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 »

Consider the following plotline:  A young man travels to another world where he infiltrates the indigenous people and adopts their ways.  He is befriended by a beautiful young woman who is very important to the tribe and ultimately becomes her lover.  Although at first the tribe has doubts about him, he proves his worth by ... read more »

A MATRIX OF CONNECTIONS For a long time, I avoided watching The Thirteenth Floor (above) due to the name Roland Emmerich in the credits. Emmerich was responsible in one way or another for such turkeys as the American Godzilla remake and 10,000 B.C.  However, prompted by Bright Lights After Dark commenter, Hal O’Brien, I finally screened the film ... read more »

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 »

Can a film’s designer be its effective auteur?  He can, if his name is William Cameron Menzies. Menzies is best known for directing and designing two classics of the science fiction/fantasy genre, his 1936 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ Things to Come (above) and his 1953 masterpiece of Childrens’ Expressionism,* Invaders From Mars (below right).  However, Menzies can also ... read more »

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 »

Can a filmmaker spend most of his or her artistic life recycling other people’s ideas and still be a true auteur?   Sure. Why not? Any idea, theme, style, or attitude if repeated frequently or obsessively enough can constitute an artistic signature – something that immediately identifies a particular movie as un film de [insert ... read more »

What’s so fresh and original about James Cameron’s Avatar? Very little, to be honest. The film’s design seems inspired by – if not directly borrowed from – the day-glo hyperrealism of Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern paperback series and the videogame based on them: Conceptually, Avatar recalls a 1966 Star Trek episode, “The Menagerie” in ... 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 »