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Don Murray, who received an Oscar nomination for his performance opposite Marilyn Monroe in the 1956 film adaptation of William Inge’s play “Bus Stop,” has died. He was 94.

His son Christopher confirmed his death to the New York Times.

In the 2017 reboot of “Twin Peaks,” he played Bushnell Mullins, the chief executive of Lucky 7 Insurance.

Murray also starred in the fourth entry in the “Planet of the Apes” franchise, “Conquest of the Planet of the Apes”; played Brooke Shield’s father in “Endless Love”; and recurred on prime-time soap “Knots Landing” as Sid Fairgate.

Reviewing “Bus Stop,” directed by Joshua Logan, the New York Times said: “With a wondrous new actor named Don Murray playing the stupid, stubborn poke and with the clutter of broncos, blondes and busters beautifully tangled, Mr. Logan has a booming comedy going before he gets to the romance. A great deal is owed to Mr.

By 1972, 20th Century Fox was no longer dithering over each movie in the Planet of the Apes franchise. Following the success of 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes, which the studio had been prepared to write off as a disaster, and 1971’s Escape from the Planet of the Apes, they had begun thinking about more than the current movie at hand. Thus the ending of the latter film expressly set up a fourth entry in the series: baby Milo, the offspring of the intelligent apes from the future, Cornelius (Rodney McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter), manages to survive his parents’ brutal murder when he is hidden away in a circus.

Sure enough, screenwriter Paul Dehn was asked to immediately get to work on a new story following Escape‘s release. The next one would follow Milo, renamed Caesar by circus owner Armando (Ricardo Montalban), as he laid the groundwork...

The comedian and former The Daily Show correspondent talks about his favorite Blaxploitation movies with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Casablanca (1942) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

The Castle (1997)

The Spook Who Sat By The Door (1973) – Bill Duke’s trailer commentary

Pressure (1976)

Robinson Crusoe On Mars (1964) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary

Boss (1975)

Django Unchained (2012) – Brian Trenchard-Smith’s trailer commentary

The Thing With Two Heads (1972) – Stuart Gordon’s trailer commentary

The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant (1971)

The Liberation of L.B. Jones (1970)

Last of the Mobile Hot Shots (1970)

Black Samurai (1977)

Truck Turner (1974)

Schindler’s List (1993)

Black Caesar (1973) – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary

Hell Up In Harlem (1973) – Larry Cohen’s trailer commentary

Judas And The Black Messiah (2021)

Friday Foster (1975)

That Man Bolt (1973)

Blacula (1972)

Foxy Brown (1974) – Jack Hill’s trailer commentary

Dr. Black, Mr. Hyde (1976)

Willie Dynamite (1973) – Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Billy Jack (1971)

John Wick (2014)

The Matrix (1999)

Cleopatra Jones...

The public often assumes that if celebrities are rich and famous, their lives must be trouble-free. Actually, lots of showbiz horror stories negate that, but they’re usually about addiction and/or self-destruction. In 1967, Sammy Davis Jr. offered an insightful guest column about the everyday problems that he and others faced as Black people in America.

In the 1960s, America seemed on the brink of a second civil war, as people were divided about the civil rights movement, the Vietnam war, police brutality, drug use, the White House versus the media, and more. It was a world similar to 2020.

Davis said in 1967, “The nightmare we all face has had a massive impact on all our lives and none of us, Black or white, will walk away from this time without being scarred by its enormous effects upon the moral and physical well-being of democracy.”

Davis was in London working on the film “Salt and Pepper,...

Prolific producer and director Arthur Marks, who worked on “Perry Mason” and blaxploitation movies including “Detroit 9000” and “Friday Foster,” has died. He was 92.

Marks died Nov. 13 at his home in Woodland Hills, Calif. His son, “Narcos” producer Paul Marks, confirmed his passing to Variety.

Marks was a native of Los Angeles who was born in 1927 into a show business family. His grandparents were actors in silent pictures and his father, Dave Marks, worked as an MGM assistant director and production manager who worked on “The Wizard of Oz” and “Easter Parade.” Arthur Marks worked as a child actor, getting work as an extra and bit player on “The Good Earth” (1937), “Boys Town” (1938) and Mickey Rooney’s Andy Hardy series.

Marks joined the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy during World War II and served with the U.S. Navy during the Korean War. He began working in the production department at MGM,...

Starring: Peter Breck, Constance Towers, Larry Tucker, Gene Evans, Hari Rhodes, James Best | Written and Directed by Samuel Fuller

The prolific Samuel Fuller carved a niche – or perhaps a gutter – in making exploitation shockers just outside the Hollywood studio system. His had an ability to elevate trash material to something approaching art. Writer and producer on most of his movies, he undoubtedly wielded enough control to be regarded as an auteur.

He also had high-minded ideas. Shock Corridor opens and closes with a quote from the controversial Greek tragedian Euripides: “Whom God wishes to destroy He first makes mad.” Sandwiched between is an absurd thriller, nonsensical and enjoyable and almost certainly allegorical.

Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island saw a detective enter a mental asylum to solve a case. Here, the guy going deep is a Pulitzer-pursuing journalist named Johnny (Peter Breck), who’s there to solve the murder of a man named Sloan.

Even as a new version of the classic mini-series is in the works, Warner Bros. is aiming to please fans by bringing the entire original series of Roots to the high definition format with a slew of bonus features. Come inside to learn more!

If you're a fan of the original Roots series, or weren't old enough to remember the iconic mini-series, then you're in luck. Today WB has announced a new blu-ray set to bring the entire series to blu-ray with loads of special features that dive into the heart of the story on June 7, 2016. All the details are below:

The groundbreaking, acclaimed television miniseries that captivated the entire nation and won multiple awards, Roots, will be released on Blu-ray™ for the first time, by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment (Wbhe) on June 7, 2016. The legendary family saga, which follows the inspiring story of Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton, Transformers: Rescue Bots,...

Techno-thriller fans have been waiting a long time for a good disc of action ace John Sturges' sci-fi espionage suspenser. George Maharis, Richard Basehart, Anne Francis and Dana Andrews must stop a madman who has snatched a full battery of deadly bio-warfare viruses from a super-secret government lab. Each flask can wipe out an entire city, and one of them will kill every living thing on the planet. The Satan Bug Blu-ray Kl Studio Classics 1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 114 min. / Street Date September 22, 2015 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95 Starring George Maharis, Richard Basehart, Anne Francis, Dana Andrews, John Larkin, Richard Bull, Frank Sutton, Edward Asner, Simon Oakland, John Anderson, James Hong, Hari Rhodes, Henry Beckman, Harry Lauter, Tol Avery, Russ Bender, James Doohan, Harold Gould, Carey Loftin. Cinematography Robert Surtees Film Editor Ferris Webster Original Music Jerry Goldsmith Written by Edward Anhalt, James Clavell from the novel by Ian Stuart (Alistair MacLean...

Don Kaye Jun 28, 2019

The fourth Apes movie, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, showcased Caesar's controversial and timely fight for freedom.

On June 30, 1972, 20th Century Fox released the fourth film in the original Planet of the Apes cycle, titled Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. It followed up the previous year’s Escape from the Planet of the Apes, the first of the Apes films to deliberately end with the promise of a sequel. In that film, two intelligent chimps from the future, Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) and Zira (Kim Hunter), traveled back to our time only to be brutally slain by the U.S. government over fears that they would plant the seeds for the apes’ eventual domination of humankind. Their baby, however, secretly survived, hidden away by the circus owner Armando (Ricardo Montalban) and already beginning to form words.

As Conquest of the Planet of the Apes opens,...

The Wasteland:

Television is a gold goose that lays scrambled eggs;

and it is futile and probably fatal to beat it for not laying caviar.

Lee Loevinger

When people argue over the quality of television programming, both sides — it’s addictive crap v. underappreciated populist art — seem to forget one of the essentials about commercial TV. By definition, it is not a public service. It is not commercial TV’s job to enlighten, inform, educate, elevate, inspire, or offer insight. Frankly, it’s not even commercial TV’s job to entertain. Bottom line: its purpose is simply to deliver as many sets of eyes to advertisers as possible. As it happens, it tends to do this by offering various forms of entertainment, and occasionally by offering content that does enlighten, inform, etc., but a cynic would make the point that if TV could do the same job televising fish aimlessly swimming around an aquarium,...

Debuting on Tuesday nights in January 1966, Daktari ran for four seasons and 89 episodes on CBS. The show follows the work of veterinarian Doctor Marsh Tracy (Marshall Thompson) at the Wameru Study Centre for Animal Behaviour in East Africa. "Daktari" is a native word for doctor.

Doctor Tracy is joined by his daughter Paula (Cheryl Miller), American Jack Dane (Yale Summers), and a native named Mike Makula (Hari Rhodes), as they protect animals from poachers and local officials. They have two memorable pets; a cross-eyed lion named Clarence and a chimpanzee named Judy.

The complete first season of Daktari has now been released on DVD. You can purchase the set or you can try to win a copy here. To enter, you need to merely post a comment below. You can enter once per day.

If you'd like an additional...

Now I realise that this film is not exactly forgotten, indeed it has just been re-released by the Criterion Collection in a lavish DVD/Blu-ray edition, but it isn’t an Easy Rider or Bonnie and Clyde, it’s not a picture that comes straight to mind when one thinks about 1960s American cinema, but it should be. Samuel Fuller’s Shock Corridor is a primitive, angst ridden allegory, fusing a noir inflected style with intense psychodrama which is still shocking and relevant today, “it has to be seen to be believed” wrote Andrew Saris in the American cinema, such a phrase is simply apt.

With a performance as smouldering as hot coals, Peter Breck plays investigative journalist Johnny Barrett, an ambitious and daring reporter with his eyes on a Pulitzer Prize. Johnny envisions his prize winning piece as an exposé on a recent murder at a local mental hospital,...

In Match Cuts, we examine every available version of a film, and decide once and for all which is the one, definitive cut worth watching. This week, in honor of the new "Planet of the Apes" movie "Rise of the Planet of the Apes," we're looking at fourth film in the original series, J. Lee Thompson's "Conquest of the Planet of the Apes."

Editions:

-Theatrical Cut (1972): 86 minutes

-Unrated Cut (2008): 87 minutes

The Story (Spoilers Ahead):

At the end of the second "Apes," "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," the Earth of the far future is destroyed. In the third film, "Escape From the the Planet of the Such and Such," two surviving talking chimps and their baby are thrown back in time to the 1970s. At first, they're hailed as celebrities, but later they're considered portends of a future where man is enslaved by beast. Humanity hunts and kills the chimps,...

This Friday sees the release of the first "Planet of the Apes" film in a decade, "Rise of the Planet of the Apes" starring James Franco. We'll have our review of the film up on Friday, but to help set the mood, here is a revised and updated version of a feature we first brought you in 2008 on the 40th anniversary of the original "Planet of the Apes." Below you'll find a guide to all six previous movies, with synopses, spoilers, continuity errors, and a celebration of all the high-minded social commentary and low-brow schlocky ape masks that make the "Apes" films one of the most satisfying of all sci-fi franchises.

Please note: Most "Planet of the Apes" films have a "shocking" twist that everyone at this point already knows. However, if you have somehow extricated yourself from forty years of pop culture references, by all means be wary of Spoilers ahead.