Behind the Scenes: Selling Sex Plain and Simple, “The Vampire Lovers” (1970) Pressbook
These days you’d call The Vampire Lovers a genre mash-up. The main problem with mixing up the genres is explaining to the audience what they’re going to see. The marketeers solved the issue of selling this to both the horror audience and those who didn’t care in what form female nudity and sex came at…
The Vampire Lovers (1970) ***
Should have a lot more going for it. Female empowerment for a start. This would also, in today’s terms, be called a reboot of the Dracula legend, though it does originate from a different source than Bram Stoker. Or you could look at the bold exploration of lesbianism, none of the angst of The Killing…
Behind the Scenes: “The Guns of Navarone” (1961)
It’s time to celebrate the 65th anniversary of The Guns of Navarone – world premiere on April 27, 1961, in London and New York opening on June 22, 1961. Although the picture set a new benchmark in high-octane entertainment, a fast-moving war thriller packed with twists and a genuine all-star cast, it was far –…
The Guns of Navarone (1961) *****
To celebrate this film now streaming on Netflix I thought i’d re-run a previous review. Stone-cold action classic that blazed a trail for the big-budget men-on-a-mission war picture like The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Where Eagles Dare (1968). Brilliantly structured, written and directed, and featuring a sea battle, storm, shipwreck, mountaineering, chase, interrogation scenes, infiltration…
Borderlines / The Caretakers (1963) ****
Two sequences set this apart from the mini-cycle of films Hollywood was temporarily producing on the theme of mental illness and the institutions set up to treat it such as the Frank Perry’s empathetic and occasionally lyrical David and Lisa (1962), Robert Rossen’s Lilith (1964) – both essentially romances – and Sam Fuller’s more brutal…
Two Gentlemen Sharing (1969) ***
Shelved was a polite term for what happened to this picture. It was funded by Paramount but they didn’t like the look of the finished article. It could have gone straight into the bin, but it was reprieved, sold onto AIP which was looking to shift away from horror and biker movies into mainstream productions.…
The Wicked Die Slow (1968) **
Might be a companion piece to Hot Spur. Would definitely fit into the same one-star sleaze western category as Hot Spur (1969) except for an extraordinary opening section and the fact, like Christopher Nolan et al, it plays around with the time signatures. For a start, the credits, or as they’re dubbed here the “visual…
The Devil’s Mouth (2026) **
What you have to remember is that the streamers are stuck with the same problem as the big movie studios back in the day when Hollywood was broken up into majors (MGM, Fox, , Paramount, Columbia etc) and mini-majors (United Artists, Disney, Embassy etc). The bigger the studio the more movies – in the 1950s/1960s,…
Django (1966) ****
You’re not going to get a more iconic opening than a cowboy dragging a coffin up a muddy hill. But just in case you think director Sergio Corbucci is trying to make some high-falutin’ statement, the next few minutes contain nine deaths and a woman whipped and then threatened with being burned to death. What…
Crossplot (1969) ***
Roger Moore – in his first movie in seven years – almost auditioning for James Bond with his lothario instinct, light touch for dialog, a nice side-line in double takes, and enough action to show that even in his early 40s he was still nimble enough. Not in the Charade (1963) or Arabesque (1966) league…
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The Magnificent 60s 