TCM is commemorating this tragic event by airing a series of films tonight (November 21st) that...
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Blog post (or Samuel Beckett and Buster Keaton Make a Picture)
In July of 1963, acclaimed Irish playwright/poet/novelist/weirdo Samuel Beckett traveled to New York City to oversee the filming of his first and only screenplay, a silent two-reeler starring Buster...
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Claude Chabrol – Beyond Criticism
A few years ago I made a poorly-thought-out attempt to pay tribute to Chabrol here in this blog, by (what was I thinking?) focusing on his worst film. OK, so that didn’t work. But I’m coming back to...
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Movie History Pared Down to a Decade
My last post dealt with William K. Everson’s 1972 book, The Detective in Film, and it got me to thinking about my movie book collection. Specifically, I wondered, as I looked through my library of...
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My Favorite Turkeys
In recognition of the holiday, I want talk about my favorite turkeys—box office turkeys, that is. This slang word for box-office failure goes back to about 1927 and was first applied to Broadway...
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German Class: Films From the Berlin School at MoMA
“I watch old [soccer] games on YouTube. Gladbach against Cologne in 1973, Ernst Huberty is broadcasting. Four camera positions, few cuts. Berlin School.” -Christian Petzold (quoted in epigraph to...
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Lowered Expectations: The Gift that Keeps on Giving
With the holidays soon approaching, here’s the perfect gift for any movie lover looking to have a good time watching movies that never fails: lowered expectations. I noticed on TCM’s schedule for the...
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Holiday Cooking with the Stars
In October I shared some of Vincent Price’s recipes and cooking tips in a post titled In the Kitchen with Vincent Price and the response was overwhelming positive. In celebration of Thanksgiving I...
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Shocking Stuffer!
Now that Thanksgiving is toast, it’s time to start thinking about Christmas… and if you’ve got stockings to fill, why not fill one with the latest issue of Shock Cinema? It always feels like 8am on...
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Claude Chabrol: a primer
For many, the term Nouvelle Vague is virtually synonymous with its twin axes, its most famous practitioners, François Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. But if Truffaut and Godard were destined to become...
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Cinematic Cat-egories
I was going to write about The Hudsucker Proxy (1994), because it’s screening tomorrow on TCM and, also, because the latest Coen brothers film, Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), opens theatrically this...
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Gloria Swanson’s Adventures in the Parlor City of the Ohio Valley
This past August, two new biographies about the silent era’s most glamorous star were published, Gloria Swanson: Ready for Her Close-Up by Trish Welsch and Gloria Swanson: The Ultimate Star by Stephen...
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Bumbling Angel: The Horn Blows at Midnight (1945)
For Jack Benny The Horn Blows at Midnight was a punchline, the crowning clunker in his failed movie career. He made it the object of self-deprecating scorn on his radio and TV shows, and as late as...
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