Celebrating The Drive in
Several weeks ago, we ran a report that John Carter, which died a horrible death at the box office, got a little boost with some help from The Avengers. Yes, it seems as if the movies were played on…
Out of This World
The young Emirati filmmaker Majid Al Ansari picked up a Golden Palm award at this year’s Mexico International Film Festival for his debut film, The Intruder!, a curious B-movie-style sci-fi short about a couple who encounter an alien robot on…
Prometheus
WHEN he directed Alien back in 1979, Ridley Scott’s game plan was simple: take a B-movie premise – a monster running wild on a spaceship – and dress it up with first-class actors, expensive special effects, a brooding tone cribbed…
B Movie Abe
If there existed an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a B-Movie, this year’s winner would easily be Bill Oberst, Jr., for his outstanding portrayal of our 16th President in a motion picture entitled Abraham Lincoln vs….
Was Honest Abe A Vampire Slayer?
History tells us that Abraham Lincoln is the 16th President of the United States, best remembered for the Gettysburg Address and the Emancipation Proclamation, and reputed to be one of the 3 greatest U.S. heads of state. Per American author…
Riddle of Walnut Avenue movie star
Who is the Roanoke-born movie star who once lived at 621 Walnut Ave. S.E.? This was the question I posed in “What’s on Your Mind?” a couple of weeks ago, after reader Joel Richert first posed it to me (I…
B Movie Fix
When Scared Stiff premiered last week night at The Bar, a small crowd of bizarro movie buffs gathered to see cult classic Plan 9 From Outer Space. But it wasn’t just the campy Ed Wood-directed flick that brought folks in…
Low Budget Theatres
Greenfield’s only movie theater is expected to receive a favorable recommendation to extend its current lease with Greenfield Highlands through July 1, 2014, years after it was expected to be razed for redevelopment. At Tuesday’s Planning Commission meeting, Greenfield’s only…
Beefcake Cinema
Sylvester Stallone may be a limited actor, but you can’t say he doesn’t have sense of humour. In Marco Brambilla’s enjoyable 1993 future-shock thriller Demolition Man – which screens during TIFF Bell Lightbox’s new Saturday-night series Schwarzenegger/Stallone: The Rise of…
Survival of the Fittest
“ITS STRUCTURAL PERFECTION is matched only by its hostility,” says Ian Holm in 1979’s Alien. “I admire its purity.” True, he’s talking about a soulless, vicious alien, but what he says applies just as well to Alien. A perfect film,…
SYFY Genius
Syfy has traditionally brainstormed its TV movies by taking two or more creatures and smashing them together to create a superbeast who can wreak cheesy destruction (Mansquito; Dinocroc vs. Supergator). But someone in the network’s lab apparently realized that they…
Prometheus
WHEN he directed Alien back in 1979, Ridley Scott’s game plan was simple: take a B-movie premise – a monster running wild on a spaceship – and dress it up with first-class actors, expensive special effects, a brooding tone cribbed…
Abraham Lincoln vs. Zombies
If there existed an Academy Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a B-Movie this year’s winner would easily be Bill Oberst Jr. for his outstanding portrayal of our 16th President in a motion picture entitled Abraham Lincoln vs….
Ray Bradbury Passes
Author of The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, Something Wicked This Way Comes, and many more literary classics — died this morning in Los Angeles, at the age of 91. We’ve got confirmation from the family as well as his biographer,…
John Carter on Mars
Everyone’s favorite cinematic punching bag John Carter invades home theaters today with the flopbuster’s release on DVD and Blu-ray. As you can expect, it’s available as a basic DVD, a two-disc Blu-ray/DVD combo and a four-disc combo with Blu-ray 3D,…
Piranha 3DD
Piranha 3DD is a funny, energetic and unabashedly sleazy hymn to the three classic B movie virtues: blood, beasts and breasts. The beasts are prehistoric piranhas who’ve made their way via underground rivers to an adult-themed water park where the…
Big Fade Out On Drive Ins
Many midlifers have fond memories of snuggling on the bench seats of their cars while watching a Grade B movie at a drive-in. Originally marketed towards families, these iconic outdoor theaters became a big draw for teenagers in the 60s…
Zombies Vs Gladiators
Despite the fact that none of these movies that pit two famous movie creatures against each other and none of these B-movie tributes that present material that’s self-aware in its schlockiness have managed to become runaway hits, Hollywood has deemed…
Revisiting Alien
In space, no one can hear you scream. But in 1979, audiences at Ridley Scott’s groundbreaking, science-fiction-horror-hybrid “Alien” there were shrieks aplenty. While Scott’s hotly anticipated “Alien” follow-up “Prometheus” has been described as everything from an “Alien” prequel to a…
Sybil Danning
Danning was born in Wels, Upper Austria, Austria as Sybille Johanna Danninger. Danning was the love child of a German-Dutch-American father, who had to leave for the United States before Danning’s birth. Her Austrian mother raised her until she married…