Attack Of The Gila Monster
Bill Dever knows precisely why hundreds of people flock to his B Movie Celebrations featuring monsters as oversized as the flicks’ campy fun. “There are a lot of maladjusted people out there,” Dever said with a laugh. Consider the Franklin…
Looper=B Movie
There are two reasons I didn’t like “Looper” very much. The first is how the cast talked about the film. “This is the best acting I have done,” Joseph Gordon Levitt said in an interview at this past summer’s Comic…
Hell Comes To Frogtown
Hell Comes to Frogtown is a 1987 cult film that was created by Donald G. Jackson. The screenplay for this film was written by Jackson and Randall Frakes. The film was directed by Jackson and R. J. Kizer, and stars…
A Boy And His Dog
A post-apocalyptic tale based on a novella by Harlan Ellison. A boy communicates telepathically with his dog as they scavenge for food and sex, and they stumble into an underground society where the old society is preserved. The daughter of…
Technicscope
Techniscope or 2-Perf is a 35mm motion picture camera film format introduced by Technicolor Italia in 1963.] The Techniscope format uses a two film-perforation negative pulldown per frame, instead of the standard four-perforation frame usually exposed in 35mm film photography….
Dredd
In an age where every other action film references Sept. 11 or the Occupy movement, “Dredd 3D” is centered squarely in the fears of 1983. An irradiated wasteland. Overpopulation. Society under martial law, where police act as judge, jury and…
Gen X Does Not Like B Movies
“I hate to admit it, but I just don’t get off on movies like Can’t Stop The Music or Krull or The Bee Gees’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band like I used to,’ Erdman told longtime friend Patrick Faulk,…
Once Upon a Time in the West
Sergio Leone practically invented a new kind of movie in 1964 with A Fistful of Dollars. While he wasn’t the only maker of the so-called “Spaghetti Western,” he was indisputably its master, as synonymous with the Italian-made shoot ’em up…
MGM For Sale
The current and enduring IPO wave isn’t only for recently minted tech companies. A successor to one of the oldest of the old-line Hollywood studios, MGM Holdings, has filed a preliminary prospectus as a first step in a possible IPO…
The Art Of A Trailer
Evelyn Watters always loved watching the coming attractions before a movie. She works in advertising, so she’s always had respect for the craft, but something about the business bugged her. “There is no credit in the theater, there is no…
Argo
This is one movie that history buffs don’t want to miss. It’s based on true events that occurred during the Iranian revolution of 1979. In this story, now declassified, we find out that there are six Americans trapped inside a…
Mockbusters
“Mockbusters” are straight-to-video knockoffs of Hollywood hits. They’ve got a long and glorious history stretching back to ’50s B-movies, and NPR’s Mandalit del Barco reports they’re having a mini-renaissance in the age of SyFy and Netflix streaming. The meticulous computer-generated…
‘Star Trek’ sequel gets a title
EW has confirmed that the official title for director J.J. Abrams’ sequel to his 2009 film Star Trek will be Star Trek Into Darkness. (TrekMovie.com first reported the news.) The moniker further differentiates Abrams’ reboot of the venerable sci-fi franchise…
‘Dark Knight Rises’ hits $1B mark
“The Dark Knight Rises” may have lost the box office battle with The Avengers for the hearts (and wallets) of moviegovers this summer. But this weekend still marked an important milestone for the third of Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy. BoxOfficeMojo.com…
Prates Of Dark Water
Last week, we discussed the potential of a feature adaptation of Disney’s Gargoyles, a dark and Gothic animated serial from the mid-1990s. There was a good amount of support for the idea and more than a fair share of nostalgia…
Possession
Two new films tanked at the box office this weekend, resulting in the lowest ticket sales in more than a decade. The weekend’s winner was a holdover: “The Possession,” the horror flick that topped the box office over the Labor…
ParaNorman
Opening in 4:3 with scratchy studio logos and a “Feature Presentation” snippet, with dirt, grain and sound-jerking like a messed-up print of a well-worn B movie, ParaNorman opens in a manner that cements itself early in the nerdiness of an…
Dredd 3D
Film festivals and comic book movies typically don’t mix. Movies based on popular paneled heroes generally get their start at conventions or through marketing departments. Yet, thanks to TIFF’s Midnight Madness program a certain gruff helmet sporting antihero from the…
Mary Woronov
The actor: Mary Woronov first came to prominence in the New York artistic community through her work with Andy Warhol and the Theater Of The Ridiculous, but it was her work with famed producer Roger Corman that brought her to…
Bachelorette
A trio of footloose bridesmaids, out on the town on the eve of the wedding, with mischief on their minds — sounds like the setup for three coins in a fountain of fun. But as it goes with most such…