*contains spoilers Director John Sturges’s (1910-92 emphysema) Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) was a film which helped introduce martial arts into mainstream American movies and it is also a film which looks at racism and xenophobia in a way that remains relevant in the United States to this day. Thankfully, to a lesser degree.…
Read more The Cult of Xenophobia in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955)
Dean Bennett (1963-) is a bit of a legend in South Australia as he was a young film-maker who inspired many other young film-makers through his impressive award-winning Super 8 short films which played local festivals in the late 1970s. His ingenuity in creating exciting stunts and fiery special effects on the pocket money he…
Read more Teen Movie Prodigy and Stunt Man Dean Bennett on his Cult Film Career and Carrie Fisher…
*contains spoilers The films of Australian filmmaker Murray Fahey (no info) are very low budget but couldn’t be more diverse. Of the four movies which impressed me most to write about – two are comedies and two are horror movies… And they are all original to some degree. For example, his comedy/drama Sex is a…
Read more The Cult Movies of Writer and Director Murray Fahey
*contains spoilers Call it youthful naivety, call it sexual ambivalence or confusion but when I first saw Eat the Rich (1987) several times in my late teens as an usher during a film festival, I really thought actress Lanah Pellay (1959-) was a woman, or I thought she was a man… Ummm… Alan Pellay or…
Read more The Cult of Actress Lanah Pellay in Eat the Rich (1987)
*contains spoilers The best Charlie Chan movie of all has a creepy association with the “unsolved” murders of The Zodiac Killer which began in San Francisco back in the late 1960s and would baffle police well into the 1970s and onwards. As they say: Everyone loves a mystery – and the Chan movies offered that…
Read more The Cult of The Zodiac Killer and Charlie Chan at Treasure Island
*contains spoilers Box office megaflop Honky Tonk Freeway (1981) was unleashed at the beginning of a period of conservative Reagan-ism and the public simply didn’t take to its community led by a corrupt Christian minister and politician… even if he did mean well! This reimagining of Stanley Kramer’s (1913-2001 pneumonia) It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad,…
Read more The Megaflop of Director John Schlesinger’s Honky Tonk Freeway (1981)
*contains spoilers There is a tale behind the making of the Australian science fiction movie The Time Guardian (1987) and it is not a pretty one. I credit the film to director Brian Hannant (1940-) but he more or less disowns the final product… his only venture into fully-fledged feature directing. In fact, Hannant wouldn’t…
Read more The Cult of Director Brian Hannant’s The Time Guardian (1987)
*contains spoilers Inner beauty is a hard thing to write about and to define which is probably the reason there aren’t too many movies on the subject. Of course, there are poets and filmmakers who can write or direct beautiful things – but what about inside of the creators themselves as we just assume that…
Read more The Cult of Inner Beauty in The Enchanted Cottage (1945)
*contains spoilers The Island (1980) is a misunderstood film with a possible demographic that was unable to view it, which is why it failed so miserably at the box office upon its initial release. This tale of a twelve-year-old boy adopted by murderous modern-day pirates of the Caribbean is also one of the great father-son…
Read more The Cult of a Pirate’s Rites of Passage in The Island (1980)
*contains spoilers Director Robert Altman’s Images (1925-2006 leukemia) is an, at times, puzzling movie about the creation of writing and the madness that lies in between. It is also one woman’s journey through insanity brought to life by a great performance by Susannah York (1939-2011 multiple myeloma) in the lead. Or is the act of…
Read more Actress Susannah York goes insane in Images (1972)
