*contains spoilers Filmmaker Larry Buchanan (1923-2004 collapsed lung) is feted for his bad movies and the worst of these are his Azalea Pictures. They are a series of eight movies, which were shot on budgets of about $30,000 each, starting in the mid-1960s. Produced by American International Pictures they were the first of the colour…
Read more The Cult of the Azalea Pictures by Larry Buchanan (Part One)
*contains spoilers There is a link between cult favourite – well, for a few – The Day of the Dolphin (1973) and the film Altered States (1980). That link is American scientist John C. Lilly (1915-2001 heart failure). Lilly studied the communication between humans and dolphins for many years in the 1950s and 60s which…
*contains spoilers Director Nicholas Roeg’s (1928-2018 natural causes) film The Man Who Fell to Earth, starring music legend David Bowie (1947-2016 liver cancer) is essentially a science fiction film about alcoholism. Bowie plays an alien who comes to Earth in search of water for his parched planet. He has left his family behind in the…
Read more David Bowie is The Man Who Fell to Earth (Part One)
*contains spoilers The Sorcerers is only one of a few movies directed by Michael Reeves, who many believe committed suicide in his mid-20s at the height of his career, despite it being recorded as a case of accidental drug overdose in the coroner’s report. Reeves was a promising director, obvious from his first low budget…
Read more The Virtue Brainstorm is Virtually no Remake (Part Two)
*contains spoilers “I’ve been around the course a couple of times now,” says Linda, admitting to thirty and brooding over past boyfriends. “Poor Linda, here she goes again,” she says to herself as they leave the café, looking forward to that moment again, where they can physically and spiritually bare their souls. Before it vanishes…
Read more The Cult of Gutsy Beauty of Linda Haynes (Part Two)
*contains spoilers Linda Haynes is an actress who worked for a short period in the film industry. In that time she gave a few unforgettable performances before retiring while not yet 35 years old, a victim of depression and substance abuse. Linda felt trapped in the industry. She was also so beautiful that she probably…
Read more The Cult of Gutsy Beauty of Linda Haynes (Part One)
*contains spoilers Ronald Wycherley aka Billy Fury only starred in a couple of movies and didn’t have the chart success of Elvis Presley, but strangely enough the pair of them died at the relatively young age of 42. Billy was born in Liverpool in 1940. A landlady’s dog bit him on the face when he…
*contains spoilers Farrah Fawcett (1947-2009 anal cancer) or Farrah Fawcett-Majors, as she was known for a spell, was one of Charlie’s Angels (tv series 1976, 78-80) who hoped to kick-start a film career in the late 1970s and early 80s. She failed but the results are far from disgraceful. Married to the Six Million Dollar…
*contains spoilers There are a trio of “Body Snatcher” type sci-fi movies which all seem to have snatched source material from all over the place making them not quite original, but their melting pot of ideas have produced something aficionados of the genre may cherish. It Came from Outer Space (1953) is the first movie…
*contains spoilers After his success with American Graffiti (1973), producer and director George Lucas (1944-) had a script in mind based on murders in a radio station during a big opening launch based on the Bud Abbott (1897-1979 throat cancer) and Lou Costello (1906-59 heart attack) movie Who Done It? (1942). It went through almost…
