H.B.Halicki
“H.B. “TOBY”‘ HALICKIlived the American dream. At 15 he left his home in Dunkirk, New York and moved to California. He started working pumping gas and within two years owned his own body shop. He enrolled in real estate classes…
Ed Wood, B-Movie King, Gets a Film Retrospective
Twenty years ago, Johnny Depp played the title B-movie director in Tim Burton’s frisky biopic “Ed Wood.” The film introduced the eccentric Wood, then mostly known to fans of cult cinema, to a mainstream audience and renewed interest in his…
“Jaws” still alive on Martha’s Vineyard
Forty years ago, Edgartown Harbor on Martha’s Vineyard, looked a little different than it does today. The tranquil summer tourist magnet was transformed into Amity Island, the famous town from “Jaws.” Roy Scheider, left, and Richard Dreyfuss are shown…
Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
To this day my friend and I still refer to the gremiln like he is real. When something goes wrong with my computer, it is the gremlin, when my keys are misplaced and then show up in a spot that…
Evil Toons (1992)
Four women are staying the weekend in a spooky house they’ve been hired to clean, but before long one of them has been possessed by a demon unwittingly brought to life and embarks on a murderous rampage. I really like…
Women’s Prison Movies
Babes behaving badly. Chicks in chains. Sweeties in the slammer. As a rule, movies about women in prison have been far from subtle. In fact, they’re part of what cinema buffs would call the exploitation genre. Conceived by men, produced…
Hold On! (1966)
Somebody, somewhere, in 1966, got the idea to make a movie featuring the English rock-n-roll band Herman’s Hermits. That somebody should be interrogated at length. This movie was obviously a crass attempt to cash in on the evolving music phenomena…
Galaxy Raider
Back in high school, one of our favorite six-pack stinkers was The Fiend (1980), in which a supernatural creature resembling a radioactive Twistie enters the grave of a recently deceased music teacher. He comes back from the dead, naturally craving…
Chandler (1971)
That’s Chandler, C-H-A-N-D-L-E-R, as in Raymond,” Warren Oates snaps in the title role, as if to make sure less detective-fiction-savvy viewers don’t miss the literary connection. Since MGM released CHANDLER in 1971 when youth-oriented films were raking in big bucks…
Francis Goes to West Point (1952)
Francis the talking mule gets his owner in and out of trouble while he is taking basic training at West Point. It lacks the warmth found in the original film, but it is certainly funnier and has a better storyline…
Robot Jox (1989)
Robot Jox tries hard, but is fundamentally a series of fight scenes strung together — robot against robot, man against man, man against woman. The premise had potential, but it seems the script wasn’t really given the couple of more…
Nightbeast
If Ed Wood was given color film stock and a budget that was double the nearly four dollars he made his entire library on, I suspect the result would be something that looked vaguely similar to the film “Nightbeast;” wooden…
The Roller Blade Seven
First of all, I am grad film student at U.S.C. In one of my classes we went through the three films associated with the project, THE ROLLER BLADE SEVEN, RETURN OF THE ROLLER BLADE SEVEN, and LEGEND OF THE ROLLER…
Ma and Pa Kettle (1949)
The Kettles and their fifteen children are about to be evicted from their rundown rustic home when Pa wins the grand prize by coming up with a new tobacco slogan. Birdie Hicks is jealous of the family’s new wealth, which…
Buck Privates (1941)
Abbott and Costello’s second feature, “Buck Privates,” opened in January 1941. Peacetime conscription was in effect, voted by Congress in late 1940, and only planned to last for one year. Europe was at war, China was being raped (literally) by…
Space Truckers
When he is late in delivering a consignment of square pigs to boss Keller, space trucker John Canyon gets into a fight and is forced to take the first available load and flee the space station with young trucker Mike…
Corvette Summer (1978)
The gas tank is either half full or half empty depending on how you view CORVETTE SUMMER. One could justly call it forced in its humor, directionless, repetitive and overlong. Others will see a likable, innocent coming-of-age adventure. It depends…
A Bucket of Blood (1959)
This delicious black comedy is one of the films that Roger Corman used to make before he got a bigger budget and went on to do fantastic adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe stores, starting with ‘The Fall of the House…
30 Days of Night (2007)
“30 Days of Night” is easily one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in a very long time mostly because everyone involved seemed to know exactly what it takes to make a decent horror movie. It’s not obscene amounts…
Honky Tonk Freeway (1981)
Back in August, ’81 there was a country-ish buzz to movies, big hits like “Urban Cowboy”, “Every Which Way But Loose”, “Smokey and the Bandit” were all the rage. For that reason I suspect the producers of this movie chose…