Hollywood Loves Comics
The highest-grossing film of all time, Avatar, has started to make its way through the cable television universe. I saw a few minutes of it this week on FX, and was surprised by how different the film seemed than when…
Juan Of The Dead
If nothing else, Juan of the Dead is a film you can have some fun with. Unfortunately, it fails in nearly every other respect, but even then there’s no getting around the fact that this Cuban horror film has enough…
640 Million Avengers
Now the fun begins. The Avengers has broken box office records in its opening weekend, taking in more than half a billion and counting. But now that the fan boys and girls have flocked to the theatres, and the hype…
B Movie Attack
If you’ve watched any local TV or listened to any radio in the last two years – you should know Berne Velasquez. He’s a tireless self-promoter – and now he’s been able to parlay his local celebrity into his.. It’s…
100 Years Of Universal
Universal recently hit its 100 year anniversary. At first, the studio was most famously the house of horror, home to genre favorites like Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf-Man, and the Creature From the Black Lagoon. Although Universal put out a lot…
Livid
Wetting our appetites, short film, Decapode Shock, acts as the perfect accompaniment to Bustillo and Maury’s genre-defying “horror” film, Livid. From a surreal part-animated sci-fi revenge tale with a horse-riding half-man half-crab wearing a spacesuit, Livid misleadingly takes us into…
Evil Dead The Musical
Magicians, impressionists, impersonators, topless dancers and … bloody chain saws? The thin line between shows for “locals” versus “tourists” gets a little more blurred when the Plaza hosts an open-ended run of “Evil Dead: The Musical” starting next month ….
There’s probably no good way to ease into the films of Takashi Miike, at least in the days before the prolific genre maestro started varying his extreme cinema provocations with offbeat experiments like the splatter-musical The Happiness Of The Katakuris…
We Just Love Silent Films
Sure, you’ve heard of old movies, but one highlight of this year’s Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival reaches back 88 years, reviving the silent film “The Moon of Israel.” The revival fits right in with the rediscovery of the silent…
Dark Bridges
The always-accurate Wikipedia defines “genre film” as: “A motion picture (such as a western, a gangster film, a musical, or a film noir) that plays on the expectation of the audience regarding familiar plot structures, characters, setting, and so on.”…
Robert Lippert
Robert L. Lippert has to be one of the most dynamic men in the Motion Picture Industry. He was born March 11, 1909 and was left the same day on the doorstep at San Francisco Catholic Charities Orphanage. Robert was…
Tremors
Giant killer worms in the desert. It sounds absurd, but this 1990 science fiction/horror/comedy flick strangely makes it work. Some call it a B-movie cult classic (It did go on to spawn two sequels, a prequel and a short-lived TV…
Manos: The Hands of Fate,
“Manos: The Hands of Fate” is a 1966 horror film written, directed by and starring insurance/fertilizer salesman Harold Warren. The plot follows a vacationing family who find themselves lodged in the home belonging to a pagan cult. The plot was…
Saving Bond
Mendes became attached to Skyfall so long ago, back when it was called Bond 23, that you might have been forgiven for thinking he would never actually get to make it. But while MGM sorted out its money troubles and…
Hell Comes To Frogtown
From Fangoria Years ago, I used to watch the old USA Network show UP ALL NIGHT, which showcased some of the most bizarre, eclectic, off-the-wall—and also original and highly entertaining—films ever. Unlike the major Hollywood flicks, these B-movies took chances…
Percy Kilbride
Familiar to million as the twangy, bucolic Pa Kettle, Percy Kilbride first stepped on the stage in the role of an 18th-century French fop in a San Francisco production of Tale of Two Cities. Interrupting his career to serve in…
10 Lamest Mockbusters
A mockbuster is a film, often made with a low budget, created with the apparent intention of piggy-backing on the publicity of a major film with a similar title. These movies have similar names like “Snakes on a Train” –not…
Orpheum goes digital
“The release of ‘Avatar’ in December 2009 represented the pivotal moment for digital cinema, with digital technology forming the bedrock of the modern cinema environment,” said David Hancock in a 2011 story in the California-based IHS Screen Digest. “Before Avatar,…
Cult Movie Mania
Cult movies live on, thanks to people like Andy Lalino, who began the popular “Cult Movie Mania Screaming Cinema Series” at the Tampa Pitcher Show. The film series focuses on modern movies created to look like Cult B Movie Classics….
The Last Drive In
The 1930’s will always be remembered as the decade of The Great Depression. But it wasn’t all doom and gloom in the 30’s. For instance, a New Jersey man opened the very first drive-in movie theatre in 1933. The outdoor…