*contains spoilers Director Bert I. Gordon (1922-) worked through from the mid-1950s until his last feature film in 2015. He was known as Mr B.I.G. because of his initials and for his propensity for his films to have special effects that showed giant animals and humans. The movie Tormented (1960) is one of my favourite…
*contains spoilers The Real Macaw was made as a family follow-up to Andreacchio’s critical, and runaway financial success, with another family film he directed and co-wrote entitled Napoleon (1995). That film was about a golden retriever pup that escapes his city home and goes on a trek cross country with the help of a galah.…
Read more The Versatility of Director Mario Andreacchio (Part Two)
*contains spoilers Adelaide-based director Mario Andreacchio (1955-) was at the heart of the growth of the film industry in South Australia in the 1970s and 1980s. Part of a core group of directors in that state, he began with a series of varied short films and then moved on to features. The features he has…
Read more The Versatility of Director Mario Andreacchio (Part One)
*contains spoilers Deranged, at the time of its production, was the most accurate portrayal of the life of the Butcher of Plainfield – Ed Gein (1906-84 liver cancer), who dug up corpses and kept parts of them around his home as trophies and paraphernalia. He apparently even made furniture out of skin and bone. The…
Read more The Slightly Deranged Screenplays of Alan Ormsby (Part Two)
*contains spoilers It is reported that screenwriter, and sometime director, Alan Ormsby (1943-) was inspired in the late 1960s after seeing a screening of the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) with some university friends. “Let’s do something like that,” said Ormsby after seeing the movie in downtown Miami one evening. The result would…
Read more The Slightly Deranged Screenplays of Alan Ormsby (Part One)
* contains spoilers There may be a few vampire movies that may be worth a look as they appear to have been forgotten over the years. They are no masterpieces… but they are better after a single viewing, which is always a good sign. Those movies are Dracula’s Widow (1988), Nightlife (tv movie 1989) and…
Read more The Cult of Director Christopher Coppola’s Dracula’s Widow (1988)
*contains spoilers There is a movie which will become more important as the years pass… should we not correct the environment… as a premonition of things to come. The film is The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), a fictional account of how the world, after the detonation of a couple of large atomic bombs,…
Read more The Climate Change Irony of The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1962)
*contains spoilers The movie Angst (2000) isn’t a horror movie, it’s a movie about horror fans – and a tribute to those often isolated souls. Those fans who just want to connect in that crazy, horrible, violent, terrible, bloody… life and death genre! It is about the foetus in every hard-core horror fans mind –…
Read more The One About the Aussie Horror Fan who Wrote a Horror Movie!
*contains spoilers While he was filming Longstreet, Jimmy set up the James Franciscus Celebrity Tennis Classic to raise money for the now politically incorrect titled charitable organisation Foundation for Retarded Children of the Desert. Held in the Palm Desert area, the classic appears to have run a few years and should have helped Jimmy get…
Read more The Cult of the James Franciscus Facial Tan Club (Part Two)
*contains spoilers The James Franciscus Facial Tan Club came about in second year high school. My friends Scott and Paul were the members of clubs inscribed in my pencil case… along with The George Negus ‘I’m top shit’ Club and the Denise Marcos Orgy Club who were media figures of the day. We were fans…
Read more The Cult of the James Franciscus Facial Tan Club (Part One)
