If this film's title wasn't enough of an indication for you - yes, Hell Comes to Frogtown is a cheese piece, a staple of the "so-bad-it's-good" genre of action adventure films, and more to the point, it's a 1980s film, and in all aspects, it is both a considerably under-seen, and dare I say, underrated little gem of a film. By classical film standards, this film may be considered nothing but a resounding smudge on the sleeve of the cinema of yesteryear, yet the opening moments of the film alone Read more [...]

Well, it's been said that 'Blood Feast' was the first gore movie of all time. I'm not going to dispute that, as I haven't seen any before its release date of 1963. What can not be disputed by anybody is that the film had an incredible influence on the horror/gore/cult film genre. That's admirable. Without 'Blood Feast' and the other early gore films of HG Lewis, we may not have had the great movies by the likes of Romero, Argento and Fulci, and those are some of the best horror films of all time. However, Read more [...]

When radiation left behind by atomic weapons testing creates a gigantic killer mutant arachnid, it's up to a trio of scientists (Mike Cook, Billie Jo Konze and James Norgard), an Army general (Mark Haider), and a newspaper reporter (Daniel R. Sjerven) and his fiancée (Shannon McDonough) to figure out how to stop the hungry beast from devouring the entire county in writer/director Christopher R. Mihm's ode to the giant bug films of yesteryear! Christopher R. Mihm is the writer, director, and producer Read more [...]

Tomorrow night, the University of Chicago's Doc Films will screen the Joseph H. Lewis noir Gun Crazy, one of the major works of classic B cinema and one of the most radical and thoroughly entertaining movies in American film history, period. Prior to a renewed interest in expressionistic style during the 1970s, Lewis was considered a simple B movie director in the United States. (That wasn't the case elsewhere, of course—the staff of Cahiers du Cinema sang his praises while his career was still Read more [...]

A CROSS-dressing singer and music producer from Darwen has composed the soundtrack to a film premiered at Cannes. Kurt Walsh, 26, who grew up in Pole Lane, approached Troma Entertainment, the makers of cult 1986 B-movie ‘Nuke Em High’, after it announced a follow-up was to be made. Mr Walsh, aka Kurt Dirt, who dons female outfits for his bizarre rock performances, had been a fan of the company’s films since childhood. Bosses at Troma asked him to produce a demo for them and, after Read more [...]

The Giant Behemoth was one of the last giant monster-on-the-loose films of the 1950's, a decade that saw all manner of creatures born of the two biggest scientific issues of the decade- space exploration and nuclear weapons. Behemoth fell into the second category, a genre started with the excellent Beast From 20,000 Fathoms, and elaborated upon with Godzilla and Them! However, by the time Behemoth rolled before the cameras, the concept of atomically created monsters had already worn thin. Nevertheless, Read more [...]

Doris Wishman was born on June 1, 1912, in New York City. She was still a child when her mother died. Her father was a hay and grain salesmen who raised her and her five other siblings. Wishman studied for a while at Hunter College where she studied several subjects including acting. She worked as a secretary and a movie booker until she met and married a man by the name of Jack Abrahms. After Abrahms died, Wishman wanted to do something in her life that would keep her busy instead of being a grieving Read more [...]

'Akira' is an astonishingly influential film, easily as much so as cinema's touchstones Citizen Kane and Pulp Fiction. Its impact is made more difficult to judge, though, given that it was made more than sixteen years ago, and didn't make an initial impact outside of Japan. Oddly, this made its influence even more profound, benefiting from 'word of mouth' and the influx of cheap VHS at the end of the Eighties. It's also gained enough of a following to warrant being digitally remastered, at a cost Read more [...]

The real history of the medium is frequently chaotic and bizarre (as is the medium itself), and to cover it in depth would take hundreds of pages (I've been threatening for years to write such a book), but that's not the function of this primer. My goal is merely to give you, the reader, an idea of what happened and when. Significant events have been left out of this (I'm not even going to think about documenting the politics of early US fandom or the recent Evangelion debacle), and portions of the Read more [...]

Pam Grier made many movies in the 1970s, but 'Coffy' as much as anything, is the one role on which her reputation as the Queen of blaxploitation rests. After a bit part in a Russ Meyer movie (his classic 'Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls'), Jack Hill, former Roger Corman protege and director of the creepy cult favourite 'Spider Baby', "discovered" her and gave her two strong roles in his popular chicks-in-chains movies 'The Big Doll House' and 'The Big Bird Cage'. Then Hill wrote and directed 'Coffy', Read more [...]