The lore behind this grisly horror comedy is somewhat legendary in cult film history: originally titled and conceived as a series very loosely tied to Warner Bros.’ 3D hit House of Wax (1953), the final production was deemed too graphic as a TV pilot, and was released to cinemas, rebranded as Chamber of Horrors…
Frank Gilroy’s novel may have flowed from comedy to romance, black comedy to semi-tragedy, with an absurdist finale, but his own adaptation and direction resulted in a most peculiar western which was an impossible sell…
It’s hard to decide if J. Lee Thompson’s final years making movies for Cannon could be branded a reprieve from retirement for the veteran writer / editor / director, or the nadir of a skilled filmmaker who peaked with two magnificent back-to-back classics: the WWII epic The Guns of Navarone and the brutal revenge thriller Cape Fear…
Woody Allen’s examination of fame, adulation, and the worth of a comedian’s career is filtered through a Felliniesque lens that’s still a bit of a challenge 35+ years since its release, perhaps because, to paraphrase fan salvos aimed at central character Sandy Bates, ‘it’s not as funny as his older films…
Woody Allen’s Zelig drew plenty of attention for its bravura visual effects in which fictional Leonard Zelig (Allen, of course) and others were seamlessly blended with real newsreel and archival film footage, creative a perfect mockumentary that feels like some previously lost, one-time, feature-length Fox Movietone production that was initially aborted and later completed decades after the footage was discovered in some dank vault holding RKO oddities…
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