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[…]
Actors & Personalities · Interviews
Interview with Louise Hassing, or Live Cinema
Dogme secrets revealed by Lars von Trier’s “most promising actress” The 17th International Short Films Festival of Aix en Provence, in December 1999, apart from the competition, focused on Scandinavian[…]
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[…]
Book review: Little Joe, Superstar, by Michael Ferguson
Little Joe, Superstar: The Films of Joe Dallesandro, by Michael Ferguson. Laguna Hills, CA: Companion Press, 1998. ISBN 1-889138-09-6, Trade paper, $18.95. Monique von Vooren was mesmerized by his “translucent skin”; Sylvia Miles called it[…]
Book reviews: The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry; Joseph H. Lewis
The New Historical Dictionary of the American Film Industry, by Anthony Slide. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press,1998. Oversize hardcover, ISBN 0-8108-3426-X, 207pp, $55.00. Film dictionaries have become a genre unto themselves lately, and[…]
Directors · Exploitation & Erotica · Interviews
Roger Corman on New World Pictures: An Interview from 1974
Fun in the New World Corman founded New World in 1970; it was his second attempt to control production and distribution (after the ill-fated Film Group, which lasted a couple[…]
Directors · Experimental & Underground · LGBT & Queer
Laughing Pan: James Broughton
Ecstasy for all! says the pied piper of queer experimental film Every movement has its muses. James Broughton probably would have copped to being a muse, or perhaps more accurately,[…]
Crime · Noir · Reviews · Uncategorized
Carol Reed’s The Third Man on Criterion
Good golly, Mr. Holly! In one of the many extras in Criterion’s sumptuous DVD presentation of Carol Reed’s The Third Man, Peter Bogdanovich calls the film “the greatest non-auteur film[…]
Denounced, Cut, and Burned: The Passion of Joan of Arc
The film suffered almost as much as Joan before arriving in a gorgeous DVD. In spite of the hype, DVD is more often promise than fulfillment. Many, perhaps most, of[…]
Life Is … Pretty Good: Hermine Huntgeburth’s The Trio
Criminal high jinks with a different kind of family Family, aka “the F word,” comes in many forms, or so says Hermine Huntgeburth’s bittersweet black comedy The Trio (1998). This[…]
Still Breathing: Ana Kokkinos’s Head On
Ari’s a mess – it’s in his kiss Ana Kokkinos’s debut feature Head On was one of the more distinctive entries in San Francisco’s 1999 Lesbian and Gay Film Festival,[…]
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