Films That Matter
Night Terrors
Unlike most other memorable Hammer horror movies, the 1964 mystery thriller Nightmare, directed by Freddie Francis (perhaps better known as the cinematographer of films like David Lynch’s The Elephant Man and Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear) eliminates all of the monsters for an old fashioned quasi ghost story... the piece deserving to be remembered up there with those Hammer horror films centered on vampires, resurrected corpses, and lycanthropes. Shot in shadowy black and white, the story follows struggling seventeen year old Janet (Jennie Linden), who is currently away from home living at a finishing school for girls.
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Fontaine Shined Bright
SuspicionDecember 30, 2013This is the second week in a row that I have had to begin with the sad news of another death of a film legend. Joan Fontaine, the actress who gained fame for playing threatened wives to possibly dangerous husbands in the early 1940s, passed away at the age of 96 last week.
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What’s in that Box?
Kiss Me DeadlyAugust 7, 2013Fans of Quentin Tarantino and his iconic crime thriller Pulp Fiction may remember the cryptic glowing briefcase with the lock that is opened by the number 666 which is held by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson. This mysterious plot device was borrowed from one of the last great film noir pictures from that genre’s classical era, 1955's Kiss Me Deadly. Similarly, this gimmick was also used (but this time in the trunk of an automobile) in the Alex Cox 1984 cult classic Repo Man, starring Harry Dean Stanton and Emilio Estevez.