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This week on TCM Underground: Mario Bava’s Shock (1977) and Benjamin...
This week on TCM Underground, it won’t be Friday but it sure will be freaky! Italian filmmaker Mario Bava came to direct his final feature film in a roundabout way – roundabout because he had by 1976...
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Movie Book Round-Up: The Holiday Edition
Since I began writing for the Movie Morlocks five years ago I typically compile a blog post with summer reading suggestions or a list of favorite film related books released at the end of the year....
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What is a Western Anyway, or How a Western Can Be Just About Anything It Wants
Today, TCM offers up Cimarron, the 1960 remake of the 1931 adaptation of the 1929 novel by Edna Ferber that employs the Oklahoma Land Rush as a major plot element. Also on today, The Sheepman, from...
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Claude Chabrol vs. Fantomas
It was a little over 100 years ago that the writing team of Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre first began cranking out Fantômas mystery novels for a voracious European public. To keep apace with the...
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The Favorite No One Else Shares: The Twelve Chairs
Looking at the schedule for TCM today, I find myself once again drawn to discussing favorite movies of directors, actors, and writers that aren’t the obvious choices for most people. Of course, when I...
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One for Sinatra
When I was very young, I made a mental list of adventures I wanted to experience in my life—a kind-of bucket list before the phrase was coined. One of those experiences was to hear Frank Sinatra sing...
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Tunnel Vision: Under Pressure (1935)
Under Pressure is a swarthy, bellowing beast of a movie, burrowing its testosterone underneath the East River. Directed by Raoul Walsh in 1935, it depicts a race between two teams of self-described...
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This week on TCM Underground: Lucio Fulci’s The House by the Cemetery (1981)...
If you love, as I do, to re-read Charles Dickens’ classic Yuletide novella A Christmas Carol every December then you’ll love TCM Underground this weekend! Ghosts, the restless dead, dark old houses,...
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Extra! Extra! Stuff Shock Cinema #49 in your stocking, sucka!
The latest issue of Shock Cinema arrived last Wednesday, just a little too late to make it into my weekly roundup. A new SC always drops around Christmas time and it is always a welcome addition to my...
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Nippon Noir: Snow Trail (1947)
Senkichi Taniguchi’s Show Trail aka Ginrei no hate (1947) begins with a bang. A montage of shadowy figures and fragmented images bombards viewers during the film’s opening credits while guns fire,...
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He’s One of My Favorite Actors! If Only I Liked His Movies.
Today on TCM, the Blake Edwards remake of the German film, Viktor and Viktoria, this time as Victor/Victoria. The original has actually been remade a few times but the Blake Edwards version is the...
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Girls! Girls! Girls!
Two lovers, locked in a room—the future of the state itself depends on whether their roiling lust for each other will override their other emotions and compel them into a marriage. The last time these...
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The Circus Comes to Town
This Tuesday’s daytime theme on TCM is Under the Big Top. Yes, the circus is coming to town with 12 hours of chronological carnival fun from 1928 through 1959, and I can’t help but feel that some...
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When the King Met the Voice
As part of Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday celebration, TCM has included several television specials in their Wednesday Sinatra-centric programming. This Wednesday, December 16, the 1973 special Ol’...
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The Agony of Defeat: Four Falls of Buffalo (2015)
On January 3rd, 1993, the Buffalo Bills trailed the Houston Oilers 28 – 3 at halftime. I was 11 years old, and had gone to the Wild Card playoff game at Rich Stadium outside of Buffalo, NY with my...
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This week on TCM Underground: Possession (1981) and Black Moon (1975)
Oh, boy. We’re going to get letters. We are so going to get letters. And by “letters,” I mean angry comments in the angry comments section; I’m anticipating unfettered use of CAPSLOCK and lots of...
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Pioneering Women: Disney Artists Mary Blair & Thelma Witmer
Left: Mary Blair at work. Right: Thelma Witmer & color stylist Eyvind Earle working on Sleeping Beauty (1959). Tonight TCM is premiering a batch of winter themed Disney cartoons and movies...
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The Golden Age of Hollywood: The Expanded Universe
For years and years, Hollywood didn’t do much in the way of sequels. Certain successful movies had them, like Going My Way which had The Bells of St. Mary’s, but most successful movies, from Gone with...
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How I learned to stop worrying and love Star Wars
I’m not sure if you’ve heard but there’s a new Star Wars movie out now. Some of you are probably exasperated by this—I know that the (stereo-)typical audience for classic movies is an audience that is...
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Just a Moment
Later today, much later, the 1925 version of Ben-Hur runs on TCM and it got me to thinking about a post I did almost a year ago, There’s This One Scene, where I discussed movies that have one or two...
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