The Deadly Spawn
I saw this movie in the mid ’80s, renting it for a high-school slumber-party I dubbed `Dusk to Dawn’ (a marathon of B-movie horror flicks). My jaw dropped – this was intense stuff! I recently watched it again and was…
The Wicker Man Musical
The Wicker Man is easily one of the weirdest films ever made. Shot on location in Scotland, the 1973 movie tells the story of a devout policeman who travels to a remote Hebridean island to investigate the disappearance of a…
Berlinale film lovers flock to Nazi Moon comedy Iron Sky
FINNISH sci-fi comedy about Nazi astronauts invading the earth has become the surprise hit of the Berlinale film festival. Iron Sky, made in the finest tradition of B movie, is the most talked-about film outside the main competition. It takes…
Corman’s “A Bucket of Blood” On Stage
The spirit of legendary B-movie director Roger Corman will hover over the Kansas City theater scene this spring. In March, the Living Room will present “A Bucket of Blood,” a new stage version of a comic horror film set against…
Christopher Lee
Christopher Lee was born in 1922 in London, England, where he and his older sister Xandra were raised by Estelle Marie and Geoffrey Trollope, a professional soldier, until their divorce in 1926. Later, while Lee was still a child, his…
Barbarella
Our story opens on Barbarella’s spaceship, the Alpha 7, which is furnished, floor to ceiling, with light brown shag carpeting. How incredibly groovy! Earth tones evidently made a comeback in 40,000 a.d.. The first scene is a unique weightless striptease…
Top Ten B Films Ever Made-Maybe
10. Psycho Beach Party – 2000 This is a relatively recent addition to the list of B-Movie must-sees. This spoofy blend of 1960’s beach party flick and 1970’s slasher film (think “Gidget” meets “Halloween”) offers everything from almost-naked bikini babes…
John Carpenter’s First Film Discovered!
Fun Fact! The only John Carpenter film to ever win an Academy Award – and one of only two nominations total, the other being Starman’s Best Actor nod in 1984 – was a short film called The Resurrection of Broncho…
Taking Laughable Movies Seriously
I have to wonder if studios realize just how laughable some of their movies are. There are plenty of off-the-wall movies out there, and a good deal are enjoyable when they embrace their B-movie material. It’s when movies take themselves…
A Visit With Bianca Allaine
1. While filming Albino Farm how were you impacted personally from the story that it’s portraying? Yes, I have always felt like an ostracized outsider. Looking back, I definitely see the connection I have to the character and story. Growing…
Joi Lansing
Gorgeous actress and model Joi Lansing was born Joyce Brown (later, Loveland) in Salt Lake City, Utah, on April 6, 1928 (some sources cite 1929 and 1935 as her year of birth). By the late 1940s, she had made her…
Rocketship X-M
Rocketship X-M (1950) was the second of the American science fiction feature films of the space adventure genre begun in the post-war era, in 1950. Because expensive special effects and production value delayed the release of Destination Moon, this black-and-white…
Remake of Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion’
Paramount has recruited Veena Sud (The Killing) to script a remake of ‘Suspicion’, the Oscar-winning 1941 Noir psycho-drama from director Alfred Hitchcock.It seems that not even the best work of filmmaking legend Alfred Hitchcock is considered “hands off” anymore, as…
Nazi humour from Finland at Berlin Film Festival
Is it tactless to screen a comedy about Nazis in Berlin? Perhaps. A film dreamed up by Finnish young men about Nazis on the moon, their discovery by American astronauts, and the ideological conflict that ensues, has nevertheless been one…
Can Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter bring mashup films back from the dead?
It looked like Hollywood’s next big thing a couple of years back, when a whole host of movies with unlikely titles such as Boy Scouts vs Zombies seemed to be getting the green light, or at least placing high on…
Charles B. Pierce
Back in the day, regional filmmakers were a scrappier bunch than the current crop of nominally independent filmmakers. They pulled together shoestring budgets from a variety of interests, often used locals for talent and wheeled and dealed their way into…
Max Terhune
Robert Max Terhune was born February 12, 1891 in Amity, Indiana, and Max would spend most of the first thirty years of his life in the ‘Hoosier’ state. He married Maude Cassada in 1922. Daughter Doris Maxine arrived in 1923,…
Fritz Lang’s Metropolis Redux
Throw away your Metropolis DVD! The version of Fritz Lang’s sci-fi classic seen and admired by the world for nearly a century is far from the epic that the director originally envisioned. The film was significantly altered and recut after…
Iron Sky: Berlin Film Review
From The Hollywood Reporter BERLIN – There’s a funny premise behind Finnish director Timo Vuorensola’s Nazis-in-space caper Iron Sky, and a confident grasp of sci-fi B-movie lore, with leather trench-coated Third Reich descendants ably subbing for the usual alien threat….
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
An atmospheric, action-packed trailer for its “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” a 3-D summer spectacle film starring relative newcomer Benjamin Walker as a very different incarnation of our venerable 16th president. The trademark beard and stovepipe hat are there, sure, but…