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…
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…
The Way Of The Dragon
I’ve never been much of a fan of . It seems there are zillions of them, all very same-y, and I’ve struggled to sit through any of them. Enter The Dragon is still perhaps the best known from the entire genre, and that’s the only one I recall seeing in its entirety. I didn’t like…
Batman
“Duh duh duh duh duh….Batman!” As a kid, I used to love watching the Adam West 1960s TV series. I was a superhero comic book fan, and this was the first – indeed only – onscreen superhero. No matter that the Zap! Wham! Kapow! titles were unbelievably cheesy and the villains incredibly silly – it…
The Enforcer (2)
I’ve already posted about the Humphrey Bogart film of the same name, but this Enforcer was the third in Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry series. It’s an ok movie, but not a patch on either the original or the first sequel Magnum Force. This was the point at which the Harry movies started to become formulaic…
Black Sabbath
I’ve never seen Mario Bava’s 1963 Black Sabbath, save for a YouTube clip of the bizarre end sequence – in which Boris Karloff rides off on a horse through the trees, only for the camera to pull back and reveal him to be on a prop horse in the studio, with the ‘trees’ created by…
Zombie / The Beyond
Italian director Lucio Fulci gets a lot of love amongst gore fans, but I must admit I don’t get it. The only movie of his I have managed to sit through is his pseudo Dawn Of The Dead sequel Zombie aka Zombi 2 aka Zombie Flesh Eaters etc. Years ago, this one got banned in…
The Incredible Hulk / The Incredible Hulk Returns
Years before Marvel Studios and mind-bending CGI conquered the universe, there were Marvel super-hero movies, sort of. These posters are for two TV movies which were subsequently theatrically released in various international markets. These were filmed as part of The Incredible Hulk TV series, which ran from 1978 to 82. These starred Bill Bixby as…
Gone With The Wind
Gone With The Wind remains the highest grossing movie of all time if box office receipts were adjusted for inflation. (Take that, James Cameron!). It was also for many years the most successful Oscar-winning movie (netting 8 awards), including Best Picture. I’m not sure if I have ever sat through all 3 hours and 42…
Mad Max / Mad Max 2
Australian director George Miller successfully redefined automative action sequences with his first two Mad Max movies. The first Mad Max (1979) is an origin story, told on a small budget, and helped make a star of a young Mel Gibson. It has its moments, but is rough around the edges. The sequel, with a much…