It’s time for me to  ’fess up:   until this week, I’d never seen the the original Hammer Dracula movie, the one that made Christopher Lee a star. I’d never acquired a taste for Hammer horror; Universal Studios’ three-decade output (from 1924′s HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME to 1954′s CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON) supplied all [...]

The Malaysian films of actor / singer / songwriter / orchestrator / screenwriter / director P. Ramlee are gems:  disarming, humorous, tuneful treasures needing to be discovered by Western cinephiles. On a cursory look Ramlee’s Cinema may look like Bollywood-on-a-Budget, but as the viewing unfolds what emerges is a picaresque slapstick world with a common [...]

Milos and the gang at FACETS have scored big-time by unearthing this film, cleaning it up, and releasing it on DVD. ANOTHER SKY is the only film directed by screenwriter / novelist / Hollywood-biographer Gavin Lambert, made in Morocco on a budget of £25,000.  The movie was made during Lambert’s days as editor of the [...]

With constant revelations of Republican politicians’ sex scandals coming at us like loads of spermatazoa in hot pursuit of an ovum, I thought it would be appropriate to write an appreciation of the best comedy ever created on American Hypocrisy and false puritanism: Richard Boleslavski’s THEODORA GOES WILD. Barely remembered today, director Boleslavski’s career managed [...]

In order to build allies as World War 2 approached, the Hollywood film industry at the request of the federal government began incorporating aspects of Latin American culture in its films: glamorizing locales such as Rio and Buenos Aires, incorporating Latin culture in costume design (such as Edith Head’s designs for Barbara Stanwyck in 1941′s [...]

The Fourth of July weekend was the epicenter of the new film releases: major studio films are timed to be released in June, July and December. Lots to choose from but, for me and a friend, the agreed-upon movie to catch during the holiday was Michael Mann’s PUBLIC ENEMIES. I once heard the great experimental [...]

For a couple of decades, producers in Turkey cranked out unlicensed ripoffs of Hollywood movies:  RAMBO, STAR TREK, E.T., THE EXORCIST, STAR WARS, etc. Aysecik ve sihirli cüceler rüyalar ülkesinde (literally, Aysecik in the Land of the Magic Dwarfs) was the Turkish take on THE WIZARD OF OZ.  It’s pretty primitive filmmaking:  there’s even a [...]

This posting is a contribution to this week’s The Spirit of Ed Wood Blogathon at the Cinema Styles blogsite. Have you ever heard Charlie Parker’s 1947 recordings for the Dial label? Bird was in L.A., headed for a personal crash-and-burn that would soon land him in Camarillo’s mental hospital; for some sessions he had to [...]

The story of short-lived, A-List wannabe studio, Eagle-Lion Films (1946-1951), can be charted by the quirkiness of its output. OUT OF THE BLUE was one of its first offerings; and it’s a film that proves that (just like great improv) a scramble to keep keep the ball rolling can result in flashes of brilliance. Eagle-Lion’s [...]