“L’horreur… l’horreur…”

First off, I want to point out that my critical take on Kaidan (1964) and Histoires extraordinaires (1968; Spirits of the Dead) might be clouded by the fact that I stayed up late to watch both of these movies in an venue that is gradually becoming known around Rancho Yesteryear as “Insomniac Theatre.” So if it seems like I was…

“The horror…the horror…”

“I love October on TCM,” asserts Stacia of She Blogged by Night—a statement with which I heartily concur. TCM kicked off a bodacious horror film fest (one, I’m thankful to say, does not include every third-rate Halloween sequel like the once-proud AMC is heckbent on spotlighting) this a.m. with The Thing (From Another World) (1951) and it looks like they’re…

“The situation calls for strategy.”

Last week, TCM rolled out their latest made-for-cable documentary, Public Enemies: The Golden Age of Gangster Film—and while I had every intention of sitting down and watching it I forgot that I usually make a date with Keith and Rachel at that time, so I passed it up. I knew, of course, that the doc was included in the Warner Brothers…

Grey Market Cinema: Night of the Eagle (Burn, Witch, Burn) (1962)

Professor Norman Taylor (Peter Wyngarde) is a rising star at the college which employs him as an instructor; he is well-liked by both faculty and students, and he’s on the fast track to a promotion in his department. So he’s a bit taken aback when he learns that his wife Tanzy (Janet Blair) has been…

Down came a Blackbird

Originally scheduled for an October 12th showing (and postponed for a proper Paul Newman send-off), TCM premiered The Blackbird (1926) last night—an entertaining silent melodrama from the collaborative team of actor Lon Chaney and Tod Browning. Any chance I get to watch a film involving the contribution of these two cinematic giants is literally like a hot…

Carey Hilliard*

I had watched a promo on TCM announcing the “world premiere” of the 1962 cult oddity The World’s Greatest Sinner earlier this week, but a shout-out must go to Mark Evanier for the last-minute reminder. That having been said, he should also be condemned for leading me towards this colossal turkey; it’s one of the most serious examples of…

Region 2 Cinema: Repulsion (1965)

Carole Ledoux (Catherine Deneuve) is a shy, reserved manicurist who’s concerned about her sister Helen (Yvonne Furneaux)’s upcoming trip to Italy with the boorish Michael (Ian Hendry), a married man with which Helen is having an affair. You see, unaware to Helen or any of her salon co-workers, Carole is slowly descending into madness—brought about…

Little buddies

Kliph Nesteroff, one of the many sages at WFMU’s Beware of the Blog, has unearthed from the dusty YouTube archives a February 5, 1969 episode of The Good Guys, a CBS-TV sitcom which had a short-run from 1968-70. The series focused on the misadventures of Bert Gramus (Herb Edelman) and Rufus Butterworth (Bob Denver); a pair of…

Magnum Opus

Kerry Lauerman at Salon.com interviews Berkeley Breathed about the upcoming demise of his Sunday comic strip Opus, starring the penguin that was one of the delights of his Pulitzer Prize-winning strip Bloom County (1980-89). Breathed claims that the coarsening of the National Discourse is his motivation behind closing down the strip: You've said that you're ending "Opus" because you believe "We…

Seven rooms of gloom

Just learned from my CharredHer.net homepage that Levi Stubbs, lead singer of the Four Tops, has passed on at the age of 72. This makes Abdul “Duke” Fakir the only surviving original member of the popular Motown group, who charted so many hit records during the 1960s and 1970s: I Can’t Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch), Bernadette, Reach…