Bride of the Monster (1955)

Posted on January 30, 2011
Filed Under Ed Wood, films

Ed Wood’s might-have-been movie.

Bride of the Monster is tantalizingly close to being unremarkably bad, like Bert Gordon’s Beginning of the End (1957), Vic Savage’s The Creeping Terror (1964) or Wood’s own Jail Bait (1951).  For Ed Wood in 1955 the difference between “unremarkably bad”  and “paralyzingly bad” was professional life or death. An unremarkably bad horror picture would’ve moved Wood up a notch on the industry ladder, perhaps fostered further collaborations with competent pros, maybe generated some TV work. In the event a paralyzingly bad horror picture led directly to Plan 9 From Outer Space. Bride of the Monster was Wood’s last best shot. It dies before our eyes in the uncaring arms of an inanimate prop octopus. Read more

Batman (1943)

Posted on January 18, 2011
Filed Under films, serials

The first attempt to bring Batman to the big screen is a luxe 15-chapter Columbia serial released eighteen months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Batman (1943), with Lewis Wilson in the title role, is filled with echoes of the war then raging around the world and is a grand chapterplay, but it’s marred by its failure to adequately dramatize the title character. Read more

The Birth of A Nation again, The Metropolis Times, The Man Who Walked Around The World

Posted on January 15, 2011
Filed Under contemporary, film news, films, silent films

The most controversial film in history is now online at Hulu.

February 8 marks the 96th anniversary of the release of The Birth of A Nation. Griffith’s foul, brilliant masterpiece continues to stir controversy and debate. Last month a proposed showing of the film at the American Civil War Center in Richmond, Virginia generated a censorious resolution from the city council. (The proposed showing was canceled for a variety of other reasons.) Read more

Cockroach art

Posted on January 11, 2011
Filed Under exploitation, films

White Slaves of Chinatown (1964) stars Audrey Campbell as a vicious, criminal ice princess who breaks down kidnapped girls for the vice trade in New York City. Or, as the censorious narrator has it, “It is the story of one woman so sadistic in mind and nature that the very mention of her name brought fear and terror to all who dared to come in contact with her. Her name was Olga, and her business was slavery—white slavery and narcotics. This woman possessed a mind so warped that she made sadism a full-time business.” Campbell’s largely affectless performance as Olga is one of several memorable features of this grimy little exploitation shocker, which is more interesting than it ought to be. Read more

Josephine

Posted on January 6, 2011
Filed Under films, silent films

La Revue des Revues (1927) is a series of 1920s Parisian nightclub acts strung like pearls on an Art Deco necklace, the string in this case being a slight backstage melodrama about a poor girl’s rise to stardom. The gossamer-thin bridging story is expertly shot and mercifully brief, leaving plenty of time for extended recreations of more than 15 of the le jazz hot dance acts that made Montmarte’s nightlife notorious around the world in those days. Read more

keep looking »

Recently


Categories


Archives


Blogroll