No one with eyes and a brain could seriously dispute Nicholas Ray’s role as the primary auteur of Bigger Than Life. All you need to do is watch Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause and Bigger Than Life back-to-back to see that both films are the work of the same filmmaker, sharing a nearly identical approach to performance (pushed ... read more »

Paul Blaisdell (July 21, 1927 – July 10, 1983) was a science fiction illustrator (The Ant Men, above), a special effects artisan, and an inspired designer of imaginative costumes and props for a series of low-budget horror, monster, and sci-fi films released by American International Pictures and Allied Artists in the 1950s. He was the ... read more »

La Belle Captive (1983) is an erotic noir mystery by Alain Robbe-Grillet, the screenwriter of Last Year at Marienbad. It is also quite tongue-in-cheek. The following three images which appear in succession in the film capture something of the movie’s fetishistic flavor. If the last shot reminds you of the orgy sequence in Kubrick’s Eyes ... read more »

Check out the latest issue of Film Comment, containing an excellent, though regrettably short, piece by Richard Combs praising the formal achievement of Roger Corman’s The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (1967). “About time,” says I. Though film historians occasionally cite The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre as an effective genre piece – it is almost a ... read more »

In this drab time when new classic title DVD releases are almost nonexistent, one has to wonder, are the studio DVD people just asleep at the wheel, or–more likely–do they just know nothing about movies made before 1985 that aren’t Singing in the Rain or Casablanca? Well, I’m here to shout into the wind: Release ... read more »

If you’re a fan of the films of Otto Preminger, Roger Corman, or Mario Bava – or, like me, all three – you will be saddened to learn of the death earlier this week of John Phillip Law, who was an iconic presence in the films of all three directors. For Preminger, he played a ... read more »

Most fondly remembered for the two films she did for Terence Fisher – The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) and The Man Who Could Cheat Death (1959) – and the three films she did for Roger Corman – Premature Burial (1962), The Raven (1963, above), and The Masque of the Red Death (1964). This stunning English ... read more »

Boris Karloff in “The Wurdalak” episode of Mario Bava’s Black Sabbath (1963) This is my ranked list of 31 Essential Horror Films culled from Ed Hardy, Jr.’s 183 Official Nominees for the 31 Flicks That Give You the Willies List. In keeping with the parameters of Ed’s poll, my primary criterion for inclusion and ranking ... read more »

WROTE: Attack of the Crab Monsters; Not of this Earth; The Undead (in iambic pentameter); It Conquered the World; Teenage Doll; Rock All Night; A Bucket of Blood; Little Shop of Horrors (also acted, and provided the voice of Audrey Jr., the man-eating plant); Creature From the Haunted Sea; The Wild Angels; Death Race 2000. ... read more »

When I first saw Rose Hobart (excerpted above) back in the 1970s, it was a revelation to me. Its maker, Joseph Cornell (1903-1972), was an American surrealist who specialized in collages and “assemblages” – open-faced boxes in which he arranged images and various found objects. Cornell’s Rose Hobart (1936) was an assemblage of another kind, ... read more »