Films That Matter
By the Skin of Your Teeth
Originally meant to be a satire... though of a film very few have ever seen nowadays, the Norman Z. McLeod western comedy The Paleface (1948), written by Frank Tashlin about 1929's Virginian, infuriated the man in how it was directed (as a more generic spoof of the western)... but funnily enough, despite the screenwriter’s opinion, until Blazing Saddles (1974) came out, it was the highest grossing western parody of all-time and spawned a sequel in Son of Paleface (1952), while it was also remade as the Don Knotts vehicle The Shakiest Gun in the West (1968). After government agents tasked with tracking down an illegal gun smuggling ring turn up dead, the infamous Calamity Jane (Jane Russell) is secretly broken out of jail by Gov. Johnson (Charles Trowbridge) with the hope that she will take a pardon for going undercover to get to the bottom of this rebel-rousing (similar to rabble-rousing) gang in the frontier land.
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The House of Husher
House of UsherOctober 20, 2025The first of Edgar Allan Poe’s famed horror stories to come to life at American International Pictures with Roger Corman at the helm and Vincent Price in the starring role, House of Usher (1960), was a huge success... spawning numerous gothic Poe adaptations that would bring the team back together in the near future. With Price taking on the role of the titular Roderick Usher, the man is an utter emotional mess, belying his impeccably manicured appearance. Severely sensitive to noise, light, and taste, he demands hushed voices, minimal natural or candle light at all times, and bland gruel as the meal of choice.
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Peek-A-Boo
The Invisible ManOctober 10, 2025For one of the soon to be illustrious monsters for their slate of horror movies, Universal turned to the writing of H.G. Wells, bringing to life his novel The Invisible Man (1933), with the director of 1931's Frankenstein, James Whale, given another opportunity to envision one of their fiends for cinematic life. Combining technical precision, maniacal madness, and more than a touch of Whale’s famed black comedy, the classic tale follows an on the run Doctor, Jack Griffin (basically just Claude Rains’ masterful voice doing all the work... though he wasn’t the original choice – Frankenstein stars Boris Karloff and Colin Clive both said no), who finds his way to a tiny British village.
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Hammer Hunter
Captain Kronos: Vampire HunterSeptember 28, 2025A somewhat surprising take from Hammer Film Productions, especially considering how many rather traditional Dracula centred vampire horror movies they made throughout the years, 1974's Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter, written and directed by Brian Clemens, breaks the mold... or perhaps it stakes the mold. Set in a rather vague time period – most likely somewhere within the 18th-19th centuries, Clemens builds a world in which many varieties of vampires exist. With a cold open showing a rural village and countryside being afflicted by an unknown caped creature who is sucking the age and beauty out of its young women, the town’s doctor, Marcus (John Carson), has the good sense to send a message to his old friend Captain Kronos (Horst Janson), who, along with his trusty sidekick Professor Hieronymus Grost (John Cater) – who unfortunately has been born with a hunchback, as well as recently rescued Carla (Caroline Munro) – who was sentenced to the stocks for dancing on the Sabbath, this ragtag triumvirate becomes the team to hunt such evil things.
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Location, Location: Carnival of Souls & Carry On Girls
Carnival of SoulsCarry on GirlsSeptember 12, 2025As someone who loves history, there is nothing better than delving into movies from the past. Not only are they a microcosm of society at the time they were made, but there is an added benefit if they were filmed on location somewhere rather unique, that may or may not have changed drastically over the years since shooting. Having recently watched the slapstick British comedy Carry On Girls (1973), it brought me back to another very different film from the past, the low budget horror cult classic Carnival of Souls (1962) – for a very specific reason. So, instead of doing a typical review of the features, we will take a look at two historic locations featured in both of these pictures.
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To Paris and Back Again
Sin Takes a HolidayJune 22, 2025No one in their right mind would ever cast one of the biggest young starlets of the 1930s – Constance Bennett, to play an ordinary plain Jane secretary in a movie. . . but, of course, that’s exactly what Hollywood decided to do in 1930 with the Pre-Code romantic dramedy Sin Takes a Holiday, directed by Paul L. Stein. Bennett plays Sylvia Brenner, a near constant on-call secretary working late nights for a snooty playboy divorce lawyer named Gaylord Stanton (Kenneth MacKenna). Liking nothing better than playing the field with both married and unmarried women (though it seems like he prefers the former better), and then having some fun joking around with his group of friends, including the somehow even snootier barrister Reggie Durant (Basil Rathbone – this at the end of his matinee idol first run... making it big five year later... add another four years and he’d take on his most famous role of Sherlock Holmes), this lifestyle soon backfires on him after a divorcing dame client, Grace Lawrence (Rita La Roy), is looking for a proposal from him as she starts her immediate rebound.
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Safety First
Fail SafeMarch 2, 2025Like a severe and utterly serious version of Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satirical dark comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, you would think that Fail Safe would have been the original release in theatres that was then later spoofed, yet that is not the case. Released approximately six months later in the same year, as you might imagine, it led to very poor returns at the box office – dare I say it (as the film deals with this subject matter)... it was a bomb! Despite that, over time, it has become a bonafide classic. Based upon Eugene Burdick’s 1962 novel of the same name and directed by Sidney Lumet (Dog Day Afternoon), he introduces us to our main players by way of little vignettes.
