This programmer was the last film of tragedy queen Helen Twelvetrees. Once a promising leading lady at RKO during the early sound era. Now a blowzy party girl, she and former prizefighter Buck Jones unofficially adopt the son of a late pal whom they were unaware he had. Young Donald O’Connor is the precocious youth who comes to adore them,Read More »
Ted Danson plays a computer genius who gets involved in the theft of an important N.A.S.A. computer, then thrust into the world of espionage with Sir Christopher Lee.Read More »
Fear of Blushing bursts forth with irrepressible hand-painted color, corroded emulsion and a menacing soundscape of looped voices, distorted instrumentals, samples & rhythm. Fleeting visions and voices erupt out of the ominous abstraction in unusual juxtapositions, suggesting a cinematic free-association marked by anxiety, pleasure and shame. Best appreciated in the immediate; the 7200 painted frames fly by at an average of 12 per second.Read More »
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A corrupt hospital administrator decides to get as much money as possible from the patients by any means necessary – lie, cheat or steal.Read More »
A loony farmer finds a prehistoric monster hiding in a cavern on his land. To feed his newest critter, the farmer kidnaps three people. The three desperately try to escape and finally, one of them succeeds.Read More »
The 1937 Thirteenth Chair was the third film version of the 1919 stage melodrama by Bayard Veiller. Dame Mae Whitty dominates the proceedings as Mme. La Grange, a phony mystic who is on hand when a man is killed during one of her seances. The killing takes place in the home of a provincial British Indian governor, and the victim was a blackmailer whom everyone present had good reason to despise. Complicating matters for Mme. La Grange is the fact that one of the suspects, Nell O’Neill (Madge Evans) is her own daughter. Dissatisfied with the manner in which brusque Scotland Yard inspector Marney (Lewis Stone) is investigating the case, La Grange takes matters in her own hands, stage-managing a second seance so that the guilty party will be frightened into a confession. More slickly produced than the 1929 version of Thirteenth Chair, the remake isn’t quite as enjoyable, lacking two vital ingredients: Margaret Wycherly and Bela Lugosi, the earlier version’s Mme. LaGrange and Inspector Marney.Read More »
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Troubled, unemployed New York office worker Sue (Anna Thomson) lives in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. However, job interviews lead nowhere, and she’s behind in the rent, forced to accept a prostitute as a roommate. Meanwhile, she veers close to a mental precipice as she wanders the city, seeking human contact. She finds a friend in free-lance journalist Ben (Matthew Powers), but after he leaves the country on an assignment, she becomes increasingly disturbed and unable to cope, facing both eviction and mental collapse. Shown at 1997-98 film festivals (Toronto, Berlin).Read More »
In 1975, I was invited to “make any film I wanted as long as it was shot in Minneapolis.” David Hancock, a filmmaker friend in Vermont, who coincidentally grew up in Minneapolis, had just asked me to film him. He had been recently diagnosed with terminal cancer in his early thirties and wanted me to document the craziness of his dying days, as he was buffeted from chemotherapy to New Age cures recommended by friends. I didn’t have the stomach to follow much of David’s last days. Meanwhile, Steve Ascher and I teamed up to go to Minneapolis. We wanted to ask strangers what in their lives they would like to have filmed. For me, it was almost like an act of expiation. -Ed PincusRead More »
