Since I’ve worked in the Industry, some of my posts approach a movie as more than an end product:  they also look at the work culture of making a film plus the bottom-line realities of how everything up on the screen had to be paid for one way or another. That’s why I really enjoyed [...]

On a British site, I read that the mid-sixties surf film RIDE THE WILD SURF had a Gay following. That was news to me, so I gave it a look. The film is more naturalistic (if you can call a movie that is 50% rear-projection ‘realistic’) than the cartoony Frankie-and-Annette beach party films cranked out [...]

The Harry Ransom Center on the campus of the University of Texas in Austin is an Elysian Fields for film lovers. Among its treasures are the David O. Selznick Archives, the Robert De Niro Archives and the Gloria Swanson Archives. While doing some volunteer research work amidst their film holdings, I unearthed an artifact that [...]

That neglected low-budget 1950s horror movie BLOOD OF DRACULA has been rearing its head periodically on late-nite cable. It’s a primo example of an early Herman Cohen production. And a fascinating look at how screenwriter Aben Kandel loads a film with the fears of the Zeitgeist.  Many screenwriters have succeeded at crystalizing the fears of [...]

Maxine Cooper — an actress known for her appearances in such Robert Aldrich films as What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Autumn Leaves and most famously as the “Woo Bait” Velda in KISS ME DEADLY — has passed away in Los Angeles at the age of 84. Cooper’s television appearances were a catalog of early [...]

[Posted as part of the EARLY HAWKS BLOG-A-THON.] It says it right up there at the beginning: A Howard Hawks Production. So, not only did Hawks direct TODAY WE LIVE (1933), but he ‘produced’ it also. But I put the word produced in quotes because the film is a 1933 product of M-G-M, so above [...]

As the creator and author of www.postmodernjoan.com I find myself thinking about Joan Crawford almost every day. This weekend it has been her MOUTH. If you look at photos of JC from her silent movie days, she is hardly recognizable as the later screen diva, but most can’t put their finger on what’s different. Look [...]