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Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker
Directed by William Asher (Bewitched, Muscle Beach Party), Butcher, Baker, Nightmare Maker lifts key elements of Oedipus and Psycho and runs them through a grindhouse blender—the result is both sleazy and cathartic. Susan Tyrrell plays an over-the-hill sex bomb way too interested in her nephew, played by the baby-faced Jimmy McNichol. The supporting cast (in
Wes Craven’s New Nightmare
Wes Craven brings Freddy Krueger into the “real” world where he haunts the actual casts of previous Freddy films. Robert Englund dons the fiendish phantom’s fedora and former Elm Street mainstays like Heather Langenkamp and John Saxon play “themselves.” Craven paid for his cleverness at the box office, the film tanked even while garnering unusually positive.
Nightmare Cinema
Masters of Horror directors Mick Garris and Joe Dante team up with cultish mischief makers Ryûhei Kitamura, David Slade, and Alejandro Brugués to breathe life into the venerable horror anthology genre a la Dr. Terror’s House of Horror. Mickey Rourke stars as a sinister projectionist who screens horror films with all-too-real consequences for his audience. Th
The Italian Job
Michael Caine specialized in charming scoundrels and his role in Peter Collinson’s The Italian Job is one of his more memorable ne’er-do-wells. Caine is Charlie Coker, a canny crook with a big dream; swipe a cache of gold bullion from an armored tank as it grinds its way through Turin. His unlikely crew includes Benny... The post The Italian Job appeared fir
Dead Bang
Late-period John Frankenheimer is better than no Frankenheimer at all and this rather standard thriller is elevated not only by the director’s still formidable chops but the production design of Ken Adam on vacation from the Bond films. Don Johnson plays an LA homicide detective trailing a murderer with a white supremacist agenda. Penelope Ann... The post De
Explorers
Joe Dante’s bittersweet ode to endless summers and the boys who lived them was bullied by the studio into a rushed release date — nevertheless the movie’s soul is undiminished thanks to the director and the open-hearted appeal of his young actors. Each making their feature film debuts, Ethan Hawke and River Phoenix play inventive... The post Explorers appear
Dragons Forever
In Sammo Hung’s Dragons Forever, three Hong Kong superstars go against type, but when the going gets tough, they stay true to form. The usually wide-eyed Jackie Chan is a slick lawyer, gun-shy Hung plays a savvy private investigator, and the street-smart Yuen Biao is a bizarre inventor. The trio joins forces to expose a... The post Dragons Forever appeared f
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
From Beyond
Trailers From Hell Guru Stuart Gordon continued his tongue-in-cheek send-ups of classic horror and gore films in this follow-up to the game-changing Re-Animator. The director is dining out on Lovecraft again, this time with even gooier results. Jeffrey Combs and Barbara Crampton return to tangle with yet another mad scientist, this time a loony known... The
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure
Pee-wee’s Big Adventure is a blast from start to finish with the pairing of Paul Reubens and director Tim Burton a match made in Toys ‘R’ Us. Reubens wrote the screenplay with Phil Hartman and Michael Varhol. Danny Elfman channels Raymond Scott’s percolating rhythms and Victor J. Kemper (Dog Day Afternoon) provided the cotton-candy cinematography. The post P
Big Trouble in Little China
A frenetic mash-up of 30’s pulp and 70’s kung fu thrillers, John Carpenter’s action comedy stars Kurt Russell as Jack Burton, a winking caricature of every musclebound hero from Doc Savage to Indiana Jones. The film was hampered in its rush to beat Eddie Murphy’s similarly styled The Golden Child to the box office but... The post Big Trouble in Little China