B’s Creates Shockwave
Summer moviegoing is usually about the stars, the spectacle and the sizzle. But in a trend that’s mystifying Hollywood, this summer’s box office is being driven by films with modest ambitions, including relatively inexpensive comedies, lower budget animation and horror…
Quatermass And The Pit/Five Million Years To Earth
Without a doubt, this is true science-fiction at its best. Kneale’s brilliant script (based on his acclaimed 50’s BBC serial) proposes a truly staggering premise. The human race was actually genetically altered by martians about five million years ago, the…
Capricorn One
This is a gem of a thriller from the late 70’s that has conspiracy over tones right the way through. It was very contemporary for it’s time with a fine cast that could easily have been a whose-who guide of…
7 Faces of Dr.Lao
“This is the Circus of Dr. Lao. We show you things that you don’t know. Oh, we spare no pains and we spare no dough, but we’re going to give you one helluva show!” And the Good Doctor certainly did,…
Big Screen Sharknado
Sharknado,” the SyFy channel B-movie-turned-social-media-sensation, is coming to a big screen near you. On Aug. 2, theaters in Huntsville and Birmingham will host midnight screenings of the film in which sharks are sucked into the sky by water spouts and…
Roger Corman-Produced Chinese Horror Movie Debuts
With the Chinese government’s strict prohibition of the depiction of paranormal activities on screen to prevent audiences from being exposed to what they see as archaic forms of superstition, the country has never made much of a contribution to the…
‘The Man With the Iron Fists’
It’s no secret that producer/rapper RZA — nee Robert Fitzgerald Diggs — is a big fan of vintage chop-socky films; his group Wu-Tang Clan lifted its name from one such flick. RZA has worked steadily at crossing over into cinema,…
Warner Archive Restores ‘B’ Movies
The latest category of content the Warner Archive Collection has been working to restore and release is the ‘B’ movie genre. Speaking about the movies fans love to hate July 19 at San Diego Comic-Con International were Warner Archive Collection…
The Summer Of The B’s
Summer moviegoing is usually about the stars, the spectacle and the sizzle. But in a trend that’s mystifying Hollywood, this summer’s box office is being driven by films with modest ambitions, including relatively inexpensive comedies, lower budget animation and horror…
Joi Lansing
Crowned by the press as “TV’s Marilyn Monroe,” model, singer, film and television actress Joi Lansing was born April 6, 1929 (as Joyce Brown) in Salt Lake City, Utah to Virginia Grace (née Shupe) Brown, a housewife, and Jack Glenn…
B-grade Sharknado Teaches Hollywood A Cruel Lesson
Hollywood: she’s a fickle mistress. As the accountants at the Disney studio count their losses on The Lone Ranger, a big-ticket film with a budget of US$200 million which landed with a thud, across down a cheesy, cheap piece of…
Wolverine Delivers
It’s a weird time we live in when I can describe a film as “cheap” because it “only” cost around $100 million to produce. But such is the case with this smaller-scale X-Men spin-off. As such, while there is little…
Irene Ryan-Genius
Ryan was born Irene Eileen Noblett in El Paso, Texas, the daughter of James Merritt Noblett and Catherine “Katie” McSharry. Her father was from North Carolina and her mother was a native of Ireland. She had one sister, Anna, who…
Big Ass Spider On The Way
Big Ass Spider! has fun with the idea of a giant spider terrorizing Los Angeles, mostly by centering the film around the unlikely heroic duo of expert exterminator Alex Mathes (Greg Grunberg) and security guard Jose Ramos (Lombardo Boyar). ……
Robots Smacking Monsters In The Puss
I’ve heard a lot about the decline of cinema over the past few years, and plenty of people have complaints about the seemingly endless stream of artless summer blockbusters that focus more on explosions than stories. But none of that…
The Flops Of Summer
Analysts are predicting that R.I.P.D, starring Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds, will become the fourth such film in as many weeks to underperform. The costliest failure so far has been The Lone Ranger, starring Johnny Depp, which cost $250 million…
The Thing from Another World
Director: Christian Nyby, Script: Charles Lederer, Story: John W. Campbell Jr. (Who goes There?) Cast: Kenneth Toby, Robert Cornthwaite, Douglas Spencer, Margaret Sheridan, James Arness. I am going to try to be kind when I give my opinions about this…
Boxcar Bertha
Watching early films by classic directors in the midst of discovering their trademark style always proves to be an interesting endeavor, and Martin Scorsese’s Boxcar Bertha is no exception. Made the year before Scorsese’s breakthrough hit, and first tale of…
King Larry
Less money, more freedom!” has long been the mantra of film-makers working in the B-movie arena. Yes, the critics will sneer at them. No, they’re not going to win Academy Awards. The pay-off is the chance to be subversive, innovative…
The Lost Empire Rediscovered
In 1983, a young director stepped behind the camera for the first time and began to shoot a film which he thought might be both his first and his last. An ardent fan of �B� cinema, Jim Wynorski decided to…