Caution: Spoilers ahead! *** Truth be told, I consider The White Elephant Blogathon a chance to inflict pain, suffering, discomfort, loss of appetite and slight headache upon some poor unsuspecting soul. That’s why I proffered up Universal Soldier: The Return and Big Trouble in previous years, irritating the recipients so much one victim considered smashing…
All posts in review
Ladies’ Man (1931)
Caution: Spoilers Ahead! One of the first lessons for fans of early film is perhaps also the hardest: many pre-Codes and early talkies are simply no good. The technological limitations, the era, the changing morals and styles, even when acknowledged, fail to fully excuse many of these indifferent programmers. Ladies’ Man (1931), with its unparalleled…
The Gone Too Soon Blogathon: Marie Prevost
Edit 07/06/2013: For anyone interested in doing their own project on Marie Prevost, please make sure to read the note at the bottom of the page. Thank you. This post originally appeared at https://www.shebloggedbynight.com/2012/03/gone-too-soon-blogathon-marie-prevost.html and a copy can be found on the Internet Archive here. *** Almost exactly one year ago, I posted my latest…
And Now, Some Bonus Robert Osborne Content
Clips from a few episodes of “Good Morning Britain” from 1989 featuring Neil Diamond being interviewed by the show’s Hollywood correspondent, our good friend Robert Osborne. There’s not much of Bob, just the back of his head and his voice, but I thought the SBBN chapter of the Robert Osborne Fan Club might…
Neil Diamond’s Birthday (And Sordid Past)
What’s knittin’, Kitten? There is no better way to celebrate Neil Diamond’s 71st birthday than to tease him about the questionable things he did when he was young. Everyone, go thank Capricornonevintage on Flickr for making your day just a little bit brighter. Then send your happy birthday wishes to Neil on Twitter, because…
Book Review: The Hammer Vault
On Tuesday, Marcus Hearn’s new Hammer compilation The Hammer Vault will be released in the U.S. I was lucky enough to snag a copy of this extensive book before the official drop date, and I’m glad I did. It’s a hefty thing, nearly 13 inches by 10 inches in size with 175 thick pages. The…
The Italian Horror Blogathon: Dario Argento’s Jenifer and Pelts
Italian director Dario Argento is known for his giallo films featuring excessive style, bloodshed and sex. His surrealist and controversial horror thrillers of the 1970s are often cited as some of the most influential films by modern horror filmmakers. In the mid-2000s, Argento directed two episodes of the Showtime “Masters of Horror” series. While not…
The Torture in Store: Ken Russell’s Gothic (1986)
Gothic is a wild mix of the beautiful and the grotesque, intriguing philosophical questions and empty MTV-era visuals, cloaked in an impossible melange of cobwebs and goats and sex and leeches. The film borrows thematic styles at whim, everything from David Lynch to Fellini’s exquisitely debauched Casanova (1976) to Hammer studios’ signature colorful lighting palette.…
Berserk (1967)
In 1962, the cult mainstay Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? launched a genre of campy horror films starring actresses who were best known for their classic Hollywood films of two, three, or even four decades earlier. Joan Crawford was one of the queens of this new genre and starred in several B-grade horror flicks. Berserk…
The Unknown (1927)
Related: the first of what should be many Flickr sets: The Unknown. *** There are, apparently, multiple prints of the Lon Chaney classic The Unknown (1927), though sorting the whole situation out is difficult to the point of impossible. In June and December of 1997, TCM showed an amber tinted print of The Unknown (1927)…