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With Janus possessing the much-needed restorations, Catherine Breillat is getting her biggest-ever spotlight in November’s Criterion Channel series spanning 1976’s A Real Young Girl to 2004’s Anatomy of Hell––just one of numerous retrospectives arriving next month. They’re also spotlighting Ida Lupino, directorial efforts of John Turturro (who also gets an “Adventures In Moviegoing”), the Coen brothers, and Jacques Audiard.

In a slightly more macroscopic view, Columbia Noir and a new edition of “Queersighting” ring in Noirvember. Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse trilogy and Miller’s Crossing get Criterion Editions, while restorations of David Bowie-starrer The Linguini Incident, Med Hondo’s West Indies, and Dennis Hopper’s Out of the Blue make streaming debuts; and Kevin Jerome Everson’s Tonsler Park arrives just in time for another grim election day.

See the full list of titles arriving in November below:

36 fillette, Catherine Breillat, 1988

Anatomy of Hell, Catherine Breillat,...

The original "The Twilight Zone," created by Rod Serling and broadcast on CBS from 1959-1964, is quite simply one of the greatest television series in the history of the medium. It has been incredibly influential in so many areas, from television itself (providing a sterling template for the anthology series), to sci-fi and horror in general, to even popularizing its title into a catch-all slang term for the strange and unusual. Serling not only gathered the cream of the crop of then-up-and-coming genre writers, but he also put his own imitable talents to use, writing the bulk of the series' 156 episodes and establishing the entire series' tone and style.

While the anthology, one-story-per-episode structure of "The Twilight Zone" allowed the series to avoid many of the usual pitfalls of long-running lightly- or heavily-serialized shows, it doesn't mean that the show was at the top of its game for its entire run.

Like most movies, The Invisible Man travelled a long and winding road to the silver screen, and perhaps longer and more winding than most. As biographer James Curtis put it in his book James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters, “The gestation of The Invisible Man was the lengthiest and most convoluted of all of James Whale’s films. It involved four directors, nine writers, six treatments, and ten separate screenplays—all for a film that emerged very much in harmony with the book on which it was based.” It was first suggested as a possible follow-up to Dracula (1931), perhaps as a vehicle for new star Bela Lugosi, but was dropped in favor of Frankenstein (1931) due to the complicated special effects it would require. After Frankenstein was an even bigger success, both director James Whale and star Boris Karloff were immediately attached to The Invisible Man and several...

These last few years the Criterion Channel have made October viewing much easier to prioritize, and in the spirit of their ’70s and ’80s horror series we’ve graduated to––you guessed it––”’90s Horror.” A couple of obvious classics stand with cult favorites and more unknown entities (When a Stranger Calls Back and Def By Temptation are new to me). Three more series continue the trend: “Technothrillers” does what it says on the tin, courtesy the likes of eXistenZ and Demonlover; “Art-House Horror” is precisely the kind of place to host Cure, Suspiria, Onibaba; and “Pre-Code Horror” is a black-and-white dream. Phantom of the Paradise, Unfriended, and John Brahm’s The Lodger are added elsewhere.

James Gray is the latest with an “Adventures in Moviegoing” series populated by deep cuts and straight classics. Stonewalling and restorations of Trouble Every Day and The Devil, Probably make streaming debuts, while Flesh for Frankenstein,...

It was more than a little heartening to see Roger Corman paid tribute by Quentin Tarantino at Cannes’ closing night. By now the director-producer-mogul’s imprint on cinema is understood to eclipse, rough estimate, 99.5% of anybody who’s touched the medium, but on a night for celebrating what’s new, trend-following, and manicured it could’ve hardly been more necessary. Thus I’m further heartened seeing the Criterion Channel will host a retrospective of Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations running eight films and aptly titled “Grindhouse Gothic,” though I might save the selections for October.

Centerpiece, though, is a hip hop series including Bill Duke’s superb Deep Cover, Ghost Dog, and numerous documentaries––among them Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, making Michael Rapaport a Criterion-approved auteur. Ten films starring Kay Francis and 21 Eurothrillers round out series; streaming premieres include the Dardenne brothers’ Tori and Lokita,...

Robert Florey directed and Curt Siodmak wrote it, but Luis Bunuel’s fingerprints are allegedly all over the concept for this earliest and best of the crawling hand movies. Dreamlike and intensely creepy, with a thundering Steiner score and Peter Lorre at his pop-eyed best in a role intended for Paul Henried. In any case, a crawling hand turns up in Bunuel’s later The Exterminating Angel.

The post The Beast with Five Fingers appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Robert Florey’s melancholy melodrama stars Peter Lorre as Janos Szabo, a Hungarian immigrant whose luck goes from bad to worse—scarred in a fire, he’s unable to find work and turns to crime. The film teeters on the edge of tragedy but Szabo eventually finds redemption in the love of a blind woman played by Evelyn Keyes. As was Lorre’s wont, he scares you and breaks your heart, sometimes at the same moment.

The post The Face Behind the Mask appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Since the creation of the camera and the dawn of cinema, film has been one long experiment. Experimental film has often been defined through its rejection of traditional storytelling and structure, its defiance of logic or reason while creating mesmerizing scenes through dreamlike abstraction and subjective narrative.

A key figure in the early history of experimental film was the French filmmaker Georges Méliès. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, Méliès was one of the first filmmakers to use special effects and trick photography to create fantastical and surreal images on the screen. His films, such as A Trip to the Moon and The Impossible Voyage, were some of the first examples of what would later be called experimental film. Another important trailblazer during the silent era was female director Lois Weber who is credited in creating an estimated 200 to 400 films. She was credited with pioneering the use of the...

Of the many macabre quotes attributed to writer-poet and goth luminary Edgar Allan Poe, one of the most implemented in fiction is his insistence that the death of a gorgeous woman is the "most poetical topic in the world." It's the focal point of his celebrated 1841 short story, "The Murders of the Rue Morgue," concerning the procedural investigation into the brutal death of a mother and adult daughter. It's a detective story crafted before such a term existed, and one of its big-screen adaptations featured a completed scene so vicious that the powers-that-be kept it from seeing the light of day, no matter how "poetical."

The year is 1932. Audiences are reeling in the wake of two major horror game-changers; James Whale's "Frankenstein" and Tod Browning's "Dracula" were both fairly faithful adaptations of their respective novels the previous year and (no thanks to the restrictive Hays Code) pushed the...

When people picture Count Dracula and Frankenstein's Monster, they think of the classic versions played by Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. Lugosi's suave, mysterious, and authentically European Dracula has informed all subsequent portrayals while Karloff's lumbering, green-skinned monster has eclipsed Mary Shelley's original description of the Creature in her novel.

The actors (and their respective characters) headlined many of Universal Pictures' classic horror monster movies. It all began in 1931, when Todd Browning's "Dracula" debuted in February and James Whale's "Frankenstein" followed in November. In another world, that year's fruits could've been all Lugosi's: Universal producer Carl Laemmle Jr. wanted to capitalize on the success of "Dracula" and have Lugosi play Frankenstein's Monster too. He thought Lugosi could be the "new Lon Chaney" — the "man of a thousand faces" — but the actor was reluctant to take up the offer.

"The Immortal Count: The Life and Films of Bela...

The Night of the Iguana

Blu-ray

Warner Archive

1964 / 1.85: 1 / 125 Min.

Starring Richard Burton, Ava Gardner, Deborah Kerr

Written by Anthony Veiller, John Huston

Directed by John Huston

T. Lawrence Shannon looks more like a dock worker than a clergyman but to the women in his congregation he’s as soulful as one of Raphael’s angels. The problem is that this particular angel’s wings have been clipped. Shannon’s faith isn’t the only thing he’s struggling with; his wandering eye and freethinking ways suggest a reined-in version of Urbain Grandier, the randy minister of The Devils of Loudon. But where Grandier was unrepentant, Shannon is a walking guilt complex.

There’s a storm brewing this rainy Sunday morning and inside the church Shannon is doing his best to match it; his sermon begins in a reverent whisper but builds to a booming confession, “He that hath no...

Rarely one finds a friend on the Criterion Channel—discounting the parasitic relationship we form with filmmakers, I mean—but it’s great seeing their March lineup give light to Sophy Romvari, the <bias>exceptionally talented</bias> filmmaker and curator whose work has perhaps earned comparisons to Agnès Varda and Chantal Akerman but charts its own path of history and reflection. It’s a good way to lead into an exceptionally strong month, featuring as it does numerous films by Pier Paolo Pasolini, the great Japanese documentarian Kazuo Hara, newfound cult classic Arrebato, and a number of Criterion editions.

On the last front we have The Age of Innocence, Bull Durham, A Raisin in the Sun, The Celebration, Merrily We Go to Hell, and Design for Living. There’s always something lingering on the watchlist, but it might have to wait a second longer—March is an opened floodgate.

See the full...

Is this a horror classic? I’d certainly says yes, just for the shrewd, sympathetic performance of Peter Lorre as an unlucky immigrant whose disfigurement in a fire turns him to life of crime and vengeance. An impossibly young Evelyn Keyes shines as the sweet love interest, but the performances and Robert Florey’s good direction keep the tone from going soft. And the ending is as bleak and chilling as they come. Whatever you may do, my recommendation is to Not double-cross Peter Lorre. The disc producers give experts Alan K. Rode and Kim Newman the podium, and they respond with three full extras on this highly unusual, seldom-seen gem of a horror film.

The Face Behind the Mask

Blu-ray (Plays on Region A players)

Viavision [Imprint] 44

1941 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 68 min. / Street Date May 21, May 26 or June 2, 2021 / Available from / 34.95 au

Starring: Peter Lorre, Evelyn Keyes, Don Beddoe, George E. Stone,...

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You don’t have to be obsessed with nostalgia to appreciate the aesthetic of a vintage movie poster — but it definitely helps. Vintage movie posters are multi-functional as far as gift giving goes. They’re perfect for movie lovers, they’re collectible, and they add a bit of character to any room. Whether you’re shopping for a gift for your home or office, or buying a present for someone else, we gathered up a short list of Old Hollywood movie posters to purchase online.

The round up of posters feature Marilyn Monroe, Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Shirley MacLaine, Ed Begley Sr., and other unforgettable faces from Hollywood’s Golden Age. High quality...

The Devil BatOver the past few years the Vienna International Film Festival's retrospective, organized in close partnership with the venerable Austrian Filmmuseum, has shifted its focus from the standard—though no less rewarding—practice of showcasing the work of Great Directors to carving out new lateral paths through cinema history, opening oblique thematic and geographical doorways that fruitfully undermine the notion of cinema as the product of a single monolithic creator. From tracing the circuitous second life of certain stories and their variations as they crop up, like musical refrains, in the form of remakes, sequels or re-imaginings across time to exploring the idea of utopia and its ideological correction in Soviet cinema, the Viennale's retrospective has become a dynamic platform through which to re-think cinema in all of its wonderful and varied complexity. This year was no different with the retrospective detouring from the sanitized, big budget, star-driven...

Classic horror film lovers get excited, as Turner Classic Movies just unveiled its movie lineup for the Halloween season. I’d run through and list all the classics that will be popping up throughout the month, but there’s just too many to list. This is Turner Classic Movies after all. Check out the full lineup below, and let us know if you’re excited for any of these! (via Bloody Disgusting)

Wednesday October 3, 2018

8:00 Pm The Unknown (1927) Dir: Tod Browning

9:00 Pm The Phantom of the Opera (1925) Dir: Rupert Julian

10:45 Pm The Monster (1925) Dir: Roland West

Thursday October 4, 2018

12:30 Am The Penalty (1920) Dir: Wallace Worsley

2:15 Am The Unholy Three (1925) Dir: Tod Browning.

4:00 Am He Who Gets Slapped (1924) Dir: Victor Seastrom

Saturday October 6, 2018

2:00 Am Deadly Friend (1986) Dir: Wes Craven

3:45 Am Demon Seed (1977) Dir. Donald Cammell

Sunday October 7, 2018

8:00 Pm The Mummy’s Hand (1940) Dir: Christy...

Ah romance! A handsome stranger takes a room in your house, lets you feed him and doesn’t pay the rent — of course he’s the perfect man of your dreams. Excellent WB players Faye Emerson and Zachary Scott enliven an odd mix of moods in a tale of a murderous Bluebeard- boyfriend. Director Robert Florey’s thriller is half stylish spook show, and half romantic sitcom. With Dick Erdman, Rosemary DeCamp and perky Mona Freeman as the little sister who needs to be told, ‘Don’t you do what your big sister done.’

Danger Signal

DVD-r

The Warner Archive Collection

1945 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 78 min. / Street Date March 6, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Faye Emerson, Zachary Scott, Dick Erdman, Rosemary DeCamp, Bruce Bennett, Mona Freeman, John Ridgely, Mary Servoss, Joyce Compton, Virginia Sale, Robert Arthur.

Cinematography: James Wong Howe

Film Editor: Frank Magee

Original Music: Adolph Deutsch

Written by Adele Comandini,...

'The Magnificent Ambersons': Directed by Orson Welles, and starring Tim Holt (pictured), Dolores Costello (in the background), Joseph Cotten, Anne Baxter, and Agnes Moorehead, this Academy Award-nominated adaptation of Booth Tarkington's novel earned Ricardo Cortez's brother Stanley Cortez an Academy Award nomination for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White. He lost to Joseph Ruttenberg for William Wyler's blockbuster 'Mrs. Miniver.' Two years later, Cortez – along with Lee Garmes – would win Oscar statuettes for their evocative black-and-white work on John Cromwell's homefront drama 'Since You Went Away,' starring Ricardo Cortez's 'Torch Singer' leading lady, Claudette Colbert. In all, Stanley Cortez would receive cinematography credit in more than 80 films, ranging from B fare such as 'The Lady in the Morgue' and the 1940 'Margie' to Fritz Lang's 'Secret Beyond the Door,' Charles Laughton's 'The Night of the Hunter,' and Nunnally Johnson's 'The Three Faces...

Ricardo Cortez biography 'The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez' – Paramount's 'Latin Lover' threat to a recalcitrant Rudolph Valentino, and a sly, seductive Sam Spade in the original film adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's 'The Maltese Falcon.' 'The Magnificent Heel: The Life and Films of Ricardo Cortez': Author Dan Van Neste remembers the silent era's 'Latin Lover' & the star of the original 'The Maltese Falcon' At odds with Famous Players-Lasky after the release of the 1922 critical and box office misfire The Young Rajah, Rudolph Valentino demands a fatter weekly paycheck and more control over his movie projects. The studio – a few years later to be reorganized under the name of its distribution arm, Paramount – balks. Valentino goes on a “one-man strike.” In 42nd Street-style, unknown 22-year-old Valentino look-alike contest winner Jacob Krantz of Manhattan steps in, shortly afterwards to become known worldwide as Latin Lover Ricardo Cortez of...

Each month, the fine folks at FilmStruck and the Criterion Collection spend countless hours crafting their channels to highlight the many different types of films that they have in their streaming library. This July will feature an exciting assortment of films, as noted below.

To sign up for a free two-week trial here.

Saturday, July 1 Changing Faces

What does a face tell us even when it’s disguised or disfigured? And what does it conceal? Guest curator Imogen Sara Smith, a critic and author of the book In Lonely Places: Film Noir Beyond the City, assembles a series of films that revolve around enigmatic faces transformed by masks, scars, and surgery, including Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face (1960) and Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another (1966).

Tuesday, July 4 Tuesday’s Short + Feature: Premature* and Ten*

Come hitch a ride with Norwegian director Gunhild Enger and the late Iranian master...

Will somebody explain the sheep and the bear? Luis Buñuel really knows how to disturb people. This, his most characteristic surreal drama proposes an impossible, irrational situation – which isn’t all that different from the reality we know. Petty social rules, jealousies and bitterness make life hell for group of dinner guests stuck with each other, caught in an existential trap.

The Exterminating Angel

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 459

1962 / B&W / 1:33 flat full frame / 93 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date December 6, 2016 / 39.95

Starring Silvia Pinal, Jacqueline Andere, Augusto Benedicio, José Baviera, Antonio Bravo, Claudio Brook, Rosa Elena Durgel, Lucy Gallardo, Tito Junco .

Cinematography Gabriel Figueroa

Film Editor Carlos Savage

Original Music Raúl Lavista

Based on a story by Luis Alcoriza, Luis Buñuel

Produced by Gustavo Alatriste

Written and Directed by Luis Buñuel

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

That intransigent rebel imp Luis Buñuel never mellowed — after ten or so...

Above: 1960s French stock poster for Marx Brothers revivals.This weekend New York’s Film Forum begins a week-long series entitled The Marx Brothers & The Golden Age of Vaudeville which is as good an excuse as any to look at the representation of the greatest sibling comedy team in cinema through movie posters. It has long been a tradition in movie poster illustration to render comedy stars as caricatures—often with oversized heads on small bodies—and Groucho, Harpo and Chico were a caricaturist’s dream. (Zeppo, the straight man, less so, but he left the act after Duck Soup in 1933, and re-release posters for the films he appeared in tend to ignore him, as in the Belgian Duck Soup and the Danish Horse Feathers below). With their distinctive props—Groucho’s oversized greasepaint mustache and cigar, Harpo’s curly blonde wig and Chico’s Alpine hat—the threesome could...

Look out! Here come two A.I.P. horror pix from the soggy end of the Poe cycle: the first features Jason Robards, an impressive cast and a disorganized storyline. The second is an almost-good Lovecraft horror with interesting performances from Dean Stockwell and Sandra Dee.     Murders in the Rue Morgue and The Dunwich Horror Blu-ray Color Scream Factory Street Date March 29, 2016 / 26.99

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Scream Factory's new double feature disc finishes off two different American-International horror series. The first picture is the last fright film made for the company by the directing and writing team of Gordon Hessler and Christopher Wicking. It's no gem, but it's a lot more interesting on a second viewing. The second is the company's final try to make that old joker H.P. Lovecraft into a filmic horror icon, like Edgar Allan Poe. It has a lot going for it, but also its own set of problems.

Depraved convicts ! Crazy Manhattan gin parties! Society dames poaching other women's husbands! A flimflam artist scamming the uptown sophisticates! All these forbidden attractions are here and more -- including Bette Davis's epochal seduction line about impulsive kissing versus good hair care. It's a 9th collection of racy pre-Code wonders. Forbidden Hollywood Volume 9 Big City Blues, Hell's Highway, The Cabin in the Cotton, When Ladies Meet, I Sell Anything DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1932-1934 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 63, 62, 78, 85, 70 min. / Street Date October 27, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 40.99 Starring Joan Blondell, Eric Linden, Humphrey Bogart; Richard Dix, Tom Brown; Richard Barthelmess, Bette Davis, Dorothy Jordan, Berton Churchill; Ann Harding, Robert Montgomery, Myrna Loy, Alice Brady, Frank Morgan; Pat O' Brien, Ann Dvorak, Claire Dodd, Roscoe Karns. Cinematography James Van Trees; Edward Cronjager; Barney McGill; Ray June Written by Lillie Hayward, Ward Morehouse, from his play; Samuel Ornitz, Robert Tasker, Rowland Brown...

A friend pointed out that a shot of a girl on a swing in Renoir's A Day in the Country (filmed in 1936, completed in 1945) seemed surprisingly similar to one in Robert Florey's Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). The girl swings, and the camera swings with her. Was Renoir influenced by Florey? Both men were French. Maybe Papa Jean was a Bela Lugosi fan. But now it seems like both were influenced by Charles Vanel, who includes an identical shot in the only film he directed, Dans la nuit (1929).Vanel also sets his camera on various fairground rides, and in this, as well as much of his visual style, he seems influenced by the impressionist school: Jean Epstein features a long, ecstatic funfair scene in his Cœur fidèle (1923). Like Epstein, Vanel exults in hallucinatory moments of disorientation, transient effects of light, and contrasting overheated emotion with gritty locations and a naturalistic depiction of working life.

Pat O'Brien movies on TCM: 'The Front Page,' 'Oil for the Lamps of China' Remember Pat O'Brien? In case you don't, you're not alone despite the fact that O'Brien was featured – in both large and small roles – in about 100 films, from the dawn of the sound era to 1981. That in addition to nearly 50 television appearances, from the early '50s to the early '80s. Never a top star or a critics' favorite, O'Brien was nevertheless one of the busiest Hollywood leading men – and second leads – of the 1930s. In that decade alone, mostly at Warner Bros., he was seen in nearly 60 films, from Bs (Hell's House, The Final Edition) to classics (American Madness, Angels with Dirty Faces). Turner Classic Movies is showing nine of those today, Nov. 11, '15, in honor of what would have been the Milwaukee-born O'Brien's 116th birthday. Pat O'Brien and James Cagney Spencer Tracy had Katharine Hepburn.

Don't Wait!  Put on the mask, Now!   The legendary 1961 spook-show classic has been restored and adapted to a better 3-D system than used for its original release.  A psychiatrist possessed by a Mayan ritual mask is compelled to enter a fantastic hell zone each time he wears the scary thing.  Kino packs the deluxe disc with extras, including a 2014 3-D short subject with its own "Let's go to Hell" story concept. We see Hell, all right. But where are the trailers from it? The Mask 3-D Blu-ray Kino Classics 1961 / B&W /1:66 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date November 24, 2015 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring Paul Stevens, Claudette Nevins, Bill Walker, Anne Collings, Martin Lavut, Leo Leyden, Norman Ettlinger. Cinematography Herbert S. Alpert Film Editor Stephen Timar Original Music Myron Schaeffer, Louis Applebaum Written by Frank Taubes, Sandy Haver, Franklin Delessert Produced by Julian Roffman, Nat Taylor Directed by Julian Roffman

Reviewed...

Get your beret and warm up the espresso! Some of the most famous deep-dish art film is here -- in HD -- starting with attempts to translate various art 'isms' to the screen, to graphics-oriented abstractions, to 'city symphonies' to the dream visions of Maya Deren and beyond. The careful remasters reproduce proper projection speeds and original music.   Masterworks of American Avant-Garde Experimental Film 1920-1970 Blu-ray + DVD Flicker Alley 1920-1970 / B&W and Color / 1:33 full frame / 418 min. / Street Date October 6, 2015 / 59.95 With films by James Agee, Kenneth Anger, Bruce Baillie, Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Rudolph Burckhardt, Mary Ellen Bute, Joseph Cornell, Jim Davis, Maya Deren, Marcel Duchamp, Emien Etting, Oksar Fischinger, Robert Florey, Amy Greenfield, A. Hackenschmied, Alexander Hammid, Hillary Harris, Hy Hirsh, Ian Hugo, Lawrence Janiac, Lawrence Jordan, Owen Land, Francis Lee, Fernand Léger, Helen Levitt, Jan Leyda, Janice Loeb, Jonas Mekas, Marie Menken, Dudley Murphy, Ted Nemeth, Bernard O'Brien,...

Groucho Marx in 'Duck Soup.' Groucho Marx movies: 'Duck Soup,' 'The Story of Mankind' and romancing Margaret Dumont on TCM Grouch Marx, the bespectacled, (painted) mustached, cigar-chomping Marx brother, is Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” star today, Aug. 14, '15. Marx Brothers fans will be delighted, as TCM is presenting no less than 11 of their comedies, in addition to a brotherly reunion in the 1957 all-star fantasy The Story of Mankind. Non-Marx Brothers fans should be delighted as well – as long as they're fans of Kay Francis, Thelma Todd, Ann Miller, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Allan Jones, affectionate, long-tongued giraffes, and/or that great, scene-stealing dowager, Margaret Dumont. Right now, TCM is showing Robert Florey and Joseph Santley's The Cocoanuts (1929), an early talkie notable as the first movie featuring the four Marx Brothers – Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo. Based on their hit Broadway...

Raymond Massey ca. 1940. Raymond Massey movies: From Lincoln to Boris Karloff Though hardly remembered today, the Toronto-born Raymond Massey was a top supporting player – and sometime lead – in both British and American movies from the early '30s all the way to the early '60s. During that period, Massey was featured in nearly 50 films. Turner Classic Movies generally selects the same old MGM / Rko / Warner Bros. stars for its annual “Summer Under the Stars” series. For that reason, it's great to see someone like Raymond Massey – who was with Warners in the '40s – be the focus of a whole day: Sat., Aug. 8, '15. (See TCM's Raymond Massey movie schedule further below.) Admittedly, despite his prestige – his stage credits included the title role in the short-lived 1931 Broadway production of Hamlet – the quality of Massey's performances varied wildly. Sometimes he could be quite effective; most of the time, however, he was an unabashed scenery chewer,...

How would you program this year's newest, most interesting films into double features with movies of the past you saw in 2014?

Looking back over the year at what films moved and impressed us, it is clear that watching old films is a crucial part of making new films meaningful. Thus, the annual tradition of our end of year poll, which calls upon our writers to pick both a new and an old film: they were challenged to choose a new film they saw in 2014—in theatres or at a festival—and creatively pair it with an old film they also saw in 2014 to create a unique double feature.

All the contributors were given the option to write some text explaining their 2014 fantasy double feature. What's more, each writer was given the option to list more pairings, with or without explanation, as further imaginative film programming we'd be lucky to catch...

Scariest movies ever made: The top 100 horror films according to the Chicago Film Critics (photo: Janet Leigh, John Gavin and Vera Miles in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho') I tend to ignore lists featuring the Top 100 Movies (or Top 10 Movies or Top 20 Movies, etc.), no matter the category or criteria, because these lists are almost invariably compiled by people who know little about films beyond mainstream Hollywood stuff released in the last decade or two. But the Chicago Film Critics Association's list of the 100 Scariest Movies Ever Made, which came out in October 2006, does include several oldies — e.g., James Whale's Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein — in addition to, gasp, a handful of non-American horror films such as Dario Argento's Suspiria, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre, and F.W. Murnau's brilliant Dracula rip-off Nosferatu. (Check out the full list of the Chicago Film Critics' top 100 horror movies of all time.

There are monsters out there. Scary, big ones. And they’ll haunt our dreams and crawl on our bodies for eternity. Nothing will ever make us comfortable knowing they exist, even in fiction. Then, there are some that are just Goddamn ridiculous. Here are ten of such monsters.

The Fiend Without a Face (1958)

Though ultimately, they’re just crawling brains and spinal columns, the most interesting aspect of the fiends is their invisibility for the majority of the runtime as they slowly gain their terrifying form.

The Creeping Terror (1964)

A giant, moving rug. Due to the extremely low-budget, this largely-narrated alien invasion tale amounts to little more than a big, badly dilapidated wool rug laying on top of its victims.

Prophecy (1979)

John Frankenheimer’s nature-gone-wrong turns into more of a nature-film-gone-wrong and features a bizarre, giant fetus-like bear terrorizing a mountainside.

Murders in Rue Morgue (1932)

Robert Florey’s Universal picture...

Above: Fan art poster for Gravity (Alfonso Cuarón, USA, 2013); designer: Peter Stults.

In this latest run-down of the most popular posters on my Movie Poster of the Day Tumblr—covering the last four months of daily posts—I’m not leading off with the number one most liked and reblogged poster (the Hitch-centric Rear Window, below) because that was the main poster in my loquacious posters post a couple of months ago. So I’m starting with the second most popular: a superb retro take on Gravity by artist Peter Stults which was one of a number of alternative takes on the film commissioned by the UK magazine ShortList back in October.

The rest of the top 20, shown in descending order, are a pleasingly eclectic grab bag, with posters from nine different countries and seven different decades. Three of my very favorite recent discoveries appear all in a row: that French La notte,...

Above: Us poster for Forbidden (Frank Capra, USA, 1932)

In honor of the month-long retrospective of the films of the great Barbara Stanwyck starting today at Film Forum in New York, I thought I’d select my favorite Stanwyck posters. Brooklyn-born Ruby Catherine Stevens made 85 films over 37 years in Hollywood so there is an awful lot to choose from. But the remarkable thing about looking back at these posters is how artists seemed to have had a hard time capturing her likeness. The poster for one of her earliest films, Capra’s 1932 Forbidden, above, captures her beautifully, but the poster for Stella Dallas (1937), her first Oscar-nominated role (she never won, shockingly), seems to be of a different actress entirely. As for the sexed-up illustration on the flyer for The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), in that she looks more like Jean Harlow. Some of my favorite posters for her films are the Swedish and Danish designs,...

Bette Davis movies: TCM schedule on August 14 (photo: Bette Davis in ‘Dangerous,’ with Franchot Tone) See previous post: “Bette Davis Eyes: They’re Watching You Tonight.” 3:00 Am Parachute Jumper (1933). Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Bette Davis, Frank McHugh, Claire Dodd, Harold Huber, Leo Carrillo, Thomas E. Jackson, Lyle Talbot, Leon Ames, Stanley Blystone, Reginald Barlow, George Chandler, Walter Brennan, Pat O’Malley, Paul Panzer, Nat Pendleton, Dewey Robinson, Tom Wilson, Sheila Terry. Bw-72 mins. 4:30 Am The Girl From 10th Avenue (1935). Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Bette Davis, Ian Hunter, Colin Clive, Alison Skipworth, John Eldredge, Phillip Reed, Katharine Alexander, Helen Jerome Eddy, Bill Elliott, Edward McWade, André Cheron, Wedgwood Nowell, John Quillan, Mary Treen. Bw-69 mins. 6:00 Am Dangerous (1935). Director: Alfred E. Green. Cast: Bette Davis, Franchot Tone, Margaret Lindsay, Alison Skipworth, John Eldredge, Dick Foran, Walter Walker, Richard Carle, George Irving, Pierre Watkin, Douglas Wood,...

Bette Davis’ eyes keep ‘Watch on the Rhine’ Bette Davis’ eyes are watching everything and everyone on Turner Classic Movies this evening, as TCM continues with its "Summer Under the Stars" film series: today, August 14, 2013, belongs to two-time Oscar winner Bette Davis’ eyes, cigarettes, and clipped tones. Right now, TCM is showing the Herman Shumlin-directed Watch on the Rhine (1943), an earnest — too much so, in fact — melodrama featuring Nazis, anti-Nazis, and lofty political speeches. (See “Bette Davis Movies: TCM schedule.”) As a prestigious and timely Warner Bros. release, Watch on the Rhine was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award and earned Paul Lukas the year’s Best Actor Oscar. Bette Davis has a subordinate role and — for once during her years as Warners’ Reigning Queen — subordinate billing as well. As so often happens when Davis tried to play a sympathetic character, she’s not very good; Lukas, however,...

Johnny Weissmuller Movies Turner Classic Movies: Friday, August 3 6:00 Am Tarzan And The Mermaids (1948) Tarzan and Jane try to keep a woman from being forced to marry a con artist. Dir: Robert Florey. Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Brenda Joyce, George Zucco. Black and White-68 minutes. 7:30 Am Tarzan And The Huntress (1947) Tarzan fights to keep a seductive female big game hunter from capturing too many animals. Dir: Kurt Neumann. Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Brenda Joyce, Johnny Sheffield. Black and White-72 minutes. 9:00 Am Tarzan And The Leopard Woman (1946) Tarzan fights to keep a killer cult from attacking traders. Dir: Kurt Neumann. Cast: [...]...

Intrigued by The Artist but don't know where to start exploring the silent film archives? Try these five classics, which lead to plenty more…

It doesn't take long for a novelty to be hailed as a trend. Internet film rental service Lovefilm reports that the buzz around The Artist has sparked a boom in curiosity about early cinema, with a 40% rise in the number of people streaming silent films on its site in the week leading up to the Oscars.

The top 10 most-streamed silents include a clutch of Buster Keaton's ingenious comedies, some heady Hollywood melodrama (A Fool There Was, starring Theda Bara, and The Son of the Sheikh, with Rudolph Valentino) and creepy Swedish horror The Phantom Carriage. There are only two films on the list that seem to bear any relation to Michel Hazanavicius's surprise hit: Frank Borzage's mournful romance Seventh Heaven (which inspired the...

Randy gets beastly!

In The Beast With Five Fingers, the severed hand of a dead piano player comes back from the grave to… play the piano some more! There’s plenty of melody in those ghostly tunes, even though the hand appears to be a left hand. If that were true, wouldn’t it just be playing the bass notes? Aah, I ‘m overthinking it, again. A dead hand plays the piano and all I can think of is “It’s the wrong hand!” Hey, is that a class ring on its finger?

I shouldn’t be so quick to point fingers. The music the hand plays turns out to be Bach’s Violin Partita in D minor – but it’s Brahms’ transcription for the left hand! Those movie makers think of everything.

The hand actually came back to do more than play a few scales. It’s a dangerous hand,...

I’ve finally made it to the grand master of the bravura sequence, or, more specifically, of the ending bravura sequence, King Vidor.

It isn’t surprising that a producer as knowledgeable as Selznick often ran to the services of the two major champions of “slice of cake” cinema and strong sequences, Hitchcock (Rebecca, Spellbound, Notorious, The Paradine Case) and Vidor (Bird of Paradise, Duel in the Sun, Light’s Diamond Jubilee, even Ruby Gentry), who, without a doubt, made the best films for Selznick.

Love Never Dies, Wild Oranges, Hallelujah, Our Daily Bread, Comrade X, Duel in the Sun, The Fountainhead, Ruby Gentry and their terrific denouements once made me write that Vidor was a director of film endings. No doubt I was exaggerating, but it isn’t for nothing that he hesitated for a long time between several different endings for The Crowd. I was also exaggerating because...

‘It’s alive!’ must be among the most famous exclamations in cinema history, but the scene is less often quoted in full:

Henry Frankenstein: Look! It’s moving. It’s alive. It’s alive… It’s alive, it’s moving, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive, it’s alive… it’s alive!

Victor: Henry! In the name of God…

Henry: Oh, in the name of God, now I know what it feels like to be God!

Blasphemy aside, that’s a lot of ‘it’s alive’s. The reason it doesn’t sound idiotic is because of the delivery by the young English actor Colin Clive. The passion, inflexion and variation he gives to the somewhat repetitive line makes it positively musical. He is one of a group of incredibly talented individuals who arrived at Universal in the early 1930s and helped instigate...

John Garfield on TCM: Humoresque, Four Daughters, We Were Strangers Schedule (Et) and synopses from the TCM website: 6:00 Am Four Daughters (1938) A small-town family's peaceful life is shattered when one daughter falls for a rebellious musician. Dir: Michael Curtiz. Cast: Priscilla Lane, Claude Rains, Jeffrey Lynn, John Garfield. Bw-90 mins. 7:45 Am Blackwell's Island (1939) A reporter gets himself sent to prison to expose a mobster. Dir: William McGann. Cast: John Garfield, Rosemary Lane, Dick Purcell. Bw-71 mins. 9:00 Am They Made Me A Criminal (1939) A young boxer flees to farming country when he thinks he's killed an opponent in the ring. Dir: Busby Berkeley. Cast: John Garfield, Claude Rains, Gloria Dickson. Bw-92 mins. 10:45 Am Dangerously They Live (1942) A doctor tries to rescue a young innocent from Nazi agents. Dir: Robert Florey. Cast: John Garfield, Nancy Coleman, Raymond Massey. Bw-77 mins. 12:15 Pm Pride Of The Marines (1945) A blinded...

Linda Christian, international actress and Tyrone Power's second wife, died Friday (July 22) in Palm Springs, California. Christian, who was 87, had been suffering from colon cancer. Linda Christian was born Blanca Rosa Henrietta Stella Welter Vorhauer on November 13, 1923, in Tampico, Mexico, to a Dutch oil executive and his German-Mexican wife. As a young girl, she traveled the world with her parents, according to reports eventually becoming fluent in seven languages. Discovered by Errol Flynn while in Acapulco, Christian moved to Los Angeles where she began her film career in bit parts in Hollywood movies of the mid-1940s. Labeled "The Anatomic Bomb" by Life magazine, Christian eventually progressed to supporting roles in a handful of productions, among them Robert Florey's Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948) and Richard Fleischer's The Happy Time (1952). Leading roles, however, eluded her, while a reported seven-year MGM contract led nowhere. Though the first Bond girl...

Robert Florey directed and Curt Siodmak wrote it, but Luis Bunuel's fingerprints (heh, heh) are allegedly all over the concept for this earliest and best of the crawling hand movies. Dreamlike and intensely creepy, with a thundering Steiner score and Peter Lorre at his pop-eyed best in a role intended for Paul Henried. In any case, a crawling hand turns up in Bunuel's later Exterminating Angel.

Did you somehow miss this amazing sequel to Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man? Who could ever forget The Wolf Man vs. Dracula, the Technicolor square-off between Bela Lugosi’s villainous vampire and Lon Chaney, Jr.’s, hirsute antihero? You don’t remember it? Of course not, because it never existed. But, it almost did!

Welcome to “An Alternate History for Classic Film Monsters,” a wonderful series of previously unpublished screenplays from the Universal Monsters era. Curated by Philip J. Riley (Count Dracula Society Award winner and inductee into the Universal Horror Hall of Fame), this collection of newly dug up scripts offers any devoted monster fan who’s “seen ‘em all” a special opportunity indeed of seeing some classic chiller movies that might have been.

Published in the same style as Riley’s earlier screenplays of the ‘30s thriller greats put out by MagicImage, these BearManor Media volumes include a...

It was on this day, April 22 1935, that the Bride was born…

One of the most iconic images in all of horror cinema, the Bride has haunted our nightmares for 75 years now, an eerily beautiful, hissing figure covered in gauze from head-to-toe, draped in a brilliant but inelegant white shroud, and with flaming white streaks shooting up a jazzed, Nefertiti hairdo.

The Bride’s part in the 1935 Universal classic The Bride of Frankenstein is a small one, but it burns instantly and indelibly into one’s psyche, as the radiant Elsa Lanchester and the immortal Boris Karloff enact the ultimate nightmare version of a blind date.

The Bride of Frankenstein has endured for 75 years, its reputation as one of the great touchstones of early horror movies – and of Hollywood’s Golden Age — only looming larger as the decades tick past. The absolute zenith of the original Universal Horror cycle, Bride effortlessly combines everything: ghoulish chills,...

We come to our first episode not written by series mastermind Rod Serling, a psychological horror entry by Charles Beaumont blurring the line between reality and dreams. Then, Serling's own take on a nightmare, his not an internalized terror but an eternity of horror wrought by who else but the main character himself.

Season 1, Episode 9 - Perchance To Dream

Originally aired on November 27, 1959

Written by: Charles Beaumont

Directed by: Robert Florey

"They say a dream takes only a second or so, and yet in that second a man can live a lifetime. He can suffer and die, and who's to say which is the greater reality: the one we know or the one in dreams, between heaven, the sky, the earth- and in the Twilight Zone."

An old legend tells us that if while you sleep you dream of falling off a high precipice and reach the bottom before waking up,...

We come to our first episode not written by series mastermind Rod Serling, a psychological horror entry by Charles Beaumont blurring the line between reality and dreams. Then, Serling's own take on a nightmare, his not an internalized terror but an eternity of horror wrought by who else but the main character himself.

Season 1, Episode 9 - Perchance To Dream

Originally aired on November 27, 1959

Written by: Charles Beaumont

Directed by: Robert Florey

"They say a dream takes only a second or so, and yet in that second a man can live a lifetime. He can suffer and die, and who's to say which is the greater reality: the one we know or the one in dreams, between heaven, the sky, the earth- and in the Twilight Zone."

An old legend tells us that if while you sleep you dream of falling off a high precipice and reach the bottom before waking up,...

The Scary Movies 3 festival being held by Manhattan’s Film Society of Lincoln Center October 12-22 at the Walter Reade Theater (165 West 65th Street, upper level), which we first reported on last week, has updated its schedule, with the addition of fright filmmaker Eric Red and two of his movies to the lineup. And in conjunction with the Film Society, Fango is offering five free pairs of tickets to the Thursday, October 15 at 8 p.m. showing of An American Werewolf In London, with writer/director John Landis in attendance!

Red will be on hand for 1986’s original The Hitcher, which he scripted, and his new writing/directing venture 100 Feet; see the full updated schedule below. To enter to win tickets to American Werewolf with the Landis Q&A, send an e-mail by 12 noon Est on Tuesday the 13th to fangoscreening@starloggroup.com. You must list “American Werewolf” as your subject line; plus,...