*contains spoilers Pity director Billy Wilder’s (born Samuel 1906-2002 pneumonia) older brother, whose name was William but was known as W. Lee Wilder (1904-82). Long estranged from each another, while Billy was receiving Oscar nominations and scoring wins, his brother, who Billy jokingly called “a dull son of a bitch”, was making some of the…
Read more W. Lee Wilder’s Terrible Trilogy that Wouldn’t Die! (Part One)
*contains spoilers Then came a pair of films in England where public interest was piqued by the scandal. The films were released by what would become Hammer Studios and were the sci-fi themed Four Sided Triangle (1953), which obviously used the ménage a trois angle of Barbara’s real life and Bad Blonde (1953), where she…
*contains spoilers She was a beautiful free spirit with crystal blue eyes. She achieved stardom in Hollywood before instantly nose-diving into a life of alcoholism, sex addiction and degradation hastened by mental illness. Barbara Payton is all the Hollywood Dream can be and how it can turn completely and utterly upside-down and out. From a…
*contains spoilers The Lonely Lady is a much better prospect, both as a movie and performance by Pia. The script is by far an improvement on Fake-Out despite its reputation. Incidentally, Matt Cimber was first attached to the project but he was replaced. Based on the Harold Robbins bestseller (1976), The Lonely Lady has long…
*contains spoilers If it weren’t for my respect and obsession as a schoolkid for actor James Franciscus, I might have never known and fallen for Pia Zadora. Ever since Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), Franciscus was cool, made even more cool by his evil Paul Diller in Killer Fish (1979) which I saw…
*contains spoilers There is something odd about Frenchman’s Farm (1986), and I mean the place and the movie. It is an isolated farm in the Gold Coast hinterland in Australia and the movie is an isolated movie in that it is a rare ghost/horror/sci-fi movie made in Australia in the mid-80s. It is by no…
* contains spoilers One of my favourite actors of all time is Richard Carlson from It Came from Outer Space (1953). Have you heard of the term Six Degrees of Separation where everyone in the world knows each other through six people knowing each other? For example – and this is eerie: A journalist friend…
Melbourne director Stephen Amis has been making movies since he was a child. He went to film school on the strength of his Super 8 movies and one of his first features was paid by credit card. His low-budget sci-fi/war genre movie The 25th Reich (2012) is an instant classic which features time travel and…
Read more Director Stephen Amis on making The 25th Reich and The BBQ
*contains spoilers Max Carlton’s script for Nightmare in Wax, ingeniously uses for the first time, the Hollywood community as a backdrop to the Wax Museum horror story. It is a film populated by backstabbers, dealmakers, and stupid as well as shallow people. All except Vince Renard, a former Hollywood make-up artist, played by Cameron Mitchell,…
*contains spoilers Name: Melanie Age: 46 Occupation: Teacher Favorite Movie: About a Boy (2002) Starring: Hugh Grant, Toni Collette, Rachel Weisz and Nicholas Hoult First Saw It: On DVD at home alone when it first came out Plot: Based on the Nick Hornby novel it tells the story of a self-absorbed bachelor who becomes involved…
