If someone who’s seen Samuel Fuller’s 1953 film Pickup on South Street was asked to describe it using just a few words, they might say it’s “a Cold War spy thriller.” On the surface, that way of characterizing the movie is apt enough. The story does involve a ring of traitorous Americans who steal their…
The early-to-mid 1970s was a time when Americans’ distrust in our politicians was at a peak. The country still had not gotten over the 1960s assassinations of beloved young leaders John F. and Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Many still wondered whether the individuals held responsible for their killings acted alone, or were…
1967 was the year of the Summer of Love, but during that year, French filmmaker Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-73) put together and released a movie that couldn’t have been more removed from the splashy colors and free-love mood of the swinging moment in cultural time. Le Samourai is a stark, moody, decidedly un-psychedelic crime film that…
“How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!” That oft-cited sentence from Shakespeare’s King Lear would have been well placed on an opening page of James M. Cain’s 1941 novel Mildred Pierce and just after the opening credits on Michael Curtiz’s 1945 same-named film adaptation of the story. Criterion Collection…
Criterion Collection’s new Blu-Ray edition of the 1950 film noir title The Asphalt Jungle gives me a prompt to write about what I (and many others) consider to be one of the greatest crime/suspense movies ever made. And yet, I feel a little at a loss as to how to approach this piece. I mean,…
When mainstream publications make best-of lists pertaining to horror films, there are always a number of mainstays you can expect to see in the perceived top ten. These films include The Shining, Rosemary’s Baby, The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, Alien, and Psycho, and even some slightly less-lauded entrees like David Cronenberg’s remake of…
Criterion’s new Blu-Ray edition of Russ Meyer’s 1970 film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls gives me a prompt to write about a movie that I treasure. I could try to describe how much I like the film, but it might be easier and more telling if I just mention how many times I’ve watched…
When I read that Criterion Collection was releasing a new Blu-Ray edition of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s 1964 film Woman in the Dunes, I tracked down and read the 1962 novel by Kōbō Abe on which it is based. I thought I might write about the Criterion release, and I knew that if I did, I’d want…
It’s hard to know where to begin in writing about Carnival of Souls, the eerie cult classic horror film from 1962, which has just been given the Criterion Collection treatment in a new Blu-Ray edition. There is so much intriguing back story to the movie. One aspect of the odd but memorable film that stands…
I am approaching this post on In a Lonely Place as a page-to-screen piece, where I’ll compare notes on the novel of that title and the movie that goes by the same name. But really, there’s little in common between Dorothy B. Hughes’s 1947 book and the 1950 film directed by Nicholas Ray. Let’s talk…
