*contains spoilers If I have a favourite movie from Alfred Hitchcock’s early English period – it is definitely The Lady Vanishes (1938). It is funny, it is mysterious and there’s a bit of action. It also has a great cast of English actors who, together with the director, keep the film moving along the tracks…
Read more Director Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes (1938)
One title among the first wave of Cinemascope films from the studio which initiated the process, 20th Century Fox, was Garden of Evil (1954). This western, which is set south of the border, stars Gary Cooper (1901-61 prostate cancer), Susan Hayward (1917-75 lung and brain cancer), Richard Widmark (1914-2008 long illness), and Cameron Mitchell (1918-94…
*contains spoilers Director/Editor/Producer Brian Kavanagh (1935-) is one of the key filmmakers in the resurgence of the Australian film industry in the 1970s after a couple of decades where the industry more of less lay fallow. He directed only three feature films but he left his mark as a film editor on some bona fide…
*contains spoilers Ed Adlum said of Michael Findlay: “(He) wanted to make real movies, not porn movies, but when you have no money, you make porn movies.” He also said the Findlays had a propensity to film one for $7000 and sell it for $10000. Shriek of the Mutilated was Adlum’s gift to Michael to…
Read more The Cult of Michael and Roberta Findlay and Shriek of the Mutilated (Part Two)
*contains spoilers Director Frank Perry’s (1930-95 prostate cancer) drama Play it as it Lays (1972) opens in a sanatorium where Tuesday Weld’s character Maria Wyeth is staying. She begins: “If Carter and Helene were to think it happened because I was insane… I say let them…” We don’t know why but the way Maria talks,…
Read more The Cult of Director Frank Perry’s Play it as it Lays (1972)
Paramount Studios, who distributed Overlord, also released Annihilation (featuring Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh), which according to figures also broke even at the box office and might have been released long enough to just recoup its budget. Like the much vaunted, and Academy Award winning (it won three major Oscars) Roma (2018), it appeared…
