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Remake discussions regularly revolve around the same examples. Mainstream titles that stand as milestone examples of remake eras. The Fly (goopy 1980s remakes). The Ring (the Japanese remake avalanche). The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (the rise of Platinum Dunes). But what about the less noteworthy efforts that don’t get spotlight attention? Every so often, I like to give the little guys a chance to shine. Enter Roger Corman’s The Wasp Woman, and Jim Wynorski’s 1995 update.

Corman’s moniker as “The King of Cult” stems from sci-fi schlock like The Wasp Woman, eerily reminiscent of 1958’s The Fly. Buzzy commentary on glamor and wackadoo experimentation leads to zany creature elements later, allowing Corman to play around with monster makeup. It’s only fitting that Wynorski would remake The Wasp Woman for Showtime decades later; a filmmaker honoring his mentor by amplifying the film’s shock-jock potential. Corman gave Wynorski his start in the industry,...

Short stories have always been prime real estate in the world of adaptations. Largely those are relegated to horror anthology TV shows like Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Tales From the Darkside, or the new Creepshow revival but that doesn’t mean exclusively. You can have things like Lawnmower Man, Eight O’Clock in the Morning, or Children of the Corn that are anywhere from 8 to 18 pages and make a whole movie, or in case of Children of the Corn an entire franchise, out of those pages. Today is all about a short story that probably had more legs than you realized. The Fly, written by George Langelaan and published in 1957 would go on to be part of 5 movies. While 3 of those are cash in sequels, one of them is a somewhat slept on late 50s classic while the other is listed at or near the top of any list discussing remakes.

Back in 1986, David Cronenberg directed a remake of Kurt Neumann’s 1958 sci-fi horror classic The Fly (which was based on George Langelaan’s short story) – and the result is considered to be one of the best remakes of all time. 20th Century Fox, now the Disney subsidiary 20th Century Studios, has been wanting to replicate that success with another remake for a couple of decades now… but the project has never managed to escape from development hell. Cronenberg wanted to come back and make another Fly movie, but it fell apart over budgetary issues. Screenwriter Todd Lincoln wrote a remake of The Fly that he described as a “dark, twisted, grounded re- imagining… Part Val-Lewton, part J.G. Ballard, part Neal Stephenson with some Horror Manga touches.” The studio wasn’t into it. J.D. Dillard was attached to direct a new version of The Fly for years, then stepped away from it.

Previous | Image 1 of 23 | NextHeadliner Lil Uzi Vert

Chicago – The iconic Milwaukee Summerfest for 2024 wrapped up last month, and photographer and Music Editor Jeff “Doc” Doles was on hand to provide an on-stage view with the following “Best-of” Exclusive Photo Slideshow. From headliner Lil Uzi Vert to classic acts like Living Colour and the BoDeans, the event drew music fans from all over the world.

Click “Next” and “Previous” to scan through the Milwaukee Summerfest 2024 slideshow or jump directly to individual photos with the captioned links below. All photos © 2024 Jeff Doles for HollywoodChicago.com.

SUMMERFEST1: Headliner Lil Uzi Vert SUMMERFEST2: Abby Anderson SUMMERFEST3: Kurt Neumann of the BoDeans SUMMERFEST4: Charlotte Cardin SUMMERFEST5: Chase Lawrence of Coin SUMMERFEST6: Nathan Willett of Cold War Kids SUMMERFEST7: Dave Lowery of Cracker SUMMERFEST8: Delilah SUMMERFEST9: Jason Jones of Drowning Pool SUMMERFEST10: Jerry DePizzo of O.

Back in 1986, David Cronenberg directed a remake of Kurt Neumann’s 1958 sci-fi horror classic The Fly (which was based on George Langelaan’s short story) – and the result is considered to be one of the best remakes of all time. 20th Century Fox (now the Disney subsidiary 20th Century Studios) has been wanting to replicate that success with another remake for a couple decades now… but the project has never managed to escape from development hell. Cronenberg wanted to come back and make another Fly movie, but it fell apart over budgetary issues. Screenwriter Todd Lincoln wrote a remake of The Fly that he described as a “dark, twisted, grounded re- imagining… Part Val-Lewton, part J.G. Ballard, part Neal Stephenson with, some Horror Manga touches.” The studio wasn’t into it. J.D. Dillard was attached to direct a new version of The Fly for years, but recently stepped away from it.

Sci-fi fans will have their credulity stretched pretty far – but one proposed storyline revealed this week would have tested viewers’ to the limit

The transportation of matter has always been a curate’s egg for the sci-fi writer. Kurt Neumann’s 1958 film The Fly conjured up terrible images of horror when its protagonist found his sub-atomic particles sliced and diced with those of an insect after meddling with the untried technology. But it also featured an awful plot hole: why did the machine split our scientist into a tiny man-fly and a huge fly-man, with both parts of the hybrid suitably scaled to match, if it was just swapping over a few atoms?

David Cronenberg partially solved that conundrum with his excruciatingly icky 1986 remake, in which Jeff Goldblum’s eccentric scientist finds himself fused at a genetic level with a passing housefly and slowly begins to morph into a giant insect.

When you think of body horror, "The Fly" is easily a Top 10 contender among the most influential entries. Both the 1958 original and the '86 remake thrilled audiences in very different ways. While the original relied on costuming and admittedly shoddy (by today's standards) visual effects, the remake arrived in a decade famously known for its stomach-turning practical effects. Yet both managed to push the envelope on horror storytelling that often went over the edge, perhaps even taking things way too far.

The first film, directed by Kurt Neumann, was based upon a 1957 short story of the same name. It became a box office success and spawned two sequels, 1959's "Return of the Fly" and "Curse of the Fly" in 1965. Despite a rough road from idea to creation, director David Cronenberg's 1986 remake flipped everything about the original on its head. A sequel, simply titled "The Fly II," followed three years...

Newcomers to science fiction might not know where to start diving into this strange and fantastical genre -- or even if it's worth the ride. But, good news! Sci-fi is incredibly versatile, containing elements and expectations that fit into several subgenres like action, horror, romances, and even comedies.

The World Fantasy award-winning Ray Bradbury once told The New York Times (via Reuters), "In science fiction, we dream." Sure, the genre allows writers, filmmakers, and viewers to imagine far-flung, fantastical worlds and creatures. But it's also a clever way to comment on humanity. Bradbury also said, "Science fiction is also a great way to pretend you are writing about the future when in reality you are attacking the recent past and the present." Sci-fi asks questions like: What might the world be like if we all suddenly learned that we are part of something larger?

Here's a chronological list of landmark...

David Cronenberg‘s The Fly (1986) upholds a storied tradition of 80s remakes reinventing classic horrors through emblematic practical effects. John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982) and Chuck Russell’s The Blob (1988) both embrace the spectacle of SFX advancement to build a better goopy mass or parasitic entity. Kurt Neumann‘s 1958 iteration of The Fly, co-starring Vincent […]

The post David Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’ Continues to Make a Strong Pro-Remake Argument [Revenge of the Remakes] appeared first on Bloody Disgusting!.

October’s here and it’s time to get spooked. After last year’s superb “’70s Horror” lineup, the Criterion Channel commemorates October with a couple series: “Universal Horror,” which does what it says on the tin (with special notice to the Spanish-language Dracula), and “Home Invasion,” which runs the gamut from Romero to Oshima with Polanski and Haneke in the mix. Lest we disregard the programming of Cindy Sherman’s one feature, Office Killer, and Jennifer’s Body, whose lifespan has gone from gimmick to forgotten to Criterion Channel. And if you want to stretch ideas of genre just a hair, their “True Crime” selection gets at darker shades of human nature.

It’s not all chills and thrills, mind. October also boasts a Kirk Douglas repertoire, movies by Doris Wishman and Wayne Wang, plus Manoel de Oliveira’s rarely screened Porto of My Childhood. And Edgar Wright gets the “Adventures in Moviegoing” treatment,...

It’s a collection of 6 — count ’em Six — horror and sci-fi curiosities from the ’40s and ’50s, aimed straight at covetous fantasy film addicts. Wacky scripts, strange characterizations and poverty row production values are on view, but the fine transfers reveal professional cinematography and occasional impressive direction. The films are definitely of their time — the censor-inhibited 1940s pictures rely on spooky situations because they can’t show blood or too much violence. And a pair of low-end B&w ‘scope thrillers from the ‘fifties drive-in era do more with less, cutting corners in interesting ways. Viavision anoints the shows with expert commentaries and a couple of real surprises: an entire extra feature and a rare 1950s TV show.

Silver Screams Cinema

Region-Free Blu-ray

Return of the Ape Man, The Phantom Speaks, The Vampire’s Ghost, Valley of the Zombies, She Devil, The Unknown Terror

Viavision [Imprint] 54, 55, 56

1944-1957 / B&w / 2:35 widescreen...

The Wade Williams Collection yields another ’50s sci-fi notable, Monogram Pictures’ ambitious space travel movie filmed in glorious green-challenged Cinecolor. Cameron Mitchell and Arthur Franz sign up for a semi-suicidal space expedition, but instead of murderous Bat-Rat-Spider-Crabs, waiting for them on Mars is the glamorous, mini-skirted Marguerite Chapman. It’s core sci-fi fun from early in the Golden Era. The Film Detective adds a commentary, two new featurettes and an insert booklet; the film itself is lovingly restored to its original Cinecolor brilliance.

Flight to Mars

Blu-ray

The Film Detective

1951 / Color / 1:37 Academy / 72 min. / Street Date July 20, 2021 / Available from The Film Detective / 24.95

Starring: Marguerite Chapman, Cameron Mitchell, Arthur Franz, Virginia Huston, John Litel, Morris Ankrum, Richard Gaines, Lucille Barkley, Robert Barrat, Russ Conway, Edward Earle, Everett Glass.

Cinematography: Harry Neumann

Production Designer: Ted Haworth

Film Editor, Associate Producer: Richard Heermance

Special Effects: Jack Cosgrove, Irving Block, Jack Rabin

Original Music:...

Audie Murphy Collection

Blu ray

Kino Lorber

1952, 1958, 1959 / 242 min.

Starring Audie Murphy, Stephen McNally, Walter Matthau, Charles Drake

Cinematography by Irving Glassberg, Harold Lipstein

Directed by Don Siegel, Jesse Hibbs, Jack Arnold

“My temper was explosive… perhaps I was trying to level with my fists what I assumed fate had put above me.” – To Hell and Back, Audie Murphy, 1949

A remarkably self-aware assessment for such an angry young man. To hear him tell it, Audie Murphy came out of the cradle itching for a fight—when Pearl Harbor was attacked, he got one. He was only 16 at the time so he marched down to the recruiting center and lied about his age. In 1945 Murphy left the Army as the most-decorated soldier of World War II. In 1971 his twin-engine plane crashed into a mountainside in Virginia’s Roanoke County killing everyone on board. In the 26 years between the end of the war...

Don Kaye Jan 2, 2020

The Fly remains one of sci-fi’s strangest and most iconic franchises.

The Fly -- the 1958 version or the 1986 remake, take your pick -- stands as one of the most memorable sci-fi/horror hybrids of its time. So it’s not surprising that Scream Factory recently released one of its now-standard deluxe boxed Blu-ray sets, containing all five films in the series and a truckload of special features, some ported over from the films’ separate DVD releases and others brand new.

What’s that, you say? All five films? Correct. For most people, the title The Fly brings up two iconic images: either David (Al) Hedison with a giant fly’s head on his shoulders or Jeff Goldblum in heavy prosthetics as he mutates into the monstrous amalgam known in the 1986 film as Brundlefly. Casual viewers may not be aware that the original film spawned two sequels,...

[This Halloween season, we're paying tribute to classic horror cinema by celebrating films released before 1970! Check back on Daily Dead this month for more retrospectives on classic horror films, and visit our online hub to catch up on all of our Halloween 2019 special features!]

As a child of the ’80s, my primary version of The Fly is the David Cronenberg body horror extravaganza. It’s a favorite of mine not only because of its timeless practical effects, but also because it’s one of the great tragedies of its day. So when I first visited Kurt Neumann’s version from 1958, I assumed I’d need to brace myself for a campier, creature feature sort of vibe. But I was surprised to discover a film that truly is a spiritual predecessor to its remake. Both films explore a man’s mental and physical deterioration and the tragic consequences for those around him, but Neumann takes a very different path to get there.

The broad strokes are the same: a scientist invents a teleportation machine, gets ahead of himself in the experimentation process, and accidentally merges with a fly when the unlucky insect joins him in...

CineSavant contributor and advisor Gary Teetzel revisits a film he reviewed for us seventeen years ago. Instead of continuing to play his greatest role for Universal, Bela Lugosi ‘returns’ as a generic vampire in a very Dracula-like tale for Columbia. He’s still the best fiend for the role. The show introduces a novel demise for Lugosi’s creature of the undead, plus a furry-faced werewolf to compete with Universal’s Wolf Man… a werewolf that talks.

The Return of the Vampire

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1943 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 69 min. / Street Date February 19, 2019 / 27.99

Starring: Bela Lugosi, Frieda Inescort, Nina Foch, Roland Varno, Miles Mander, Matt Willis, Ottola Nesmith, Gilbert Emery.

Cinematography: L.W. O’Connell, John Stumar

Film Editor: Paul Borofsky

Original Music: Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco

Written by Griffin Jay, Randall Faye, Kurt Neumann

Produced by Sam White

Directed by Lew Landers

Reviewed by Gary Teetzel

For Bela Lugosi, Hollywood’s...

As I think we all known by this point in time, soon Disney will be buying up Twentieth Century Fox and all of its properties here in the near future. While there is no word on just which of Fox's intellectual properties Disney plans to keep moving forward, today we have word (a rumor) that Disney plans to bring George Langelaan's classic 1957 short story The Fly back to the big screen. You might remember that there is already another remake of The Fly in the works from Sleight filmmaker J.D. Dillard who co-wrote "a cool script" with his Sleight writing partner Alex Theurer. We're hearing that this is still the film Disney is interested in developing.

And this news (rumor) makes a whole lot of sense to this guy, considering The Fly is not only one of the best sci-fi horror tales out there, but it has proven...

Okay, pump the breaks… We knew there had been talks of rebooting 1986’s The Fly (which is itself a reboot of Kurt Neumann’s 1958 film of the same name) with Sleight director J.D. Dillard at the helm and serving as the script’s co-writer. We covered the news way back in April of 2017 (link below). […] The post Will 2019 Be the Year of The Fly? appeared first on Dread Central.

A Savant Article

CineSavant shows off an arcane observation: in 1957, scenes from a glossy CinemaScope Fox production directed by Raoul Walsh, were almost immediately re-purposed, with grandiose special effects added, for a landmark science fiction fantasy. It’s an opportunity to admire the resourceful artistry of Jack Rabin, Louis DeWitt and Irving Block, special effects professionals that did fine work but were seldom if ever considered for industry awards.

Back in the 1970s I picked up from Larry Edmunds’ Bookstore a copy of a one-shot special effects fan magazine that I think had been put together by the effects master/researcher Robert Skotak. The photo magazine lauded the efforts of a Hollywood effects partnership consisting of Jack Rabin, Irving Block and Louis DeWitt. Their names appeared on dozens of 1950s films, for their creative optical work — whatever enhancements might be needed, from simple title sequences to matte shots and even stop-motion animation when required.

“Charming” is not often a word associated with horror films; it’s counterintuitive to what the genre usually stands for—you know, terror and tension, followed by release and a sense of ease, then repeat—but yet here we are with a romantic tale about a boy, a girl, a teleportation device, and the insect that comes between them. Welcome to the world of The Fly (1958), where the hosts are welcoming, the police polite, and the monster bug-eyed.

Released by Twentieth Century Fox in July, The Fly pulled in $7 million against its $300,000 budget, enticing audiences with a tale often told at the time—sold as another Atomic Age Monster Mash, The Fly instead uses a much smaller (and human) canvas to convey a message of obsession and the love that ultimately ends it. Having said that, you also get a man with a fly head and some neat-o transportation sequences,...

It was recently announced that Sleight director J.D. Dillard would be co-writing and directing a remake of David Cronenberg’s 1986 sci-fi/horror masterpiece The Fly, which itself is a remake of the 1958 Kurt Neumann film of the same name. Dillard… Continue Reading →

The post J.D. Dillard Wants The Fly Remake to Be an Emotional Journey appeared first on Dread Central.

It’s been a while since a body horror movie ruined our appetites, so it seems as good a time as any for Fox to remake The Fly. According to Deadline, the studio is abuzz with development plans for remaking David Cronenberg’s 1986 film, which was itself a reworking of Kurt Neumann’s 1958 cinematic adaptation of George Langelaan’s short story. Cronenberg isn’t revisiting his remake, so Fox is currently in talks with J.D. Dillard. If signed, the Sleight director will also co-write the film with his collaborator Alex Theurer.

Though Deadline notes that a remake has been bandied about for some time, no stars are yet attached to the project. We could begin dream casting, though, if we could just figure out who reminds us of a young Jeff Goldblum. (Forget it, he’s, uh, one of a kind.) The Fly is the latest ’80s ...

Author: Zehra Phelan

In case you’re not getting bored yet with the constant offerings of remakes that are flooding the market 20th Century Fox are hell bent on adding another in the form of David Cronenberg’s 1986 remake of The Fly.

With budgeting issues key in Fox’s remake, which lead to the failure in enticing Cronenberg to jump on board for the remake, Fox has dived into deep negotiations to bring a new name to the table. The man who looks set to take the director’s chair and co-write the remake is Sleight director J. D. Dillard, who made quite an entrance with the film at last year’s Sundance. Dillard’s writing partner Alex Theurer is currently all set to be the other half of the writing team on the remake.

Although the 1986 remake of The Fly which starred Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis – which saw...

A new remake of The Fly has been has been on the verge of happening for years. It looks like Fox is finally ready to move forward with it, and they are looking to hire director J.D. Dillard to take on the job. Dillard made his directorial debut with the fantastic film Sleight. He would not only direct The Fly, but he would also write it with his writing partner Alex Theurer.

The first version of The Fly was released in 1958 and came from director Kurt Neumann. That film was based on a short story of the same name by George Langelaan. In 1986 David Cronenberg released his version of the story, which is the one most of you are probably familiar with. The film starred Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis and was such an awesomely grotesque and disturbing movie! That was followed by two lackluster sequels called Return of the Fly...

For his next trick, filmmaker J.D. Dillard will fuse a man with a fly.

Dillard, who is generating heat with his upcoming magic-centric low-budget thriller Sleight, is making the jump to studio movies with Fox’s remake of The Fly.

Dillard is in talks to direct and co-pen the project with writing partner Alex Theurer, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed.

The movie is a remake of the 1958 sci-fi horror classic about a scientist whose teleportation experiment goes awry and he is fused with a fly. Kurt Neuman directed the original creature feature, which launched a series of low-budget sequels.

The...

More than 30 years after David Cronenberg’s body-horror benchmark hit theaters and nearly half a century since Kurt Neumann’s version did, “The Fly” is ready to be loosed upon the world once again. Deadline reports that J.D. Dillard, whose directorial debut “Sleight” premiered at Sundance last year, is in talks to co-wrote and direct a new take on the sci-fi story for Fox.

Read More: Sundance Review: ‘Sleight’ Is An Intriguing Blend Of Street Sensibilities, Mysterious Magical Science & Coming Of Age Tropes

Alex Theurer, who co-wrote “Sleight,” will once again serve as Dillard’s writing partner. Their previous collaboration, which stars Jacob Latimore as a street magician who begins selling drugs to make ends meet for himself and the sister he’s raising on his lonesome, arrives in theaters on April 7 courtesy of WWE Studios and Blumhouse. Dillard and Theurer are also at work on “Sweetheart,” a thriller starring...

The Fly, the 1986 body-horror classic that is arguably David Cronenberg’s crowning achievement in the subgenre, is in line for the remake treatment with Sleight writer-director J.D. Dillard.

Per Deadline, Dillard has now officially opened talks with 20th Century Fox to shepherd the modern reimagining alongside long-time writing partner Alex Theurer. Fox is reportedly hoping that said reimagining will spawn something of a franchise revival, and it’s worth keeping in mind that George Langelaan’s original short story – the same one that inspired Kurt Neumann’s 1958 adaptation, and later Cronenberg’s horror masterclass – seeded the creation of two sequels: Return of the Fly and Curse of the Fly.

The story goes that a scientist hellbent on breaking new ground in teleportation accidentally transforms himself into a grotesque, vomit-spewing human-fly hybrid. Jeff Goldblum delivered a memorable performance as the bizarre Seth Brundle back in ’86, when Cronenberg’s stomach-churning feature went...

Studios are scrambling for new ways to describe their regurgitated fare, but will painting the old wagon with fresh paint stop the wheels falling off?

Some of the greatest Hollywood movies of the modern era are remakes. Martin Scorsese’s grubby Boston gangland thriller The Departed riffs shamelessly on the Hong Kong crime epic Infernal Affairs, while David Cronenberg’s 1986 body horror classic The Fly is an update on the 1958 Kurt Neumann chiller. The Coen brothers’ 2010 remake of True Grit is generally considered to be superior to the hokey 1969 version starring a past-his-best John Wayne, while the 1982 version of the Antarctic science fiction horror The Thing is a better movie than the 1951 film The Thing from Another World from which it drew inspiration.

And yet the very term, along with its younger sibling the “reboot”, seems to have become a dirty word in Hollywood in 2016. If Star Wars: The Force Awakens...

Unbridled Passion by Howard Hughes

Following the release in March of ‘A Man Called Gannon’ (1968), Simply Media in the UK continue to release more Universal-International westerns, this time of 1940s and ‘50s vintage. The new releases, out on 18 April, are ‘Calamity Jane & Sam Bass’ (1949), ‘Cattle Drive’ (1951) and ‘Black Horse Canyon’ (1954). This trio of films are literally ‘Horse Operas’, with the accent on thoroughbred steeds and their importance and role in the working west. Be they cattle drovers, stock breeders or outlaws, where would any of them be without the horse? The answer, of course, is walking.

I’ll review the DVDs in the order I watched them. First up is ‘Cattle Drive’, a 1951 western directed by Kurt Neumann. Chester Graham Jnr (Dean Stockwell), the spoilt, arrogant son of railroad magnet Chester Graham Snr (Leon Ames), is accidentally left behind when the train he is travelling on makes a water stop.

This proto- juvenile delinquent epic launched celebrated WW2 warrior Audie Murphy on the road to Hollywood fame, fortune and more troubled times. Audie commits every crime short of shooting dogs and nuns, but those wacky liberal social workers still give him the benefit of the doubt. Director Kurt Neumann back our hero with expert acting support from Lloyd Nolan, Jane Wyatt and James Gleason.  Bad Boy DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1949 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 86 min. / Street Date January 5, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Audie Murphy, Lloyd Nolan, Jane Wyatt, James Gleason, Stanley Clements, Martha Vickers, Rhys Williams, Selena Royle, Jimmy Lydon, Dickie Moore, Tommy Cook, William F. Leicester, Stephen Chase, Walter Sande, Ray Teal, Charles Trowbridge. Cinematography Karl Struss Art Direction Theobold Holsopple Production Design Gordon Wiles Film Editor William Austin Original Music Paul Sawtell Written by Robert Hardy Andrews, Karl Kamb, Paul Short Produced by Paul Short...

It’s a new year but we’re still looking at remakes and what makes them good or bad. For our latest article, we’ve got one of the good ones as we break down David Cronenberg’s The Fly.

It’s often the case where the original film is clearly better than the remake, or sometimes vice-versa. In this case, however, it’s actually hard to determine which of them is better because they’re both so well done. Both were financially successful and well-reviewed. Both versions inspired sequels. For horror fans, both versions of this film are worth a viewing. Additionally, they both had great poster catchphrases. The 1958 version had, “He was once human!” and the remake had the even more memorable “Be afraid! Be very afraid!”

The original version of The Fly (1958), based on a short story by George Langalaan, was made during the sci-fi boom of the 1950s,...

Top Ten Scream Queens: Barbara Steele, who both emitted screams and made others do same, is in a category of her own. Top Ten Scream Queens Halloween is over until next year, but the equally bewitching Day of the Dead is just around the corner. So, dead or alive, here's my revised and expanded list of cinema's Top Ten Scream Queens. This highly personal compilation is based on how memorable – as opposed to how loud or how frequent – were the screams. That's the key reason you won't find listed below actresses featured in gory slasher films. After all, the screams – and just about everything else in such movies – are as meaningless as their plots. You also won't find any screaming guys (i.e., Scream Kings) on the list below even though I've got absolutely nothing against guys who scream in horror, whether in movies or in life. There are...

Rex Ingram in 'The Thief of Bagdad' 1940 with tiny Sabu. Actor Rex Ingram movies on TCM: Early black film performer in 'Cabin in the Sky,' 'Anna Lucasta' It's somewhat unusual for two well-known film celebrities, whether past or present, to share the same name.* One such rarity is – or rather, are – the two movie people known as Rex Ingram;† one an Irish-born white director, the other an Illinois-born black actor. Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” continues today, Aug. 11, '15, with a day dedicated to the latter. Right now, TCM is showing Cabin in the Sky (1943), an all-black musical adaptation of the Faust tale that is notable as the first full-fledged feature film directed by another Illinois-born movie person, Vincente Minnelli. Also worth mentioning, the movie marked Lena Horne's first important appearance in a mainstream motion picture.§ A financial disappointment on the...

Scariest movies ever made: The top 100 horror films according to the Chicago Film Critics (photo: Janet Leigh, John Gavin and Vera Miles in Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho') I tend to ignore lists featuring the Top 100 Movies (or Top 10 Movies or Top 20 Movies, etc.), no matter the category or criteria, because these lists are almost invariably compiled by people who know little about films beyond mainstream Hollywood stuff released in the last decade or two. But the Chicago Film Critics Association's list of the 100 Scariest Movies Ever Made, which came out in October 2006, does include several oldies — e.g., James Whale's Frankenstein and The Bride of Frankenstein — in addition to, gasp, a handful of non-American horror films such as Dario Argento's Suspiria, Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre, and F.W. Murnau's brilliant Dracula rip-off Nosferatu. (Check out the full list of the Chicago Film Critics' top 100 horror movies of all time.

We all know that anything that requires you to travel to a distant region of space, pose as a filmmaker to find a new wife, relocate to a town called Castle Rock, or poke your nose into a parallel universe is tantamount to suicide. But what professions put you directly in the firing line? Are akin to having a huge red bulls-eye on your back? For the folks on this list, the term “occupational hazard” has far more ominous connotations.

We present seven of the most dangerous horror movie professions you can have (with some minor spoilers)...

Scientist – The Fly (1986)

A hallmark of science-gone-awry in the horror genre is that, for the scientist at the center of the story, it will inevitably end in blood, tears, and for Jeff Goldblum in David Cronenberg’s 1986 reimagining of Kurt Neumann’s 1958 original The Fly, monstrous transmutation and decapitation at the business end...

Kurt Neumann’s 1958 science-fiction film The Fly has finally had its day on Blu-ray, in a new release from 20th Century Fox. How very pretty it looks.

The Fly differs markedly from many other science-fiction/horror films of its ilk. Scientist Andre Delambre (David (Al) Hedison) is far from the typical mad scientist we’re used to seeing in stories like Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Andre’s greatest desire is to do good, not evil; his inventions are by way of helping the world rather than a simple desire to aggrandize himself. He’s trying to do humanity a service, and part of the film’s horror is in how little he deserves what happens to him.

The film begins almost at the end of the story. Andre is dead, crushed by a hydraulic press in his own factory, his head and arms obliterated beyond recognition. His...

Moviefone's Top DVD of the Week

"Star Trek Into Darkness"

What's It About? J.J. Abrams' second "Star Trek" installment follows the Enterprise crew when they're called back home and find an unstoppable force of terror within their own organization. Captain Kirk (Chris Pine) leads the Enterprise against a one man weapon of mass destruction. Why We're In: This sequel is exhilarating from start to finish with tons of spectacle and a solid narrative. Abarams' film perfectly mixes classic references that will excite any "Star Trek" fan, but won't make newbies feel left out. "Star Trek Into Darkness" was one of Moviefone's Best Movies of 2013 (So Far).

Watch: Get a behind-the-scenes look at the special effects of "Star Trek Into Darkness" (Video)

Rt & Follow to win a @StarTrekMovie #IntoDarkness Blu-ray & movie poster autographed by Jj Abrams and cast! Rules: http://t.co/8i1T01cxD0

- moviefone (@moviefone) September 10, 2013

Moviefone's...

Odd List Ryan Lambie 11 Sep 2013 - 06:52

Sci-fi movies are full of aliens, but which ones truly convince us that we're in the presence of the other-worldly?

Nb: this article contains a mild spoiler for Oblivion.

Before the science fiction genre even had a name, writers were wondering about life on alien planets. Philosophers, astronomers and dramatists were suggesting that civilisations might exist on other worlds in the 17th century, and some of the earliest pieces of cinema - such as Georges Méliès' A Trip To The Moon (1902) - tried to imagine what those aliens might look like. But in the decades since that key silent film, only a handful of filmmakers have successfully managed to convincingly describe what an alien life form might look or behave like, and all the terror and awe we might feel if we were to encounter one for ourselves.

These aren't necessarily films...

Brains on Ice! week kicks off at Trailers from Hell with director and Tfh creator Joe Dante introducing Universal's 1943 film "Captive Wild Woman," starring John Carradine as a mad doctor who transforms a circus ape into doe-eyed sex-bomb Acquanetta via a brain swap.A sci-fi twist on Universal’s popular wolfman cycle, this was the first in a trio of ‘Paula the Ape-woman’ movies (including Jungle Woman and Jungle Captive). Resourcefully directed by former editor Edward Dmytryk, who structures his low budget thrills around circus footage from Kurt Neumann’s 1933 The Big Cage. Even with all that extra padding, the whole thing tops out to a zippy 61 minutes of gorilla-girl action.

Around this time of year, we begin to see the studios dip into their vaults and dust off their classics for a re-release just in time for the Halloween holiday.

On September 10th, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment is bringing the 1958 film The Fly to Blu-ray.

Special features are going to include a commentary with actor David Hedison and film historian David Del Valle; Biography: Vincent Price; Fly Trap: Catching a Classic featurette; and a Fox Movietone News piece.

The Fly was directed by Kurt Neumann and was based on a short story that appeared in Playboy by George Langelaan.

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Feature James Clayton 19 Apr 2013 - 06:08

What if time were running backwards, and the remake of The Evil Dead actually came first? We'll let James explain this one...

Evil Dead is, according to one of its advertising posters, "The most terrifying film you will ever experience". That may be true, but perhaps not because it has brutal psychological and physical horror in a cabin in the dark woods and various other types of harrowing trauma. What might make it the most terrifying film experience is the actual experience of watching a remake of The Evil Dead - not the content we're swallowing, but the concept itself.

The poster also features the words, "A new vision from the producers of the original classic" and there are a couple of key points in that sentence if you break it down. The credibility of the 'new vision' claim can be contested, but I...

Here's a Planet Fury-approved selection of notable genre DVD releases for the months of February and March 2013.

The Blob (1958) Criterion Collection Blu-ray & DVD Available Now

This entertaining low-budget favorite gets some well-deserved respect from the folks at Criterion. A gelatinous creature from outer space begins to devour the inhabitants of a small town. Each time it consumes a new body, it grows bigger. A couple of teens (including the wooden Steve McQueen) attempt to warn the town and save the population from certain blech! Irvin S. Yeaworth Jr. directs the mayhem with a sure hand while Bart Sloane's great special effects still pack a punch. Followed by the bizarre comedy sequel, Son of Blob, in the early ’70s (directed by Larry Hagman!) and a great, underrated remake in 1988 by Chuck Russell.

Special Features:

* New high-definition digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack

* Two audio commentaries: one by producer Jack H. Harris...

"Why don't we just remake Cronenberg's [version] with sexy teenagers?" That [paraphrased] question was posed to director Todd Lincoln by Fox studios in regard to his now-dormant remake of "The Fly," which was first a 1958 Kurt Neumann cheapie and later given the body-horror treatment by David Cronenberg, in a version that depicted Jeff Goldblum's oogy transformation into the human-sized insect of the title. So what exactly was Lincoln going for that would have elicited that kind of response? "I found actually a really cool way into it," said Lincoln, sitting down to speak with me about his upcoming feature debut...

Johnny Weissmuller Movies Turner Classic Movies: Friday, August 3 6:00 Am Tarzan And The Mermaids (1948) Tarzan and Jane try to keep a woman from being forced to marry a con artist. Dir: Robert Florey. Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Brenda Joyce, George Zucco. Black and White-68 minutes. 7:30 Am Tarzan And The Huntress (1947) Tarzan fights to keep a seductive female big game hunter from capturing too many animals. Dir: Kurt Neumann. Cast: Johnny Weissmuller, Brenda Joyce, Johnny Sheffield. Black and White-72 minutes. 9:00 Am Tarzan And The Leopard Woman (1946) Tarzan fights to keep a killer cult from attacking traders. Dir: Kurt Neumann. Cast: [...]...

Oak Park, Ill. -- The suburban Chicago house where Ernest Hemingway is believed to have written some of his earliest works will be converted back into a single-family home, but fans of the novelist are welcome to visit, the new owners said.

The Ernest Hemingway Foundation put the Oak Park property on the market in February and Kurt and Mary Jane Neumann closed a $525,000 deal on the home on Tuesday.

The foundation bought the house in 2001 in hopes of turning it into a cultural center but couldn't make the finances work, according to John Berry, the group's chairman. The home has been divided into three apartments since the 1930s.

Kurt Neumann says his family plans to make their new home available to visits by scholars and other Hemingway fans.

"We don't want anyone to feel like we're going to shutter it up or minimize the historical significance" he said. "We appreciate curiosity in the home.

Celebrities will invade Los Angeles this weekend for the 84th Academy Awards ceremony. Searchlights will blaze and flashbulbs will pop as Hollywood stars will descend from the heavens -- or maybe just the Malibu hills -- to touch the ground that regular Angelenos walk on each day. They'll smile and snarl our traffic. They'll toss their hair and forget to thank their husbands. They'll praise each other for their bravery, while collecting $75,000 gift bags. L.A. is accustomed to such strange invasions, of course. If you're a movie fan, you already know that L.A. has been invaded over the years by everything from giant atomic ants (Them), to buff cyborgs (The Terminator), to rampaging 3D zombies (Resident Evil: Afterlife). So Angelenos take invasions from movie stars in stride. But this weekend marks an anniversary of an invasion you might not know about: L.A.'s first alien invasion. This...

While many critics scream "f*ck remake", they always forget of classic reboots such as David Cronenberg's The Fly, which was based on Kurt Neumann's 1958 film of the same name starring the great Vincent Price. And while Fox has originally planned to re-remake the film, in 2009 Cronenberg was eventually attached to develop a sequel to his disgusting 1986 masterpiece. It's been deafly silent since then. Just the other week Cronenberg revealed that he has recently completed the screenplay for his new take, unfortunately the studio didn't bite. The helmer tells Indiewire that Fox wasn't so keen on his new take, explaining, "I wrote a script and at the moment Fox is not wanting to do the project." Sure, that statement doesn't really tell us much, and it appears the site didn't bother to ask a follow up questions, but it's clearly not a good sign.

Claire Bloom, Julie Harris, The Haunting The Movies’ Top Ten Scream Queens 10 – Mary Philbin, The Phantom of the Opera (1925). Okay, so this is a silent film; in other words, Universal star Mary Philbin's screaming was all in my head. But it worked. Lon Chaney at his most grotesque had the title role; Norman Kerry was Philbin's dashing leading man. Rupert Julian directed. 9 – Patricia Owens, The Fly (1958). Wouldn't you also scream if you saw a fly named Andre — who happens to be your husband, no less — coming straight at you? David Hedison plays the unlucky Andre, a scientist who exchanges his head with that of a buzzing fly. Kurt Neumann directed the 1958 The Fly, which, though less pretentious, I find more disturbing than the 1986 David Cronenberg remake starring Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis. 8 – Denise Cheshire, Jaws (1975). Few people know the name of the soon-to-be shark-breakfast swimming woman in Steven Spielberg's Jaws,...

'The Fly' is a part of popular culture, something that has been referenced innumerable times in other films and television shows. The original film was released in 1958 if you can believe it and was directed by Kurt Neumann. David Cronenberg directed the more recent but still decades old remake, which was released in 1986. Defying the typical rules of a remake, there have been rumors that Cronenberg himself will be doing another remake of the film for 20th Centurty Fox. Shock Till You Drop asked the director about it and he clarified:  "'The Fly' is not exactly a remake, it's sort of a sequel, kinda. Yeah, that was a thing. I've written a script of that, and I don't know if that's going to really happen, but that has to do with Fox." So, kind of a sequel as in a spin-off? There already is a direct sequel to Cronenberg's 'Fly,...

The last time I saw The Fly was probably in the early nineties. It was a bit gruesome for me at a young age so I never felt the need to revisit it. I love you Jeff Goldblum but the last couple of scenes in that movie are a little much. The first film was directed and co-written by David Cronenberg. That film was a semi-remake of the 1958 version from helmer Kurt Neumann. Both are derived from the short story by George Langelaan. In 1989, if you recall, there was a sequel with Eric Stoltz...