Philip Kaufman’s 1978 version of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers is one of those rare instances where the remake is arguably better than the original movie. Don Siegel’s version is a deserved classic of 50s paranoia sci-fi, justly remembered in particular for its ending, as the hero stands on a freeway shouting to no avail…
To Trap A Spy
i used to watch The Man from UNCLE TV series regularly as a kid. It was an unashamed American James Bond knock-off, featuring spies Robert Vaughn and David McCallum in a new adventure each week. Cheaply made, and largely forgettable plot-wise, it had some decent chemistry between the leads, some fun gadgets and a few…
The Big Heat
Fritz Lang’s 1953 crime thriller is now considered one of the classic film noirs. The movie stars Glenn Ford as a homicide cop. Plus, there’s an early role for Lee Marvin as a heavy who, in the movie’s most famous scene, throws a pot of boiling coffee in his moll Gloria Grahame’s face, badly scarring…
Chariots Of Fire
“The British are coming!” So claimed the screenwriter rather arrogantly onstage after winning his Oscar for Chariots Of Fire. Actually, they weren’t. Goldcrest, the UK studio which produced Chariots Of Fire subsequently lost a ton of money on director Hugh Hudson’s unmitigated disaster follow-up Revolution, starring Al Pacino. As a 20 year old I actually…
Shivers
Shivers was the first David Cronenberg movie to put him on the map as the master of ‘body horror’. It has a lot of his tropes in place – a chilly Canadian setting, weirdly named mysterious doctors, and a fair selection of truly gross-out moments (see his later Rabid, Scanners etc). The movie was also…