Great thriller, clocking in at a whopping 68 minutes, I think. Poor sap, Al Roberts, played by Tom Neal, is hitchhiking across the U.S. from New York to California to join his girlfriend. Along the way, he gets picked up by a “Big Spender” Haskell, in a new vehicle who agrees to take him all the way to Los Angeles. The two exchange stories during their journey but Haskell mysteriously passes out en route and never regains consciousness. Roberts panics and buries the body out in the desert and assumes the dead man’s identity and drives off with his possessions. [More]
Bob Clark’s “Black Christmas” appeared many years before the onslaught of slasher films featuring idiosyncratic, stalking killers. This killer likes to freak out future victims by calling them on the phone and issuing gibberish about his foul intentions. There are many POV impressions from the killer’s vantage point. Victims are dispatched gruesomely and left in their lifeless, idle suspension to hang or sit undiscovered in the sorority house attic where some of the killer’s work unfolds. Many of these motifs we would see again in other films. Plenty of quirky characters inhabit this world and there are a few characters [More]
Dr. Henry Jekyll has been experimenting with cocaine as a potential anesthetic drug. He over does it a bit with his experiment and his drug intake, and low and behold, manifests or converts into an evil alter ego, “Jack” Hyde, a crack pipe equipped, murderous psycho. I subtitled this entry as Hybrid Horror. Let me explain myself. The grisly murders undertaken by Hyde resemble those of the infamous Jack The Ripper. This version of Mr. Hyde dispatches his victims in a manner similar to Ye Olde Jack: destructive, savage administration of a surgical knife to parts of the victim’s anatomy. [More]
Science Fiction mind fuckage in the high mode. AI experiments run rampant in a secluded state of the art home/fortress/laboratory surrounded by some of the most grandeur examples of nature imaginable. In this fabulous environment, human and artificial intelligence interact and collide, deceiving each other along the way and providing a battleground for a survival of the fittest both mentally and physically. Not hard to imagine who comes out on top. Beautifully shot with some creepy footage of the initial AI experiments of brilliant programmer Nathan. It is his last creation, Ava, who takes on a very vibrant life of [More]
I have always enjoyed Hammer Films’ “Horror Of Dracula” starring Peter Cushing as Dr. Van Helsing, vampire authority, and Christopher Lee as the undead blood sucker, Dracula. I thought the movie was a very well done horror thriller. Lee is menacing and frightening as a very strong but cold parasitic beast bent on his own survival. Cushing is magnificent as the determined and brilliant expert on folklore and the Supernatural bent on ending the vampire’s reign of terror. With the current pandemic raging on and being newly unemployed, I found time to finally finish Bram Stoker’s novel, “Dracula”. Now, comparing [More]
Very bizarre movie about an alien visitor to Scotland who assumes the form of actress Scarlett Johansson and proceeds to lure unwary men she picks up in her vehicle to their ultimate doom. Johansson lures them to her flat where they both disrobe with the promise of a sexual encounter but end up sinking into some unseen pool “holding tank” to be “consumed” later by the alien. These are some of the many arresting visuals which occur throughout this picture. I was reminded of Bowie’s “The Man Who Fell To Earth” with its tale of an alien who tries to [More]
This Roger Corman produced and directed film is a treat. There is a quasi-comical air about the proceedings as a lot of the action takes place in a Beat Generation inspired coffee house where poets and musicians alike share a performance stage, hang out and spout off in exaggerated artistic fashion. In the midst of this “Cool” cafe trundles waiter Walter Paisley, a loner who aspires to be creative and wants something more out of life than just busing tables for the rest of his life. Walter buys a packet of clay and tries his hand at sculpting in his [More]
I had memories of watching this movie at a much younger age and decided to check it out again. Luckily, You Tube has the complete movie available for viewing. I must say that it is much better watching this time from what I previously remembered. A geologist comes across a forbidden text which carries within it a demonic lineage and an evil spirit in human form is trying to recover said text at whatever cost. Friends of the geologist become involved in the struggle for ownership of what is probably the Book of Tobin and must deal with the evil [More]
To be blunt about this mess of a film, save the 90 minutes of your time and skip this movie! This movie is very repetitive and follows a clueless group of four people trying to find a missing person who ended up lost in a valley that is highly irradiated. As a result of this radiation rich zone, animals have grown to enormous proportions. There are giant hawks, an enormous snake and a titanic lizard. Oh. There is also an unfortunate quasi-human who turns out to be the missing man who is now 20 or so feet tall and whose [More]
A child is discovered wandering aimlessly in a desert in the Southwestern United States. Trying to locate her parents, a police investigation starts to uncover a series of abandoned and destroyed homesteads in the area. The evidence is confounding but scientists are brought onboard and their discoveries are unsettling. Could it be that an area located near nuclear testing could be harboring mutations created by the bomb blast radiation? Of course it could! This movie was one of many made at the time that posited that giant ants, grasshoppers, humans could be the horrific result of our dabbling with nuclear [More]
Guitar genius and legend, Eddie Van Halen passed away due to a long running battle with cancer. Van Halen, the band created with brother Alex, David Lee Roth and Michael Anthony, was a dominant musical force in the record charts from the late 1970’s to the mid 1980’s and then again when Roth exited and was replaced by singer Sammy Hagar during the 1990’s. A major portion of the credit for that achievement goes to the extraordinary guitar playing and writing of Eddie. Van Halen flirted between a heavy rock and pop sound and showcased the guitar histrionics that Eddie [More]
Influential bassist, rocker, writer and musician Pete Way has passed. I am most familiar with his work with UFO, a popular British hard rock act from the “70’s to the ’90’s. Way wrote some of their most beloved songs and was a relentless stalker of the stage and theatrical performer. Way went on to found Fastway and Waysted and his Pete Way Band. Ways’ boisterous antics are the stuff of rock legend, and there are many tales, but his playing and writing have inspired a lot of people. We will all miss yet another larger than life character of Rock [More]
Today is Bruce Springsteen’s birthday and we wish him many, many more. The evergreen rocker turns 71. We look forward to seeing him on the road again whenever we get a grip on this freaking pandemic. Vintage “The River” material is performed in the video. We need his live concert experience energy now!!!
Simeon Coxe was part of the musical duo known as The Silver Apples. He just passed away. I would not say I was previously a huge fan of their music. I thought their use of a DIY synthesizer beast and drummer combo were at times too repetitive and I wasn’t in love the singing. Listening now, I am liking what I hear more and more. I have borrowed the description below from Jon Pareles of The New York Times who describes the band: Silver Apples was a two-man band: Dan Taylor on drums and Mr. Coxe, billing himself simply as [More]