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There’s nothing quite like Rv horror. Inspired by an expanding national highway system and the proliferation of motor parks in the 1960s, this distinctive subgenre offers a unique blend of classic genre fare. Part home invasion, part road trip tale, part hicksploitation with a smidge of folk horror, the recreational vehicle becomes a home away from home and offers the illusion of safety while traversing strange locales. Jack Starrett’s Race with the Devil is arguably the first great entry in the Rv horror tradition, a criminally underseen film following two suburban couples on a road trip to hell.

Friends and business partners Frank (Warren Oates) and Roger (Peter Fonda) have just set out on an adventurous road trip from San Antonio, Texas to a ski vacation in Aspen, Colorado. Traveling in style, Frank shows off a brand new Rv with all the comforts of home: color television, microwave oven,...

Quentin Tarantino loves bastards, inglorious or otherwise. And the worst thing a movie can do, in his opinion, is redeem those a-holes.

“If you make a movie about a fucking bastard, you could bet that fucking bastard would see the error of their ways and be redeemed in the last 20 minutes,” Tarantino writes in his book of essays, Cinema Speculation. “Like, for example, all of Bill Murray’s characters.”

Whoa — what did Murray’s cinematic smart-asses do to catch the back of Tarantino’s hand?

The same thing countless other comedy characters have done throughout movie history: Start out irresponsible and reckless, then learn a few lessons over the course of the story to become a better person.

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Tarantino would prefer Murray’s characters to stay Murray-ish. “How does Murray in Stripes go from being an iconoclastic pain in the ass, who deserves to get beat up by Drill Sergeant Warren Oates,...

In light of the Christopher Nolan rumours, we take a look back at 1983’s Blue Thunder – a high-tech thriller that deserved more attention on its release.

It’s hard to pinpoint why the vehicular TV and film boom of the 1980s happened. Was it a coincidence that the likes of Knight Rider (1982), Firefox (also 1982), Blue Thunder (1983), Airwolf (1984) and Street Hawk (1985) all came out within a few years of each other?

Whatever the explanation, there was a brief period where vehicles got top billing, whether they were experimental planes (Firefox) helicopters, an ‘all-terrain attack motorcycle’ (Street Hawk) or Knight Rider.

Blue Thunder – the original 1983 film, not the short-lived TV spin-off which emerged the following year – is arguably the best of the lot. An action thriller directed by John Badham, it was one of the most exciting movies of its type released in the early 1980s – and yet, for some reason, several...

The Story: Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider), a helicopter pilot working for the LAPD, is selected to test pilot an experimental government helicopter called “Blue Thunder.” Highly sophisticated, and heavily armed, Murphy discovers the helicopter is being designed for urban use by a group within the government, headed by his old Vietnam nemesis, F.E Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell). Thought to be insane by his LAPD bosses thanks to his troubled history of war-related Ptsd, Murphy steals ”Blue Thunder” in an attempt to reveal the murderous conspiracy behind its creation, culminating in a series of spectacular dogfights in skies above downtown Los Angeles.

The Players: Director: John Badham. Writers: Dan O’Bannon, Don Jakoby. Starring: Roy Scheider, Malcolm McDowell, Candy Clark, Daniel Stern, & Warren Oates. Score by Arthur B. Rubinstein.

The History: During the early eighties, the comic book-style techno-thriller was in-vogue. Usually, these thrillers revolved around lone-wolf cops or military men given...

Everyone knows that Steven Spielberg's "1941" was a notorious box office flop. And everyone ... is wrong. Despite its reputation over the years, Spielberg's 1979 war comedy was not a box office failure. It just looked that way because, well, it was a Steven Spielberg movie. In '79, in the wake of the record-breaking box office juggernaut that was "Jaws" and its successful follow-up "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," Steven Spielberg seemed untouchable. It felt like the wunderkind director could not fail — that, like a cinematic King Midas, everything he touched would turn to gold.

"1941" changed that. While the film went on to become a modest box office success, taking in $94.9 million on a $35 million budget, it was not well received. Critics were mixed at best on the film. As Roger Ebert wrote, "The movie finally reduces itself to an assault on our eyes and ears, a nonstop series of climaxes,...

What's the best Jack Nicholson movie? Ask a group of film fans, and you'll likely get a half-dozen different answers. The actor's most historically significant movie may be "Chinatown," the sun-baked California noir from 1974 that earned 11 Oscar nominations and a permanent spot in the American Library of Congress' National Film Registry. Or it might be "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the beloved adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel that swept the Oscars in 1975 and turned the already-popular Nicholson into Hollywood's hottest commodity.

The actor's most popular films according to Letterboxd users are Stanley Kubrick's horror masterpiece "The Shining" and Martin Scorsese's crime saga "The Departed." His highest-grossing role at the box office came in 1989, when Tim Burton cast him as the rictus-grin supervillain The Joker in "Batman." Other popular moneymakers featuring the veteran performer include James L. Brooks' "As Good As It Gets," Nancy Meyers' "Something's Gotta Give,...

When Tony Scott died in 2012, he left behind more than a few unfinished projects, including a remake of Sam Peckinpah’s iconic Western, The Wild Bunch.

L.A. Confidential screenwriter Brian Helgeland was attached to write the script for the remake of The Wild Bunch for Tony Scott, and he spilled a few details about the project while speaking with Inverse, including that it would have been set in the modern day.

“I also wrote 45 pages of The Wild Bunch for Tony to direct before he died. Sadly, I always say that I’m still on page 45 of that project,” Helgeland said. “It’s pretty violent and set in the modern day. The plot revolves around L.A. rampart cops that were being sent to prison, but during the trial, they’re still technically free. So, they decide to head down to Mexico and rob a bank before scattering to the...

This month has been full of sad reports of celebrity passings… and unfortunately, today is no different. It has been brought to our attention that Lara Parker, best known for starring in the gothic soap opera Dark Shadows and the 1975 horror classic Race with the Devil, has passed away at the age of 84. Her daughter confirmed to Variety that she died in her sleep at her home in the Topanga Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles on October 12th.

If you’re not familiar with Parker’s work on Dark Shadows, Variety has the information: “From 1967 to 1971, the Memphis native starred in Dark Shadows as the central antagonist Angelique Bouchard. Set in the fictional setting of Collinsport, Maine, the series follows the town’s founding family, the Collins family. In the show, Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) spurns the besotted Angelique after a brief dalliance with her, unaware that she is a witch.

Lara Parker, who played fan-favorite witch Angelique Bouchard on “Dark Shadows,” has died at 84.

Kathryn Leigh Scott, her co-star on the 1960s gothic soap opera, posted the news to Facebook on Monday.

“I have sad news . . . my beautiful, beloved friend Lara Parker passed away Thursday, October 12. I’m heartbroken, as all of us are who knew and loved her,” Scott wrote.

“She graced our lives with her beauty and talent, and we are all richer for having had her in our lives. Family meant more than anything to Lara, and they have wanted these few days since her passing to themselves. Rest in peace, my cherished friend,” Scott concluded.

The actress died in her sleep at her home in Topanga Canyon, her daughter said.

The series ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971 and spawned several follow-up movies from creator Dan Curtis.

Parker, along with other surviving “Dark Shadows” stars, made cameos...

Lara Parker, known for her role as the vengeful witch Angelique Bouchard on the gothic ABC soap opera Dark Shadows, passed away at 84. Her daughter, Caitlin, confirmed that Parker peacefully passed away in her sleep at her home in Topanga Canyon, Los Angeles, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Parker made her mark in films as a character in John G. Avildsen’s Save the Tiger (1973), where she portrayed a prostitute whose client suffered a heart attack, alongside Jack Lemmon‘s Oscar-winning performance. She also played the wife of Peter Fonda‘s character in the 1975 satanic horror film Race With the Devil, alongside Warren Oates and Loretta Swit. In 1967, shortly after arriving in New York, Parker auditioned for Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis and was cast as Angelique as part of a storyline that delved into the origin of the tormented vampire Barnabas Collins. (It was her second-ever professional audition in New York.

Lara Parker, who as the vengeful witch Angelique Bouchard spent centuries entangled in a love-hate relationship with Jonathan Frid’s Barnabas Collins on the gothic ABC soap opera Dark Shadows, has died. She was 84.

Parker died Thursday in her sleep at her home in Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles, her daughter, Caitlin, told The Hollywood Reporter.

On the big screen, Parker stood out as a prostitute whose client has a heart attack in John G. Avildsen’s Save the Tiger (1973), starring Jack Lemmon in an Oscar-winning turn, and she played the wife of Peter Fonda‘s character in the satanic horror film Race With the Devil (1975), also featuring Warren Oates and Loretta Swit.

Mere days after arriving in New York in 1967, the green-eyed Parker auditioned for Dark Shadows creator Dan Curtis, who cast her as Angelique in a story arc that would detail the origin of the tortured vampire Barnabas.

Pairing‌ ‌wine‌ ‌with‌ ‌movies!‌ ‌See‌ ‌the‌ ‌trailers‌ ‌and‌ ‌hear‌ ‌the‌ ‌fascinating‌ ‌commentary‌ ‌for‌ ‌these‌ ‌movies‌ ‌and‌ ‌many‌ ‌more‌ ‌at‌ ‌Trailers‌ ‌From‌ ‌Hell.‌ This week, we examine some films which border on the border.

The stars are here in The Border – Jack Nicholson, Harvey Keitel, Valerie Perrine, Warren Oates – in a noirish 1982 film about the southern US border. You know, the one that’s leaking like a sieve? Lie. The one that needs a big, beautiful wall? Big lie. The one that’s actually a river for about 2,000 miles? Truth.

Nicholson is an Ins agent, one of the guys who patrols the border to keep us safe from those tired, poor, wretched huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Keitel, well, he and Oates are the dark side. You probably saw that one coming.

The soundtrack is really worth a listen, with a score by Ry Cooder and other borderesque tunes...

Directed by Tony Richardson, this 1982 “neo-noir” stars Jack Nicholson as Charlie Smith, a border agent up to his neck in a human smuggling scheme run by his glad-handing partner played by Harvey Keitel. The fine cast is rounded out by Warren Oates and Valerie Perrine, but it’s Nicholson who shines in one of his best performances. Ry Cooder’s plaintive score is a striking counterpoint to the film’s gritty atmosphere.

The post The Border appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

It’s the dying fish that sticks in the mind. You don’t see one in Bonnie and Clyde (1967) or any of the other US movies about murderous young lovers on the lam. Director Terrence Malick’s astounding debut feature Badlands (1973), which started production just over 50 years ago, has a simplicity that is completely out of kilter with its time. While his contemporaries Martin Scorsese and Brian De Palma were making gritty, violent urban movies exposing the racial, sexual, and political tensions in an America coming to terms with the disasters of Watergate and the Vietnam War, Malick was recreating the midwest of the late 1950s in loving fashion. Nostalgia reigned.

It’s not that Badlands skimps on the violence. This is a story about a serial killer who leaves corpses wherever he goes. In the film, the South Dakota garbage collector and James Dean lookalike Kit Carruthers (Martin Sheen...

The original at least reflected its era but this updated story of a woman targeted for sexual assault by a couple of drifters is a nasty pulpy mess

This leaves an unpleasant taste in the mouth. It’s a remake of the psychosexual home invasion thriller Private Property, which starred Warren Oates – a cult classic that was out of circulation for decades after its release in 1960. Depressingly, the new version seems to preserve its deeply misogynistic 1960s attitudes towards women. It’s a nasty pulpy film, in which the big question for the plot is whether a young woman is going be violently sexually assaulted and murdered at the end. Will-she-or-won’t-she? It’s a grim watch.

That woman is Kathryn (a woodenly pouty performance by Ashley Benson). She’s an aspiring actor married to a successful movie producer. While he’s at work, Kathryn spends her days cleaning their...

Quentin Tarantino just wants flawed characters to own being the antihero.

Tarantino penned in his new book “Cinema Speculation” that the decline of unlikeable leads marked “the curse of eighties cinema,” with feel-good films swooping in because they were easier to market to mass audiences after a dark ’70s.

“It was that complex and complicated lead characters of the seventies were the characters that eighties cinema avoided completely,” Tarantino wrote. “Complex characters aren’t necessarily sympathetic. Interesting people aren’t always likable. But in the Hollywood of the eighties, likability was everything.”

The Academy Award winner continued, “If you did make a movie about a fucking bastard, you could bet that fucking bastard would see the error of their ways and be redeemed in the last twenty minutes. Like for example, all of Bill Murray’s characters.”

Tarantino explained that Murray’s onscreen persona as a sarcastic nihilist was completely...

Hello, everyone! August 23rd is a quiet day for horror and sci-fi home media releases, but that doesn’t mean that this week’s offerings aren’t pretty darn great all the same. Scream Factory has put together a killer Collector’s Edition 4K release for Neil Marshall’s Dog Soldiers and Kino Lorber has put together reissues of their Blu-ray box sets for seasons one and two of The Outer Limits, which genre fans will definitely want to pick up.

Cheers!

Dog Soldiers: 4K Collector’s Edition

A group of soldiers dispatched to the Scottish Highlands on special training maneuvers face their biggest fears after they run into Captain Ryan – the only survivor of a Special Ops team that was literally torn to pieces. Ryan refuses to disclose his mission even though whoever attacked his men might be hungry for seconds. Help arrives in the form of a...

Walter Mirisch earned his Oscar for this Sidney Poitier hit directed by Norman Jewison. The tense mystery thriller was also a significant cultural step for Civil Rights, Hollywood-style: Poitier’s Virgil Tibbs claims the right to not turn the other cheek. Stars Rod Steiger, Lee Grant, Warren Oates and Larry Gates are in top form. Kino’s new 4K release maximizes the impact of Haskell Wexler’s steamy cinematography and Quincy Jones’ rich music, and includes bonus Blu-ray encodings of the two sequels made a few years later.

In the Heat of the Night 4K

4K Ultra HD

Kl Studio Classics

1967 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 110 min. / Street Date April 19, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 39.95

Starring: Sidney Poitier, Rod Steiger, Warren Oates, Lee Grant, Larry Gates, James Patterson, William Schallert, Beah Richards, Peter Whitney, Matt Clark, Scott Wilson, Timothy Scott, Quentin Dean, Anthony James, Alan Oppenheimer.

Cinematography: Haskell Wexler

Art Director: Paul Groesse...

P.J. Soles is celebrated by fans for her darker genre work, voice-over work, and comedic roles alike. She's crossed Carrie, she's been carjacked by Captain Spaulding, and she's one of the first teens killed by Michael Myers in John Carpenter's "Halloween." But few are quoted more than "Stripes," Ivan Reitman's 1981 knee-slapper starring Bill Murray and Harold Ramis. Soles plays Stella Hansen, the military police officer love interest to Murray's hapless soldier John Winger. The movie features an incredible cadre of talent (Warren Oates! John Candy! Sean Young! John Larroquette!) and takes the slacker-joins-the-Army conceit to the limits of its...

The post Bad Weather and Bill Murray Made For a Perfect Storm On the Set of Stripes appeared first on /Film.

In its 145 minute runtime, Sam Peckinpah's elegiac Western "The Wild Bunch" tipped its hat to a bygone era while ushering in a new cinematic one. Near the Mexican-American border, a band of fading outlaws — that's Pike Bishop (William Holden), Dutch Engstrom (Ernest Borgnine), and the brothers Gorch ( Warren Oates and Ben Johnson), a decimation of their former crew — reckon with the shift towards modernity and away from the old days of the West in 1913. What was supposed to be one last score for the aging gang goes sour, but they do not go gentle...

The post The Wild Bunch's Gruesome Finale Was as Brutal to Film as It Is to Watch appeared first on /Film.

The latest in our series of writers highlighting under-seen gems is an ode to a dark and disturbing 1960 thriller

You’ll find it in the depths of Prime Video, provocatively labelled “Private Property – a psycho-sexual thrill ride”. In the accompanying artwork, a stilettoed blonde bombshell displays her rear to camera, her black and white image garishly colorised in purple and yellow. Among the listed cast, character actor Warren Oates is the biggest name, while if you’ve heard of the film’s director, Leslie Stevens, at all, it’s possibly as one of the minds behind the late-70s TV’s Star Wars knock-off Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Such a package could easily be mistaken for cheap streaming dregs. And Private Property most certainly is cheap, shot as it was largely at its director’s house for less than $60,000, a tiny sum even in 1960 when the film was...

Thanks to the popularity of the Old West TV series "The Rifleman", starring Chuck Connors as 'Lucas McCain', a reboot of the series as a TV movie continues in development, focusing on adult 'Mark McCain', son of 'Lucas McCain', who reluctantly takes up his late father's proficiency with a gun:

In the original series, Civil War hero McCain, a sharpshooter and widower with a haunted past, moves to the territory of 'North Fork' to raise his son..

There, he joins forces with the fatherly 'Marshall Micah Torrance', to protect his new town and become its unofficial guardian.

Sam Peckinpah ("The Wild Bunch") creator of the series, wrote and directed episodes for the first season of "The Rifleman", starring his favorite actors Dennis Hopper and Warren Oates, letting usually letting bad guys get away with a stern scolding, after they burn down a homestead or drag Lucas face down in the dirt tied to a horse.

Late director Ivan Reitman's military comedy feature "Stripes" (1981) will be rebooted as a series for Sony Pictures Television and CBS TV, from a teleplay by Trevor Moore, Sam Brown and Zach Cregger:

The original film starred Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, P. J. Soles, Sean Young, and John Candy, with John Larroquette, John Diehl, Conrad Dunn, Judge Reinhold, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Timothy Busfield and Bill Paxton:

"...'John Winger' is a cab driver who, in the span of a few hours, loses his job, his apartment, his car and his girlfriend. Realizing he has no prospects, he decides to join the Army. 

"Talking his best friend 'Russell Ziskey', a teacher of English as a second language, into joining him, they go to a recruiting office and are soon sent off to basic training.

"Upon arriving at 'Fort Arnold', they meet their fellow recruits,...

” If they move, kill ’em! “

Nothing’s more fun than The Wildey’s Tuesday Night Film Series. Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch (1968) will be on the big screen when it plays at The Wildey Theater in Edwardsville, Il at 7:00pm Tuesday February 15th. Tickets are only $3 Tickets available starting at 3pm day of movie at Wildey Theatre ticket office. Cash or check only. Lobby opens at 6pm.

The Wild Bunch was a ground-breaking, revisionist western from director Sam Peckinpah, Although violence existed in the cinema before this film, it was Peckinpah’s treatment of violence that opened the gates for every subsequent film-maker to show graphic gunshot wounds, throat-slashing, and the like, with shocking realism. The Wild Bunch was beautifully shot by Lucien Ballard and featured memorable performances from William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, and many others.

Sam Peckinpah’s film The Wild Bunch is the story...

It’s not wedding bells which break up the old gang in Ben Affleck’s The Town, it’s witness protection. The romance in the middle of the film is only there to delineate the boundaries between heist film and crime procedural. The movie’s center is Charlestown, right across the bridge from the rest of Boston, a legend in illicit locales. The blue-collar neighborhood “produced more bank robbers and armored car thieves than anywhere else in the world,” according to the movie’s prologue. Affleck’s second film as a director charts the fall of a mythic heist gang and the streets which made them.

The Boston area was prime cinematic crime fields during the early 2000s. In Black Mass, Johnny Depp plays South Boston mobster James “Whitey” Bulger, an Irish gangster who informed on the Italian mob to the FBI. Some of the scenes were shot on the real crime locations depicted.

Michael Laughlin, who produced the cult-classic road trip movie Two-Lane Blacktop and co-wrote the Warren Beatty film Town & Country, has died. He was 82.

Laughlin died Wednesday in Honolulu from complications related to Covid-19, his close friend Brooke Nasser told The Hollywood Reporter.

During the 1970s, Laughlin produced eight independent films, including 1971’s Blacktop, starring Laurie Bird, Warren Oates, James Taylor and Dennis Wilson. The movie, which has a 93 percent “fresh” score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, was placed in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 2012. Criterion also released an edition in 2007 ...

Michael Laughlin, who produced the cult-classic road trip movie Two-Lane Blacktop and co-wrote the Warren Beatty film Town & Country, has died. He was 82.

Laughlin died Wednesday in Honolulu from complications related to Covid-19, his close friend Brooke Nasser told The Hollywood Reporter.

During the 1970s, Laughlin produced eight independent films, including 1971’s Blacktop, starring Laurie Bird, Warren Oates, James Taylor and Dennis Wilson. The movie, which has a 93 percent “fresh” score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, was placed in the National Film Registry at the Library of Congress in 2012. Criterion also released an edition in 2007 ...

Another quality month of releases awaits cult film fans this coming January from Arrow Video. First up for the US/UK/Can territories is a long awaited Blu-ray of Mario Bava's final feature, Shock, along with Michael Venus' Sleep, and Masumura Yasuzo's Red Angel. Only in the UK, fans will see Warren Oates in John Milius's Dillinger and Tobe Hooper's The Mangler. All of these releases are stuffed with bonus materials and defintiely worth checking out. You can read the full details of each set in the gallery below...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Another unexpected comic treasure from the mid ’70s! Jeff Bridges and Sam Waterston make an irresistible pair of would-be outlaws in a tale of the modern West — high-country Montana, actually — where a gentleman rancher from New Jersey owns all the land and making an honest living is just too boring. Thomas McGuane’s hilariously laid-back dialogue pits our slacker cattle rustlers against society — but only in the pursuit of having a good time. Frank Perry’s beautifully directed show gives choice roles to a fistful of actors: Clifton James, Elizabeth Ashley, Harry Dean Stanton, Slim Pickens, Charlene Dallas, Richard Bright, Joe Spinell, Patti D’Arbanville. Call it ‘literate’ country comedy, with musical accompaniment by Jimmy Buffett. The extras include a great new interview with star Jeff Bridges.

Rancho Deluxe

Blu-ray

Fun City Editions

1975 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 93 min. / Street Date July 19, 2021 / Available from Vinegar Syndrome /

Starring: Jeff Bridges, Sam Waterston, Elizabeth Ashley,...

From Pig starring Nicolas Cage, Writer/Director Michael Sarnoski and Writer/Producer Vanessa Block join Josh and Joe to discuss the movies that inspired them during the creation of their film.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Nobody (2021)

Infested (2002)

The Big Chill (1983)

A History of Violence (2005)

Pig (2021)

Mandy (2018)

John Wick (2014)

The Testimony (2015)

No Country For Old Men (2007) [Both] – John Badham’s trailer commentary

The Maltese Falcon (1941) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Blood Simple (1984) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review, Dennis Cozzaliio’s review

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

Raising Arizona (1987)

Moonstruck (1987) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary

Joe (2013)

Witness For The Prosecution (1957) [Vanessa Block] – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary

Easter Parade (1948)

Titanic (1997)

Never Been Kissed (1999)

Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

The Crow (1994)

Jurassic Park (1993)

Midnight Cowboy (1969) [Michael Sarnoski] – Glenn Erickson’s Criterion...

The late American indie film auteur Monte Hellman was fond of a quote from Jean Cocteau that poetically summed up the fate of any real work of art: “A work of art should also be ‘an object difficult to pick up.’ It must protect itself from vulgar pawing, which tarnishes and disfigures it. It should be made of such a shape that people don’t know which way to hold it, which embarrasses and irritates the critics, incites them to be rude, but keeps it fresh. The less it’s understood, the slower it opens its petals, the later it will fade.”

Cocteau’s dictum certainly applies to Hellman’s 1971 film, “Two-Lane Blacktop.” It opened its petals 50 years ago today and still confounds not only the critics but its fans and friends, including the film’s unit publicist Beverly Walker, whose groundbreaking campaign for the film included getting Esquire magazine...

It’s a new deluxe Limited Edition of Sam Peckinpah’s mangled masterpiece, the third fancy boxed set in as many years. Arrow’s presentation is certainly got the edge in graphic elegance. They’ve also strived to include as many earlier extras as possible, plus new analytical-critical takes on the picture, and an excellent (and wickedly funny) visual essay from David Cairns. The disc has both of my commentaries, including the comprehensive one that details the missing scenes with information taken directly from Sam Peckinpah and Oscar Saul’s screenplay. And hey, you never know: this could be the year that Mitch Miller’s Singalong Gang makes an incredible comeback, and we can All fall in behind the Major.

Major Dundee

Blu-ray

Arrow Video

1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 136, 122 min. / (2-Disc Limited Edition) / Street Date June 29, 2021 / 59.95

Starring: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, Michael Anderson Jr., Brock Peters,...

“Ah, nothing like fried chicken while it’s still hot and crispy! So the quicker you open that safe and give us the money, the quicker you can get back to that tasty-looking chicken.”

Kirk Douglas in There Was A Crooked Man…(1970) is currently available on Blu-ray from Warner Archive

Kirk Douglas plays a charming inmate scheming to recover $500K in stolen loot he has hidden away, while Henry Fonda looms as his new prison warden. Each man will find the tables turning in this boisterous yet blistering Western packed with brawls, shootouts and wry wit. Hume Cronyn, Burgess Meredith, Warren Oates and Lee Grant provide sterling support in this devilishly entertaining film by Academy Award® winner(Directing and Writing (Screenplay) for Both A Letter to Three Wives (1949) and All About Eve (1950) Joseph L. Mankiewicz from a script by David Newman and Robert Benton (Bonnie and Clyde).

*

The post Kirk...

After exploring “The Civil War,” “Baseball” and “Country Music,” award-winning documentarian Ken Burns and his frequent collaborator Lynn Novick examined the importance of being Ernest Hemingway in their three-part PBS documentary “Hemingway.” Premiering in April to strong reviews and Emmys buzz, the series weaves Papa’s biography with excerpts from his fiction, non-fiction, and personal correspondence. The series also reviews the mythology around the larger-than-life Hemingway, who penned such classic novels as “The Sun Also Rises,” “A Farewell to Arms,” “For Whom the Bell Tolls” and “The Old Man and the Sea,” to reveal the truth behind the bravado.

Feature film adaptations of Hemingway’s works had mixed results. Hemingway Bff Gary Cooper excelled in 1932’s “A Farewell to Arms” and 1943’s “For Whom the Bell Tolls,” receiving an Oscar nomination for the latter. John Garfield gave one of his strongest performance in 1950’s superb noir “The Breaking Point,” based...

Influential instead of famous, brilliant in a way for which his medium has little remaining use, Monte Hellman died yesterday at 91. It was heartening, if not a bit surprising all the same, to see my Twitter feed instantly and unanimously alight with praise for the director, whose filmography is often distilled to one sui generis classic and considered an object of intense interest for true believers otherwise.

Whatever that implies, it’s hard to recommend a filmography with less reservation—Hellman’s cinema is immediately identifiable for its vision of rugged, roughshod masculinity, accessible with its use of iconic figures, and (at the risk of underlining this point too sharply) always invigorates in its sense of discovering some well-kept secret.

Some cursory searches reveal a good number readily streaming. So long as you don’t mind the occasional ad break, your first step is Tubi, which hosts his Jack Nicholson...

Influential director Monte Hellman, whose 1971 film Two-Lane Blacktop starring musicians James Taylor and Dennis Wilson became a counterculture cult classic, died Tuesday. He was 91.

His death at Eisenhower Health hospital in Palm Desert followed a fall at his home, his daughter, producer Melissa Hellman, told The New York Times.

While not as well known as other directors of the New Hollywood of the late ’60s and early ’70s, Hellman was nonetheless influential. His sparse Two-Lane Blacktop , a post-Easy Rider character study about two street racers became a cornerstone among American existentialist road movies.

Hellman worked with the best actors of that New Hollywood generation, including Jack Nicolson and Warren Oates. He made his feature debut like so many other filmmakers of his generation – on a Roger Corman film, in his case called Beast From Haunted Cave.

Monte Hellman, the film director who earned a cult following with movies like Two-Lane Blacktop and Ride in the Whirlwind, died Tuesday at Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Springs, California, after a fall in his home. His daughter, Melissa Hellman, confirmed his death to The Hollywood Reporter. He was 91.

Hellman was well regarded for his genre films, such as his 1964 war drama Back Door to Hell, 1966’s pair of Westerns The Shooting and Ride in the Whirlwind (both starring Jack Nicholson), and the acclaimed road movie Two-Lane Blacktop starring James Taylor and Dennis Wilson.

Monte Hellman, the maverick director of such films as “Two-Lane Blacktop,” “The Shooting” and “Road to Nowhere,” died April 20 at Eisenhower Medical Center in Palm Desert, Calif., following a fall in his home on April 19. He was 91.

Hellman was a cult director who was widely admired within the industry, earning such fans as Quentin Tarantino; they liked his down-and-dirty storytelling, which featured poetic flourishes amid his genre films.

After working as an editor’s apprentice at ABC, he made his directing debut with the 1959 “Beast From Haunted Cave,” produced by Roger Corman. He became part of the Corman stable of veterans who learned how to get maximum impact on minimum budget. Other Corman alumni include Martin Scorsese and Ron Howard.

Hellman worked with Jack Nicholson in the 1960s, including two films shot back-to-back in the Philippines, “Back Door to Hell” and “Flight to Fury.” Hellman and Nicholson reteamed on two Westerns,...

Blood, gore and the smell of gunpowder! Sam Peckinpah’s booze-soaked Odyssey sends Warren Oates on a grisly fool’s errand to retrieve a rotting, fly-bitten… oh, just read the title will ya? Resolutely sordid and debased, and soaked in ugly exploitation values, the tale of ‘Machete Bennie’ nevertheless scores as Peckinpah’s last successful movie — if Edgar Allan Poe went crazy locked in a room with rotting corpses, he might have come up with this idea.

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo García

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1974 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 112 min. / Street Date , 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Warren Oates, Isela Vega, Robert Webber, Gig Young, Helmut Dantine, Emilio Fernández, Kris Kristofferson, Chano Urueta, Jorge Russek, Enrique Lucero, Janine Maldonado, Richard Bright, Sharon Peckinpah, Garner Simmons.

Cinematography: Álex Phillips Jr.

Film Editors: Garth Craven, Dennis E. Dolan, Sergio Ortega, Robbe Roberts

Original Music: Jerry Fielding

Written by Sam Peckinpah,...

When things get back to normal on the production side, director Ivan Reitman's military comedy feature "Stripes" (1981) will be rebooted as a series for Sony Pictures Television and CBS TV, with Reitman set to direct the pilot from a teleplay by Trevor Moore, Sam Brown and Zach Cregger:

The original film starred Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, P. J. Soles, Sean Young, and John Candy, with John Larroquette, John Diehl, Conrad Dunn, Judge Reinhold, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Timothy Busfield and Bill Paxton:

"...'John Winger' is a cab driver who, in the span of a few hours, loses his job, his apartment, his car and his girlfriend. Realizing he has no prospects, he decides to join the Army. 

"Talking his best friend 'Russell Ziskey', a teacher of English as a second language, into joining him, they go to a recruiting office and are soon sent off to basic training.

Steve Carver, a director of action films whose portfolio included An Eye for an Eye and Lone Wolf McQuade, both starring Chuck Norris, and Big Bad Mama, starring Angie Dickinson, has died. He was 75.

Carver died Friday of a heart attack in Los Angeles, writer-producer Rob Word told The Hollywood Reporter.

Carver’s first feature was Pam Grier’s The Arena (1974), a gladiator movie set in ancient Rome that marked his initial collaboration with producer Roger Corman, and he also guided Ben Gazzara in Capone (1975), Warren Oates and Ken Norton in Drum (1976) and Lee Majors in Steel (1979).

Carver’s first love was photography,...

Steve Carver, a director of action films whose portfolio included An Eye for an Eye and Lone Wolf McQuade, both starring Chuck Norris, and Big Bad Mama, starring Angie Dickinson, has died. He was 75.

Carver died Friday of a heart attack in Los Angeles, writer-producer Rob Word told The Hollywood Reporter.

Carver’s first feature was Pam Grier’s The Arena (1974), a gladiator movie set in ancient Rome that marked his initial collaboration with producer Roger Corman, and he also guided Ben Gazzara in Capone (1975), Warren Oates and Ken Norton in Drum (1976) and Lee Majors in Steel (1979).

Carver’s first love was photography,...

The new [Imprint] label turns its attention to the Sam Peckinpah favorite, the almost-classic that suffered a number of setbacks — a studio regime change, impractical remote locations, the wrong producer — and a director with zero diplomatic skills, who couldn’t finish his script and fought political battles when his movie needed his full attention. That the finished film shows so much brilliance is a tragedy, as this could have been a landmark epic, Charlton Heston’s best. CineSavant turns its attention to a favored film one more time — to play imagination games with re-cuts. Viavision [Imprint]’s lavish boxed set is said to be sold out, but that may only be at the company source.

Major Dundee

Blu-ray

Viavision [Imprint] 11

1965 / Color/ 2:35 widescreen / 136, 122 min. / Street Date October 28, 2019 / available at [Imprint] / $79.95 au

Starring: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, Michael Anderson Jr., Brock Peters, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong,...

There’s nothing like a good car chase in a movie. Maybe it’s the daring-do of the stunt drivers that makes you feel you’re in danger even though you’re comfortably in your seat, or the high stakes of the moment in which the characters we’re rooting for will either get out of the situation or have a gruesome finale, but an impressive car-chase scene can make even a mediocre movie a beloved classic. What makes a car chase legendary, you ask? They’re the ones that keep you at the edge of your seat and actually fit in with the rest of the plot. While the “Fast and Furious” movies have collectively taken the car chase to the next level, they don’t count. They’re far too CGI-enhanced. The 1970’s may have marked a new age in American cinema, but it was also a decade...

When things get back to normal on the production side, director Ivan Reitman's military comedy feature "Stripes" (1981) will be rebooted as a series for Sony Pictures Television and CBS TV, with Reitman set to direct the pilot from a teleplay by Trevor Moore, Sam Brown and Zach Cregger:

The original film starred Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Warren Oates, P. J. Soles, Sean Young, and John Candy, with John Larroquette, John Diehl, Conrad Dunn, Judge Reinhold, Joe Flaherty, Dave Thomas, Timothy Busfield and Bill Paxton:

"...'John Winger' is a cab driver who, in the span of a few hours, loses his job, his apartment, his car and his girlfriend. Realizing he has no prospects, he decides to join the Army. 

"Talking his best friend 'Russell Ziskey', a teacher of English as a second language, into joining him, they go to a recruiting office and are soon sent off to basic training.

After roaming for more than a year on the international festival circuit, “Jinpa” — the latest effort from Tibetan director Pema Tseden — has finally launched a limited run in U.S. art houses, where it might find an appreciative if occasionally perplexed audience for its idiosyncratic mix of deadpan wit and understated mysticism. The movie is by repeatedly hinting at a potential for melodramatic upheaval. Ultimately, however, Tseden finds an audaciously different way to pull the rug out from under us.

Set in the rugged territory of the Kekexili Plateau, an isolated Tibetan region with an average elevation of more than 16,000 meters, “Jinpa” begins by introducing us to its title character, a grizzled long-distance trucker (played by an actor whose name also is Jinpa), as he traverses a seemingly endless road across a spectacularly barren landscape. He appears genuinely upset by the prospect of bad karma when he accidentally rolls over,...

Chris Longo Dec 30, 2019

The executive producers of Lost in Space tell us where a potential season 3 may take the Robinson family.

Lost in Space Season 3 has yet to be officially confirmed by Netflix, but the executive producers may have learned something from spending so much time with the always prepared Maureen Robinson. The creative minds behind the show already have a roadmap for the third season planned out.

*Caution: Season 2 spoilers ahead*

“A big thing happened at the end of season 2: the kids and parents are split apart,” showrunner Zack Estrin tells Den of Geek. “We’re going to pick up with two separate stories in season 3.”

The cliffhanger ending of Lost in Space season 2 leaves several storylines up in the air. So far, the Robinsons haven’t met a problem they couldn’t solve together. Now, apart, a potential third season may be their most daunting challenge yet.

Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Mangled Masterpiece’ gets a new lease on life with this Austrian import, which corrects all the things that bugged me about Twilight Time’s impressive Blu-ray back in 2013. This is the first time that the original uncut Preview-International version of Major Dundee has come to Blu-ray with its original soundtrack intact. The Two-Disc set includes a longform making-of docu from the prolific producer Mike Siegel, and the other extras make an extensive raid of our combined Dundee photo archives.

Major Dundee (Sierra Charriba)

Region-Free Blu-ray Mediabook

Explosive Media GmbH

1965 / Color/ 2:35 widescreen / 136, 121 min. / Sierra Charriba / Street Date December 12, 2019 / available at Amazon.de / 21,99 €

Starring: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, Michael Anderson Jr., Brock Peters, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong, Dub Taylor, Michael Pate, Karl Swenson, Begonia Palacios, Aurora Clavell.

Cinematography: Sam Leavitt

Film Editors: William A. Lyon, Don Starling, Howard Kunin...

Sam Peckinpah’s ‘Mangled Masterpiece’ gets a new lease on life with this Austrian import, which corrects all the things that bugged me about Twilight Time’s impressive Blu-ray back in 2013. This is the first time that the original uncut Preview-International version of Major Dundee has come to Blu-ray with its original soundtrack intact. The Two-Disc set includes a longform making-of docu from the prolific producer Mike Siegel, and the other extras make an extensive raid of our combined Dundee photo archives.

Major Dundee (Sierra Charriba)

Region-Free Blu-ray Mediabook

Explosive Media GmbH

1965 / Color/ 2:35 widescreen / 136, 121 min. / Sierra Charriba / Street Date December 12, 2019 / available at Amazon.de / 21,99 €

Starring: Charlton Heston, Richard Harris, James Coburn, Senta Berger, Jim Hutton, Michael Anderson Jr., Brock Peters, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson, Slim Pickens, R.G. Armstrong, Dub Taylor, Michael Pate, Karl Swenson, Begonia Palacios, Aurora Clavell.

Cinematography: Sam Leavitt

Film Editors: William A. Lyon, Don Starling, Howard Kunin...

” If they move, kill ’em! “

Golden Anniversaries: Films of 1969 features 6 classic films celebrating their 50th anniversaries. This second edition focuses on 1969 and features a half-dozen films, all screening for free at the St. Louis Public Library (1301 Olive Street St. Louis) over 3 weekends in late summer. (This series kicked off August 31st at 1:30pm with Midnight Cowboy). On Saturday September 14th at 1:30pm the ’69 film will be The Wild Bunch directed by Sam Peckinpah. There will be an intro and post-film Q&a with W.K. Stratton, author of The Wild Bunch: Sam Peckinpah, a Revolution in Hollywood, and the Making of a Legendary Film . W.K. Stratton will be selling and signing copies of his book at the event. Admission is Free. A Facebook invite can be found Here

The Wild Bunch was a ground-breaking, revisionist western from director Sam Peckinpah, Although violence existed in the cinema before this film,...