Italian director Ivan Zuccon (1972-) is an experienced filmmaker who started his career with the short film Berenice (1997). He made several other short films before his interest in the American horror writer H.P. Lovecraft turned his mind to create horror movies related to that writer’s stories. His early features which were shot on video…
Read more Director Ivan Zuccon on H.P. Lovecraft and his Cult Film Career…
*contains strong course language Haydn Keenan (1951-) is originally from Melbourne. He formed the company Smart Street Films with his friend Esben Storm while they were still teenagers and moved to Sydney to work for the Commonwealth Film Unit as you will learn from this interview… He made one of his first short films Stephany…
Read more Producer/Director Haydn Keenan on 27A and his Cult Film Career…
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 Melbourne-based director/editor/producer/writer Brian Kavanagh (1935-) is one of the key filmmakers in the resurgence of the Australian film industry in the 1970s. His movie A City’s Child (1971) helped kick start the industry and he produced and edited that film along with supplying the storyline. But it is his work as a film…
Read more Director Brian Kavanagh on his Cult Movies A City’s Child and Double Deal…
*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 There is a recent documentary entitled Fantastic Fungi (2019) which is narrated by Brie Larson (1989-) and while it’s probably a fantastic adventure through the world of different fungi on the planet – there are a few narrative feature films that fascinate me possibly more since I have first seen them. Surprisingly, there…
*contains spoilers When we talk about the movies of directors Michael (1937-77 killed by helicopter blades) and Roberta Findlay (1948-), many will think of pornography, if they know the filmmakers at all. But it is their horror movies that this article will be concerned with, and even though Michael Findlay only made a couple before…
Read more The Cult of Michael and Roberta Findlay and Shriek of the Mutilated (Part One)
*contains spoilers After this rare foray into comedy, Forbes wrote and directed the excellent The Whisperers (1967). Again, he has helped his lead actress, this time Edith Evans (1888-1976), deliver a performance which was nominated for an Oscar. She lost to Katherine Hepburn in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967) in the usual sympathy vote.…
Read more Actor/Director Bryan Forbes Takes Over the Asylum (Part Two)
*contains spoilers Actor/Writer/Director/Producer Bryan Forbes (1926-2013 long illness) worked himself up the ladder in the British film industry from a bit part actor to become the studio head of EMI studios in the early 1970s. He is a name not many people recognise today, but his brief stint as head of a filmmaking asylum or…
Read more Actor/Director Bryan Forbes Takes Over the Asylum (Part One)
*contains spoilers It was Darren McGavin’s (1922-2006 heart disease) tv portrayal of Hammer in Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (1958-59) that followed this film and McGavin is a decided improvement over Bray even though it’s a half hour tv format. The violence is there if not the sex of the Spillane novels. But McGavin’s Hammer again…
Read more The Cult of Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer (Part Two)
