In 1944, John Brahm directed his suspensful period noir, The Lodger, starring the wonderfully silken-voiced Laird Cregar (above left) as a mysterious rooming house guest who may or may not be Jack the Ripper. When I heard a Lodger remake was planned for the 2000s, and that it would star Alfred Molina (above right), my ... read more »

A follow-up to this post . . . Here’s an example of a real EC Comics cover – Shock SuspenStories No. 6 – from the company’s early ’50s heyday, and you can immediately see why some groups wanted to have these comics banned. At a time when any criticism of America was considered *suspect*, EC ... read more »

The name of the film is Black Magic, it was released in 1949, and it stars Orson Welles in one of his most flamboyant performances as Joseph Balsamo, aka Cagliostro, the hypnotist/charlatan whose schemes in pursuit of wealth and power were a factor in bringing about the French Revolution. I am delighted to report that ... read more »

The frame is from Screaming Mimi (1958), directed by Gerd Oswald, based on Fredric Brown’s “The Screaming Mimi” (below), which also provided the inspiration – uncredited – for Dario Argento’s The Bird With the Crystal Plumage. The image is a study in oppositions – left frame vs. right frame, light vs. dark, foreground vs. background, ... read more »

Hughes as Narcissist – Robert Downey, Jr. in Iron ManJon Favreau’s Iron Man (2008) has been universally praised for what it is, a well done but fundamentally generic superhero film. It’s also a pretty good Howard Hughes film. What makes it work on both levels is the inspired casting of Robert Downey, Jr. as Tony ... read more »

To see Charlton Heston in person was to realize that some people are born to be movie stars. He had a larger-than-life presence on-screen. And off-screen as well. In 1980, at the Los Angeles International Film Exposition (the now-defunct FILMEX), I watched him introduce with his characteristic charisma and grace a three-day marathon of epic ... read more »

In film noir, the anima (a female projection of the male unconscious) often takes the form of a femme fatale, a figure that lures the male protagonist to his doom. But as Bright Lights correspondent Eugenia points out, “There is another type of femme who figures there—a guardian angel type.” Just as the femme fatale ... read more »

Conventional wisdom tells us that the first “true” film noirs were made in the early 1940s, with 1941′s The Maltese Falcon generally considered “the unofficial beginning of the noir cycle” (Alain Silver). Conventional wisdom is sometimes wrong. Take a look at these frames from John Brahm’s Let Us Live (1939), and ask yourself if there ... read more »

Orpheus Descending - Kim Hunter (left) in The Seventh Victim    Hunter’s screen sister, Bettie Page-coiffed Jean Brooks (center), intimidated by Greenwich Village Satanists.   Bright Lights After Dark tips its hat to the Val Lewton Blogathon hosted here, and encourages its readers to check out the documentary, Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows, screening ... read more »

[SPOILERPHOBES BEWARE!! The following post comments in a general fashion on the endings of No Country for Old Men and The Great Silence, as well as what happens to Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in Psycho. Oh yes, and Rosebud was Kane's sled.] The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men has emerged as the most ... read more »