“I’m not standoffish, I’m inaccessible. Always have been.” Al Pacino as Phil Spector in David Mamet’s Phil Spector (2013) Just past the clumsily-worded disclaimer that opens Phil Spector is a movie that makes very little sense. Its title, its subject matter, its very existence is utterly dependent on the very real Phil Spector, his…
The Monster and the Ape #3 Flames of Fate Our narrator opens with exciting incomplete sentences! Suddenly! Just then! The wonder metal metalogen! Giant ape! Spot the homoerotic subtext! For those following along at home with the OV Guide version of the serial, this episode should start approximately 49 minutes in. During the…
The Loved One (1965), a biting satire on American commercialism and the business of death, was billed on its release as “The Motion Picture with Something to Offend Everyone!”, and even today, this still holds true. Based on the 1948 Evelyn Waugh novel, it was written after his “humiliating success,” as he referred to it,…
The Monster and the Ape Episode 2: The Edge of Doom When we last left everyone who bothered to show up for the first day of shooting on The Monster and the Ape, Ken was laying face down in a pit of sparks, Babs was stuck behind a false wall, Prof. Arnold was lying mostly…
Gummo (1997) is a difficult film that too often feels outrageous for the sake of outrageousness, though fans of the film seem to love it for just that reason. Personally, I’ve never been able to fully accept artistic expression that exploits people in order to show that sometimes our society exploits people. It’s impossible for…
William Shatner as Captain Kirk as Michael Myers in Halloween (1978). It’s one of the most iconic props in modern horror movie history, but what was it, anyway, and where is it now? The first mask used for the character of Michael Myers in the now-classic John Carpenter flick Halloween (1978) was a store-bought…
The Monster and the Ape Chapter #1: The Mechanical Terror Against my better judgement and as every synapse in my brain pleads with me to stop, SBBN is proud to announce a new series of recaps based on a classic movie serial: The Monster and the Ape (1945). A touching story of a robot —…
Arbogast on Film may or may not be open for the holidays! We all love Arbo and are glad he returns to us, even if it is only once a year. My husband’s art blog The Fuzzy Skeletonian has launched his 2013 Octoberweenpaloozaganza: Crumple Mania, so stop on by! As always, his blog has gory…
History is messy. The winds of cultural change seldom align neatly with our calendars; the things we think of as quintessentially 1950s, for example, like teenyboppers and nuclear testing and television, properly date to the 1940s. The same holds true for the 1970s, a decade which began in the midst of a sort of cultural…
Dan Brooks (Bing Crosby) is a disenchanted junior executive, the kind of guy expected to marry the boss’ eldest daughter and lead a staid, white collar life. But his true passion is racing, so he runs off with his horse Broadway Bill and his good friend, horse trainer Whitey (Clarence Muse), with plans to enter…