At the annual BookExpo event in New York City last June, Fantagraphics Books had some of the most original and desirable soon-to-be-released titles in their Fall 2009 catalog but few seemed to attract the buzz of this inspired creation with its oversized VHS box design complete with slipcase and fetishised detail, right down to the [...]

Misery loves company, and if you are anticipating a stressful holiday season due to an unavoidable reunion with family, in-laws or friends you’d rather not see, then you may find a kindred spirit among the dysfunctional gathering in Arnaud Desplechin’s A CHRISTMAS TALE.   

Imagine this. You are on a flight from Lisbon, Portugal to New York City and, in the dead of night over the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the pilot’s voice on the intercom suddenly jolts you awake with these words, “Can I have your attention please. This is Captain Williams. We’re in an emergency situation. [...]

That’s how Benny Perkins, one of the contestants in the “Hands on a Hard Body” contest describes this unusual endurance contest in Longview, Texas which was once an annual event that officially began in 1992. I first became aware of S.R. Binder’s enthralling, hilarious and sometimes moving documentary of the event during a visit to [...]

Whenever the subject of screwball comedy comes up, I usually flash on the same handful of titles in this short-lived movie genre which began sometime in the early thirties with such models of the form as Twentieth Century (1934) and It Happened One Night (1934) and ended sometime in the early forties around the time [...]

It seems surprising that Sir Author Conan Doyle’s most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, and London’s most famous serial killer who stalked the Whitechapel neighborhood in 1888, were never brought together for one of Doyle’s novels. But the two were pitted against each other on screen for the first time in A STUDY IN TERROR (1966) [...]

Among the many titles being released through the no-frills Warner Archive Collection are a few oddball orphans and obscurities that didn’t get much love the first time around like Dusty and Sweets McGee (1971), Carny (1980), Angel Baby (1961) and The Rain People (1969) and are well worth a look. The one that has the [...]

If you have been following our Robert Ryan blogathon, which began on Thursday and leads up to TCM’s 100th Birthday Tribute to him on November 11th, you’ll notice that the Morlocks tend to favor his more intense performances in such films as Nicholas Ray’s ON DANGEROUS GROUND, Edward Dmytryk’s CROSSFIRE, and Fritz Lang’s CLASH BY [...]

After several weeks of internet rumors, the Universal Cult Horror Collection has finally surfaced as a DVD set and it’s like a time machine back to my early TV years watching “The Late Show” with babysitters in Memphis, Tennessee while my parents were either attending or giving a cocktail party. Every Saturday night some horror [...]