USA

  • Edward D. Wood Jr. – Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

    1951-1960CultEdward D. Wood Jr.Sci-FiUSA

    Quote:
    Plan 9 From Outer Space has been unjustly deemed the worst movie of all time. It’s true that cardboard gravestones are knocked over, that scenes change from day to night at a moment’s notice, and that half of Bela Lugosi’s scenes are shot with a taller stand-in who has trouble keeping his vampire’s cape on his shoulders. But technical gaffes like these are shared by a number of low-budget sci-fi films with plots that equal the absurdity of this epic’s tale of extraterrestrial grave robbers.Read More »

  • Larry Blamire – Dark and Stormy Night (2009)

    2001-2010ComedyMysteryUSA

    Quote:
    Writer/director Larry Blamire (The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra, Trail of the Screaming Forehead) returns to the helm with this parody of 1930s-era old dark house films, presented in glorious black and white, and featuring every character stereotype and story cliché that kitsch fans have come to associate with these estate-bound frighteners.Read More »

  • Merian C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack – Grass: A Nation’s Battle for Life (1925)

    1921-1930DocumentaryEpicErnest B. SchoedsackMerian C. CooperUSA

    Quote:
    A classic adventure by the makers of “King Kong.” In 1924, neophyte filmmakers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack hooked up with journalist and sometime spy Marguerite Harrison and set off to film an adventure. They found excitement, danger and unparalleled drama in the migration of the Bakhtiari tribe of Persia (now Iran). Twice a year, more than 50,000 people and half a million animals surmounted seemingly impossible obstacles to take their herds to pasture.Read More »

  • James Toback – Fingers (1978)

    1971-1980CrimeDramaJames TobackUSA

    Quote:
    Harvey Keitel is forced to work as a debt collector for his mobster father even though he dreams of becoming a concert pianist. When he is drawn to a prostitute, the tension between his two worlds becomes unbearable. A disturbing and memorable debut from director and screenwriter James Toback.
    Remade in 2005 as the French film ‘The Beat That My Heart Skipped.’Read More »

  • Orson Welles – The Stranger (1946)

    1941-1950CrimeFilm NoirOrson WellesUSA

    The Stranger is often considered Orson Welles’ most “traditional” Hollywood-style directorial effort. Welles plays a college professor named Charles Rankin, who lives in a pastoral Connecticut town with his lovely wife Mary (Loretta Young). One afternoon, an extremely nervous German gentleman named Meineke (Konstantin Shayne) arrives in town. Professor Rankin seems disturbed–but not unduly so–by Meineke’s presence. He invites the stranger for a walk in the woods, and as they journey farther and farther away from the center of town, we learn that kindly professor Rankin is actually notorious Nazi war criminal Franz Kindler.Read More »

  • Larry Blamire – The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra (2001)

    2001-2010ComedyLarry BlamireSci-FiUSA

    Quote:
    A bad scientist and wife, a mad scientist and skeleton, two aliens and their escaped pet are all searching for the elusive element “atmospherium”.Read More »

  • John Hubley & Faith Hubley – The Tender Game (1958)

    1951-1960AnimationFaith HubleyJohn HubleyShort FilmUSA

    Quote:
    Ella Fitzgerald, backed by the Oscar Peterson Trio, sings “Tenderly” as watercolor animation portrays life and love in a big city. Simple and marvelous.Read More »

  • Jacques Tourneur – They All Come Out (1939)

    1931-1940CrimeDramaJacques TourneurUSA

    A “Crime Doesn’t Pay” morality drama about a young man sentenced to a prison term and attempts by the system to rehabilitate jailed criminals.Read More »

  • Tod Browning – Miracles for Sale (1939)

    1931-1940ThrillerTod BrowningUSA

    Quote:

    Directed by Tod Browning (Dracula (1931) & Freaks (1932)), this film features a host of character actors led by Robert Young as retired magician Mike Morgan, who now sells tricks to the other performers in his former trade (hence the film’s title). Frank Craven plays Young’s father, having just come to NYC to visit his son, and provides the film’s comic relief. Judy Barclay (Florence Rice) is being chased and comes to Morgan for help, whose assistance becomes the story, which plays out confusingly and frenetically during this picture’s 71 minutes. Henry Hull as Houdini-like Dave Duvallo and Lee Bowman (among others, some listed later) also appear in this Harry Ruskin, Marion Parsonnet, and James Edward Grant screenplay (based on Clayton Rawson’s novel).Read More »

Back to top button