Dick Clark was especially cranky that August afternoon in 1966. For a decade he had been asking harmless questions of both guests and giggly teens on “American Bandstand,” but today’s silly subject irritated him, made him self conscious. A professional study had recently claimed most men within a few years …
“One of these days I’m going to write a song that makes someone want to cry.” — Neil Diamond, Teen Screen Magazine, March 1967 When The Neil Diamond Collection arrived in the mail last month, I had forgotten I ever ordered it. For most of my 39-ish years, Neil …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
The Faculty is a star-studded horror comedy featuring Piper Laurie, Salma Hayek, Famke Janssen, Robert Patrick, Bebe Neuwirth, Usher Raymond, Elijah Wood Jr., Clea DuVall… …and Josh Hartnett’s ridiculous hair. This is a fun film, so much better than I expected after the critical evisceration it endured on release in …
Be ye warned: There be spoilers. I don’t reveal the murderer, but I reveal a lot of important plot points. The Lady in White (1988) was mentioned in a double feature post last year on the now-defunct The Dark Sublime, and was accompanied by screencaps of delicious fall scenery …
This is my entry for Ivan’s Dick Van Dyke Show Blogathon, celebrating the revolutionary sitcom that first aired 50 years ago today! “The Masterpiece” Season 3, Episode 2 Rob sidesteps the ottoman! He then spazzes out and almost falls on Laura. “The Masterpiece” was the second episode of season …
Slither (2006) is a witty horror homage, borrowing elements from various zombie movies as well as Squirm, The Brood, Night of the Creeps, The Blob, and a dozen others. It’s filled with little in-jokes, such as Rob Zombie as the voice of Dr. Karl, Troma founder Lloyd Kaufman in …
