The Frenchman, Maurice Tourneur, and the Austrian, Richard Oswald, were major producer/directors during cinema’s Silent Era, but are hardly remembered today. These days, movie lovers are more likely to know the films and television shows directed by their sons — Jacques Tourneur (Cat People, I Walked With a Zombie, Out of the Past), and Gerd Oswald (Brainwashed, Screaming ... read more »

   Lost Horizons Beneath the Hollywood Sign, by David Del Valle. Albany, Georgia: BearManor Media, 2010. Paperback. $27.95. 458 pp. ISBN 1593936079.   David Del Valle collects. Among other things, he collects movie people. Lost Horizons Beneath the Hollywood Sign is a book of reminiscences, some of which previously appeared in Films in Review, of movie ... read more »

Speaking of campy extraterrestrials, do you recognize this classic horror film star? Here’s another publicity image from the same production. I hope you’re as surprised and delighted as I was.  It’s Ernest Thesiger, best known as Dr. Pretorius in James Whale’s Bride of Frankenstein, playing “The Monster,”  a talking microbe (not really an extraterrestrial, but he sure looks ... read more »

I have written before of my admiration for the late Michael Gough (1916-2011), a British actor who could move effortlessly from the serious classical theater of Shakespeare, Chekhov, Harold Pinter, and Berthold Brecht, to the florid melodramas of Jimmy Sangster and Herman Cohen.  Which is another way of saying that – like Sirs Laurence Olivier, Alec Guinness, or John Gielgud ... read more »

Reaching across time, this poster for Gregg Araki’s 2011 film, Ka-Boom, echoes the kaleidoscopic poster design of Daniel Haller’s 1970 psychedelic monster-fest, The Dunwich Horror (screenplay by Curtis Hanson), and makes explicit the subtext of the earlier film … Those Crazy Kids.

Another masterpiece by the late Frank Frazetta (1928-2010), and a classic example of how Hollywood studio thinking  – a misguided attempt to reach the widest demographic possible — destroyed the potential of a great property.  Frazetta’s cover painting illustrates and was inspired by John A. Keel’s 1975 non-fiction book, The Mothman Prophecies, about a cluster of paranormal ... read more »

When you believe in things you don’t understand, you suffer. –Stevie Wonder In 1949 Walt Disney Studios produced the last, and arguably the best, of their “package” films – barely-feature length vignette collections made on reduced budgets during World War II for theatrical distribution – though the dyad of animated novellas included are improved little ... read more »

It’s a shame that Ed Wood’s last non-skin film, NIGHT OF THE GHOULS (1959), had to go unseen all through the prime time of Wade Williams’ TV horror package. It was also never released theatrically, so there’s no original movie poster, just video cover art. Williams coughed up the lab fee Wood could never afford ... read more »

Thank you, Spirit of Ed Wood Blogathon, for giving me an excuse to write about José Mojica Marins, the Brazilian screenwriter, director, and star of films every bit as quirky and original as those of the incomparable Wood. To be fair, Marins combines Wood with equal parts William Castle and Luis Buñuel, even – in ... read more »

Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times has some interesting observations to make concerning the Drag Me to Hell poster (top). As he notes, the actress’s wide open mouth seems to express orgasmic ecstasy rather than the horror of being dragged down to hell: “If this is a horror film where she’s supposed to be scared, ... read more »