Writer/Director Michael Farkas went to USC to study film. He quickly went on the make his first feature movie Prime Risk (1985) which has become a cult movie. After Prime Risk, he spent several years developing new scripts, then moved from Los Angeles back to Washington D.C. in 1988 where he opened Infocus Communications, a…
Read more Writer/Director Michael Farkas on his Cult Movie Prime Risk
*contains spoilers Following the failure of Revolt of the Zombies, the Halperins made their last interesting movie entitled Nation Aflame (1937). It turns a story by white supremacist Thomas Dixon (1864-1946 cerebral haemorrhage) of A Birth of a Nation fame on its head using several writers to produce an anti-racist film about founders of a…
Read more The Halperin Brothers White Zombie and Aftermath (Part Two)
*contains spoilers When we talk of pansexuality today, it was a term which did not really exist back in the late 1960s when labels were more or less limited in their descriptions of gender and sexuality. It comes as a surprise though that the film The Fox (1967), which was directed by Mark Rydell (1929-)…
Read more The Pansexuality of D.H. Lawrence’s The Fox (1967)
*contains spoilers When we talk about the early films of Canadian director David Cronenberg (1943-), most of us will immediately think of Shivers (1975), Rabid (1977), The Brood (1979) and Scanners (1981). But his first features were a couple of interesting ones made in the late 1960s and early 1970s entitled Stereo (1969) and Crimes…
*contains spoilers When you mention the screenplays of David McGillivray (1947-), you must mention in particular the films of director Pete Walker (1939-) in the same breath. And also mention the films of Norman J. Warren (1942-). All three started off in the British sexploitation film business but gravitated for a time into horror movies,…
Read more The Cult of Horror Screenwriter David McGillivray (Part One)
*contains spoilers Director William Girdler (1947-78 helicopter crash) made only nine features in his career which spanned the 1970s. Most are considered rubbish by the critics. But when you look at what Girdler did with so little money, you can’t be anything but impressed. Born in Jefferson County, Kentucky in 1947 from one of the…
Read more The Rip-Off Cult of Director William Girdler (Part One)
*contains spoilers Lest we forget the Snowtown murders, otherwise known as the bodies in the barrels case which was turned into a South Australian film in 2011. My cousin was a witness at the trial and an uncle who was on the police force said when the cops discovered the barrels in the old Snowtown…
Read more The Demons of Horror Director Ursula Dabrowsky and Others (Part Two)
*contains spoilers Adelaide director Ursula Dabrowsky (no info) has made two modest but vastly entertaining horror movies and they are entitled Family Demons (2009) and Inner Demon (2014). Family Demon is presented in the strangest of narratives – like the crime or crimes in the movie, they too are strange – physically and psychically. And…
Read more The Demons of Horror Director Ursula Dabrowsky and Others (Part One)
* contains spoilers Gordon made one of my favourites when he got 50s sci-fi star Richard Carlson (1912-77 cerebral haemorrhage) to do Tormented (1960) for Allied Artists now that he had fulfilled his contract with AIP with four quick fire movies, something which must have left the director exhausted. It is Carlson’s last starring role…
*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…
