Easy Rider is perhaps the most famous the late 60s/early 70s wave of American counter-culture movies. Dennis Hopper’s movie was both hugely successful and influential. I saw it at the cinema years ago, but I must admit I didn’t really “dig” it. Hopper and Peter Fonda play two hippie bikers taking a road trip through…
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…
The Harder They Fall
No, this is not the recent Western fronted by Idris Elba. It’s a 1956 boxing movie with Humphrey Bogart. The Harder They Fall was Bogart’s final film role. He was diagnosed with cancer shortly before production, but kept this secret from his fellow cast. The movie is a noir-ish critique of the boxing industry, especially…
The Public Enemy
James Cagney was the original movie tough guy. In his time, he was the star of various gangster classics, including Angels With Dirty Faces and White Heat, but 1931’s The Public Enemy was the first and arguably best. It became one of the most influential gangster movies of the period. Cagney plays a bootlegger who…
Scanners
David Cronenberg is one of those directors whom I find perennially interesting, yet I find it hard to love most of his films. My favourites of his are The Dead Zone and Videodrome, with The Fly and A History Of Violence not far behind. Scanners pre-dates all of those, but shares his icy Canadian sensibility,…
Firefox
I doubt even the most avid Clint Eastwood fan would claim Firefox was one of his better movies. I remember buying this US one-sheet at a film memorabilia fair in Nottingham before the movie had been released in the UK. From the poster it looks promising, with a great image and tag-line….but that’s about as…
Halloween / Halloween II
The original Halloween was and still is my most terrifying experience in a cinema, for reasons that only partly relate to the film itself. True, John Carpenter’s 1978 original is a masterpiece of horror cinema. He practically invented the whole slasher genre, and unwittingly ushered in a slew of inferior imitations. I saw Halloween…
Some Came Running
Unusually, I own several pieces of memorabilia for this movie which I have never seen. I bought these posters simply because I am a big Frank Sinatra fan. He holds a special meaning for me as he was my late father’s favourite singer. I was fortunate enough to be able to take my father to…
Apocalypse Now
This is the US one sheet poster for one of the most epic and ambitious war movies ever. I distinctly remember seeing Apocalypse Now in the cinema. It was at an arthouse cinema in Nottingham, which did not have the best sound. Consequently it was impossible to understand a word of Marlon Brando’s dialogue. At…