Ida Lupino: Queen B
If Samuel Fuller has a female counterpart it would have been Ida Lupino. A pioneering female filmmaker, she carved out her own world out of a raw cinematic wilderness . She took instead of waiting to have someone or some…
Sing -A-Long With Snake: The Score From Escape From New York
Escape From New York is another movie in John Carpenter’s long line of work that has reached cult status. Although a mild hit upon its initial release, like most of Carpenter’s films, it found its audience on cable and video….
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Wes Craven began his directing career in 1972 with the seminal The Last House on the Left, a gut-wrenching, cinéma vérité-style horror film that got up close and personal with unsuspecting audiences, setting a new standard for terror on the…
Roger
If you’re like me, the end of the summer movie season means it’ll be at least nine months before your next chance to see a superhero on the big screen trading deathblows with an alien. If you need an off-season…
The Rise Of The B Movie
Here is an overview of a course I taught at a local college The Rise of The B Movie From their beginnings to the present day, B movies have provided opportunities both for those coming up in the profession and…
Dark Star
In the middle of the 22nd century, mankind has reached a point in its technological advancement to enable colonization of the far reaches of the universe. Armed with artificially intelligent “Thermostellar Triggering Devices”, the scout ship Dark Star and its…
Live-In Fear upcoming
It’s that the time of the year when we’ll be saturated with previews of horror films through all media outlets. However, there will be some released this month that we may not be aware of. One I’m looking forward to…
China 9 Liberty 37
A condemned gunman, Clayton Drumm, is given a chance at freedom and salvation if he accepts a proposition presented to him by the railroad. Kill farmer, Matthew Sebanek. But after Drumm is disarmed at Sebanek’s ranch, he soon develops a…
Damnation Alley
1st Lieutenant Jake Tanner (Jan-Michael Vincent), an unorthodox Air Force officer, shares ICBM silo duty at an Air Force missile base in California with Major Eugene “Sam” Denton (George Peppard). When the United States detects incoming nuclear missiles, Tanner and…
#Hold Your Breath
After seeing ‘2 Headed Shark Attack’ on the big screen at B Movie Celebration this year I was really looking forward to ‘#Hold Your Breath’ because it’s the Asylum’s first theatrical release. Directed by Jared Cohn and starring Katrina Bowden…
Super Cyclone
The Catalina Islands blow up, a Super Cyclone develops, and there’s an ocean floor volcanic eruption, all within the first four minutes. That is one main reason I prefer B movies. There are no lengthy setups, overkill information about characters,…
James Bond At 50
It has been 50 years since British secret service agent 007 first appeared on the big screen in the James Bond movie Dr. No. Coinciding with the anniversary is the release of Adele’s theme song for the next Bond…
Interview with actor Darin Cooper
Darin Cooper plays Colonel Chadwick in ‘Super Cyclone’ who also had military roles in ‘Air Collision’, Battle of Los Angeles’, Mega Shark vs Crocosaurus’ and was a gun dealer in ‘Adopting Terror’. Some actors are born to play certain roles…
Corbucci: The Other Sergio
“If Sergio Leone was the ‘father’ of the Spaghetti Western than Sergio Corbucci was his ‘uncle”. This phrase by a critic sums up very well the distance between those 2 directors who are the most influential of the…
How To Build A Monster
Necessity is the mother of invention, or so they say. It’s probably the motto of a great many film directors who’ve never benefited from a multi-million dollar budget worthy of James Cameron. But mega-money is far from essential in…
Sybil In The Windy City
International sex symbol, B-movie queen and ’80s action hero Sybil Danning will be at the Music Box next weekend for two events. On Friday, Oct. 12, she’ll be around for autographs and Q&A following a screening of the original, uncut 1983 women-in-prison (a…
Internet Craze: Iron Sky
How does this plot sound to you: In 1945, sensing imminent defeat, Nazis secretly sent spacecraft and a few of their finest to the dark side of the moon. In 2018, they come back to exact revenge on Earth….
The Killer Shrews
by Jason Grooms Do you know what the most fierce, deadly, blood-thirsty creature the world has ever known is? It’s a creature with ferocious fangs like a lion, echolocation like a vampire bat, and deadly venom like a cobra. No,…
This Is Not Your Father’s Gila Monster
Whenever the topic of the remake comes up I always ask, “Why remake a good film? Why remake films that are considered cinematic masterpieces, classics of the genre? What’s the point? Why not take a stinker of a movie and…
The Tentacle’s Claw Has Me In It’s Grasp!
While at the B Movie Celebration I was caught having to decide between two films playing simultaneously; Zombies From Outer Space, a German film, or The Tentacle’s Claw coming down from Newfoundland. Both homage films, both equally tempting. Admittedly…