Fritz Lang’s M on DVD
A textbook classic restored to perfection courtesy of Criterion The roots of noir go back to German Expressionism, and there’s no movie that’s more German, Expressionist, or noir than Fritz Lang’s masterful –[…]
Author: Gary Morris
Gary Morris founded Bright Lights Film Journal as a print publication in 1974; it became a web-only magazine in 1996. He is the author of the monograph Roger Corman (Twayne Publishers, 1985) and the editor of Action! Interviews with Directors from Classical Hollywood to Contemporary Iran (Anthem Press, 2009). Directors · Experimental & Underground
Wasted: Radical Filmmaker Ian Kerkhof in Brief
Western Civ gets a brutal debunking courtesy of this South African expat auteur The titles of Ian Kerkhof’s films are both seduction and warning about what to expect from the[…]
Actors & Personalities · Directors · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Raging and Flaming: Jack Smith in Retrospect
New York’s pioneering campmeister’s flame still sears Not long ago, Fran Lebowitz invoked the sad-comic image of a sailor disembarking in New York, heading to Times Square, and experiencing total[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Home Movies from Hell: The Films of Luther Price
The master of Super-8 radical cinema takes us into the cave of the unknown, with extraordinary results The Super-8 camera and projector were once the beloved means by which postwar[…]
Documentaries · Festivals & Awards · LGBT & Queer
The 2000 San Francisco International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival: The Documentaries
Friendly Christians, bitter rent boys, and South Africa’s liberated queens are part of this year’s queer reality parade To some jaundiced eyes, documentaries have an inherent fascination and gravitas lacking[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews
The Depths Described: Lawrence Brose’s De Profundis
Wilde’s infamous letter from prison becomes a springboard for a surreal queer experience De Profundis was the closest Oscar Wilde ever came to a queer apologia and defense, written as a[…]
Carl Dreyer: Day of Wrath, Ordet, Gertrud on VHS
The later masterworks of one of cinema’s titans in fine VHS transfers Film has always been considered something of a mongrel art form, inherently populist and therefore of dubious aesthetic[…]
Actors & Personalities · Documentaries · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Sex: The Annabel Chong Story: A Documentary
Liberated porn queen or psychological wreck? You be the judge. In a demimonde as duplicitous as the porn world, it shouldn’t be too surprising to find that some of its players[…]
Turning to Stone: Black Tar Heroin: The Dark End of the Street (2000)
Going down in San Francisco’s street-kid heroin underground Behind the image of San Francisco as a creative epicenter and ultimate party town drawing talented, disaffected kids from around the country[…]
All Hail the Superbrat! Patty McCormack is The Bad Seed
“What would you give me for a basket of dead lovebirds?” The Bad Seed came out in 1956, the same year as Carousel and Tea and Sympathy. But while the[…]
Woman in the Dunes (Hiroshi Teshigahara, 1964) on DVD
The cruelty and clarity of life in a sand pit in Japan, circa 1964 Revisiting past pleasures – long-past pleasures in this case – has its particular perils. In the[…]
The Killing of Sister George (Robert Aldrich, 1968) on DVD
Dykes in distress in Robert Aldrich’s late ‘60s masterpiece Robert Aldrich ranks with Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray as one of the “golden boys” of postwar commercial cinema whose formal[…]
Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
The Alley Cats (1966) on DVD
Can your heart stand it? More Radley Metzger! The title of Metzger’s “second film” (second by his own reckoning; other sources list it as his fourth, after Dark Odyssey, The[…]
Experimental & Underground · Reviews
George Kuchar’s Secrets of the Shadow World
What do Sasquatch droppings and flying saucers have in common? George Kuchar, of course. Underground film impresario Jack Stevenson tells the story of how George Kuchar dealt with a problem[…]
Activist & Political · Documentaries · Reviews
Three Films by Richard Dindo: Grüninger’s Fall; Ernesto Che Guevara: The Bolivian Diary; Arthur Rimbaud: A Biography
The eminent Swiss documentarian looks at saints and sinners of history – without saying which are which “My films revolve around absence,” Swiss documentarian Richard Dindo has said, but the[…]
Three Films by Edgar G. Ulmer: Bluebeard, The Strange Woman, and Moon over Harlem
Making art in the most unlikely circumstances Edgar G. Ulmer (1904-1972) was one of many beneficiaries of the wave of auteurism that galvanized critics in France in the 1950s and[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Reviews
Graverobbers and Drag Queens from Outer Space! Four Ed Wood Greats on DVD
Plan 9 from Outer Space; Glen or Glenda; Jail Bait; Bride of the Monster One of my fondest memories of a communal movie experience is seeing my first Ed Wood[…]
Punk Girls on Film: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains
The kids are not all right! Riot girls have a long and noble history that extends far back beyond Hole and Courtney Love. No doubt the experts in this realm[…]
Book review: Sin in Soft Focus, by Mark A. Vieira
Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood, by Mark A. Vieira. (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1999). Cloth, $39.95, 340pp. ISBN 0-81094-475-8 “Pre-Code” is the catchall term, now familiar to[…]
Book review: The Werewolf Book, by Brad Steiger
The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shape-Shifting Things, by Brad Steiger. (Detroit: Visible Ink Press, 1999). Trade paperback, $19.95, 397pp. ISBN 1057859-078-7 The werewolf, like most other monsters of folklore, has[…]
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