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Elvira’s Movie Macabre (1981–86).At the end of a long corridor, a door creaks open to reveal a blinding light and a thick fog. The figure of a woman appears, as if from the beyond. Foreboding organ music accompanies her sashay toward us, cobwebs breaking against her ample curves. Lightning cracks, a wolf howls, and we are delivered to the black void of a soundstage, illuminated by gothic candelabras, with a red Victorian couch at its center, on which Elvira lounges, cooing little come-ons and giggling at her own jokes as she introduces this week’s feature, Count Dracula’s Great Love (1973).Cassandra Peterson’s Elvira is part Sunset Strip stand-up comedian, part Southern belle, part self-effacing ditz, and part glamorous Hollywood host. Peterson conceived of her as a vampiric bombshell with a valley-girl punk affect and a Ronette’s mass of teased-up hair. Her dress was short, black, and low-cut,...

Barring the occasional doorstep TMZ video or red carpet event appearance, the public hasn’t seen much of 34-year-old actor Jonathan Majors lately. The Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania star was sentenced in April to a 52-week domestic violence intervention program after being convicted of reckless assault in the third degree and harassment in December after an altercation with his then-girlfriend. The performer was ordered to continue mental health counseling and therapy and provide the court with updates on treatment.

Majors’ Sundance 2023 film Magazine Dreams, initially considered an awards contender, was dropped by Searchlight Pictures, as was his supervillain character Kang the Conqueror from the continuing Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Robert Downey Jr. was rehired by Disney’s comic book movie behemoth to step in as Dr. Victor von Doom for “significantly more than $80 million” over two films.)

But don’t count Majors out yet. On Sunday, Sept. 15, two days after his first treatment compliance date,...

Earlier this month, the Hugo Awards took place at the 82nd annual Worldcon in Glasgow, Scotland. The Hugos are one of the most prestigious award ceremonies for genre fiction, meant to honor the best and brightest working in fantasy and science fiction and its fandom. If you're into speculative fiction, it's a pretty safe bet to say that you probably want to keep an eye on the works, writers and artists who are nominated for and win Hugos each year.

In past years, the Hugos have been plagued by multiple controversies, such as the preemptive censorship of several entrants during last year's ceremony in Chengdu, China, which resulted in the censure and resignation of several World Science Fiction Society (Wsfs) members who played a prominent part in facilitating the awards. Even this year, there was an attempt to stuff the ballots, which resulted in the disqualification of 377 fraudulent votes after...

Brandy is back on the horror scene, and you can catch an early glimpse of her in A24‘s trailer for The Front Room, the directorial debut of Sam and Max Eggers. Based on the short story by Susan Hill, the film promises a chilling psychological horror experience and is set to hit US cinemas on September 6, 2024.

The film follows a young, newly pregnant couple who are forced to take in an ailing estranged stepmother, a premise that sets the stage for a tense and unsettling narrative. The cast features Brandy Norwood, known for her return to horror, alongside Kathryn Hunter, Neal Huff, and Andrew Burnap.

Upon her casting, Brandy expressed her excitement on Instagram, sharing her enthusiasm for working with the Eggers brothers and the impressive cast and crew. “I can’t wait for ya’ll to see this. God, you’re awesome! I trust you with my entire life.

The term wizard can be thrown around a lot. Wizards make magic, can create life from the ether, and conjure things that are beautiful and sometimes monstrous. There aren’t many wizards out in the world these days, but I know of one by name and that name is Rick Baker. Baker is a master of the monsters and a wizard of special effects. He’s an artist and a visionary who made some of the most memorable creatures and effects to grace movie and TV screens of the last few decades. He’s also an unabashed Monster Kid who has never lost his love and fascination for the classics. On todays episode of What Happened To This Horror Celebrity we’re meeting a wizard of the wicked and magician of monsters as we reveal what happened to Rick Baker.

Rick Baker was born in 1950 to Doris and Ralph Baker in New York.

John Trimble, longtime Trekkie and fan advocate, passed away on April 19, 2024. He was 87 years old. The world of "Star Trek" owes the man a debt. 

Bjo and John Trimble were Trekkies from the very start. Indeed, the married couple were early adopters of "Star Trek," becoming enamored of the series before the word "Trekkies" had even become a part of the fan lexicon. Trimble met Betty JoAnn Conway through the fan networks first set up by genre-movie ultra-booster Forrest J Ackerman, having first conversed while hiding underneath a grand piano at Ackerman's house during a party. They were married for 64 years.

Back in the 1960s, sci-fi and fantasy fan networks were achieved solely through the mail, and Trekkies would communicate almost exclusively through letters columns printed in the backs of sci-fi magazines (a model first invented by Hugo Guernsback back in 1926). More enterprising fans would author and print their own fanzines,...

At last count, there have been nine studio-sanctioned feature films to have been adapted from J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth fantasy novels. 

"The Hobbit," the first book in the series, was published in 1937, while a follow-up trilogy called "Lord of the Rings" was published in 1954 and 1955. Tolkien was both a linguist and a pacifist, so the books tended to lean toward elaborately constructed fantasy languages as well as antiwar themes. The mythology of Middle-earth was so vast and complex, Tolkien also wrote a book called "The Silmarillion" in which deep-cut details from within the "Rings" universe were laid out in excruciating, mythological detail. 

For many years, multiple filmmakers and producers attempted to adapt the first book, "The Hobbit" to film. According to Brian J. Robb's and Paul Simpson's 2013 book "Middle-earth Envisioned: The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings: On Screen, On Stage, and Beyond," Walt Disney had considered...

All of the English-language screen versions of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings came out after J.R.R. Tolkien passed away in 1973, so we’ll sadly never know what he might have thought of them. But things were nearly quite different. In the late 1950s, Tolkien and his publishers seriously considered a proposal for an animated film, which even got to the script stage before the project was eventually scrapped.

In 1957, Tolkien was approached by an American film agent, Forrest J. Ackerman, about a proposed animated film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. Early on, Tolkien was really quite positive about the idea, in a pragmatic sort of way. At this stage, Tolkien was shown some drawings and color photographs to indicate the sort of look they were going for in the animation, and he read a “Story Line,” a synopsis of the film’s proposed plot.

He told one of his publishers,...

For this month’s installment of “TV Terrors” we revisit the ambitious small screen project “Roger Corman Presents,” which aired from 1995 through 1999 on Showtime.

Not many remember this, but back in the nineties, the cable network Showtime was extremely centered on science fiction and horror genre fare. They were the original launch pads for “Stargate Sg-1” and “Poltergeist: The Legacy” before they became syndication mainstays. Hell, even their marketing was catered to the science fiction and horror aesthetic.

Like Cinemax, Showtime sought to work out distribution deals while releasing their own original films for primetime and late night slots. While Cinemax and HBO worked with Stan Winston, Showtime collaborated with the one and only Roger Corman. With him and his studio Concorde Pictures, they would produce a series of low budget films that would air over the course of two seasons. With the banner “Roger Corman Presents,” Corman and company...

In celebration of its 20th anniversary, House of 1000 Corpses has received a new Blu-ray edition. The two-disc box set is loaded with extras — including never-before-seen cast and crew interviews — among other bells and whistles, but writer-director Rob Zombie’s new commentary track is a digital exclusive (here’s how to listen).

It’s a bizarre choice — a timing issue is the only logical explanation I can fathom — but thankfully the Blu-ray comes with a digital copy that includes the track. Zombie begins by noting that it’s his first time watching the movie in its entirety since recording the previous commentary for the DVD 20 years ago, but he manages to remember plenty about the tumultuous production.

Here are seven things I learned from Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses commentary…

1. Zombie intended to play Dr. Wolfenstein.

The footage of horror host Dr. Wolfenstein that opens the movie was the...

More and more screen adaptations of the works of Jrr Tolkien are in development these days. In addition to Amazon’s The Rings of Power, a prequel series set during the Second Age of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, Warner Bros. Discovery announced in February that new films are also in development. The first will be an animated movie called The War of the Rohirrim, set 183 years before The Lord of the Rings and telling the story of a legendary king of Rohan called Helm Hammerhand, owner of the great horn at Helm’s Deep, which was named after him. We can only speculate on what else Wbd might have planned — the love story of Aragorn and Arwen, told in the Appendices to The Lord of the Rings, is surely ripe for a film adaptation and would probably be our first choice.

A blockbuster Tolkien franchise incorporating various different stories and characters...

As reported by the New York Times, on March 8, 2023, prolific B-movie filmmaker Bert I. Gordon passed away at his home in Los Angeles. He was 100 years old. 

Bert I. Gordon is a name many may not be familiar with unless they were prone to visiting drive-in theaters in the 1950s, staying up late and watching monster movies on Uhf TV in the 1980s, or were paying attention to "Mystery Science Theater 3000" in the 1990s. Gordon was the director behind such low-budget classics as 1955's "King Dinosaur," 1957's "The Amazing Colossal Man," its sequel from the next year, "War of the Colossal Beast," the 1965 outsized J.D. flick, "Village of the Giants," the 1976 H.G. Wells adaptation, "Food of the Gods," and the 1976 giant ant film "Empire of the Ants." One might note that all the films listed above involve giants of some stripe. One might also want to take note of Bert I.

Bert I. Gordon, who was given the nickname “Mr. B.I.G.” by Famous Monsters of Filmland editor Forrest J. Ackerman not just because it matched his initials but also because it matched the director’s favorite big-screen subject — giant monsters — died today. He was 100. His daughter Patricia Gordon confirmed the filmmaker’s death to the New York Times.

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Gordon often produced, directed, wrote and created the special effects for his movies, which were shot on ultra-low...

From 1958 to 1983, the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland – which was edited by the legendary Forrest J Ackerman, was a great source of information and entertainment for genre fans. A revival of the magazine was headed up by Ray Ferry – who ran into some legal issues with Ackerman – from 1993 to 2008, and then the rights to the logo and title were purchased by Philip Kim, who had “an agreement with Ackerman to use his trademarks to retain the magazine’s original look and feel”. Now Famous Monsters of Filmland is under new ownership, as Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor revealed to Rolling Stone that he has purchased the rights to the brand.

Taylor will be relaunching the magazine as a biannual or annual publication and also plans to put the Famous Monsters brand name on toys, films, and festivals. He first broke the news at the Son of Monsterpalooza convention. Taylor and his...

Before Fangoria there was Famous Monsters of Filmland, and we’ve learned this week that the James Warren and Forrest J. Ackerman-founded magazine is now in the hands of Slipknot frontman Corey Taylor! Taylor, a big time horror fan, has acquired the Famous Monsters brand, and he’s got big plans for the brand’s future in this here horror space.

Rolling Stone reports that in addition to Corey Taylor relaunching the Famous Monsters magazine, he also plans on exploring several other avenues with the brand as well.

“Our job is to build a foundation to bring Famous Monsters into the modern age, while also honouring the legacy that came before,” Taylor tells Rolling Stone. “It’s the whole reason that we were fans to begin with. It was the first real place where we, as horror nerds, could feel safe and feel connected feel like we weren’t alone.

When Corey Taylor was five years old, Buck Rogers changed his life. If the Slipknot frontman hadn’t seen the 1979 film,Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, he never would have seen the trailer for John Carpenter’s genre-defining slasher flick, Halloween.

Taylor, now 48, still has total recall of the moment he first saw masked killer Michael Myers: “I can’t tell you one thing about the Buck Rogers movie, but I can remember everything about that trailer,” he says over Zoom, looking relaxed in a surprisingly brightly lit kitchen.

Brandy‘s showing Ray J a lot of love on the heels of her brother’s concerning posts on social media.

The 43-year-old singer and actress took to Instagram on Friday and posted a throwback photo of her and Ray J with the caption, “Need you bro @rayj .” The post came just hours after Ray J took to his Instagram and alarmed his fans with posts where he contemplated taking his own life.

In the since-deleted posts, captured by TMZ, Ray J’s caption read, “If it wasn’t 4 my Kidz I would jump off and die tonight.” Ray J and his wife, Princess Love, share two children — daughter Melody, 4, and son, Epik, 2.

Read More: Ray J Confirms ‘Some Legal Stuff Is Happening’ With His Ongoing Sex-Tape Feud With The Kardashians

Another post showed his feet hanging off the side of a ledge. That post was captioned, “Should I Just...

Talk about a Back-to-School disc promotion! CineSavant digs into Severin’s MegaBox The Incredibly Strange films of Ray Dennis Steckler — 10 discs, 20 films — just enough to sample this demented offering that some have nominated for the honor of worst film ever. It’s a glorified home movie by a guy bitten by the movie-making bug — and a friend with some cash who wanted to be a producer. Steckler’s movie found real screenings in real theaters, launching the Auteur from Lemon Grove Street on one of the oddest Hollywood careers ever.

The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!?

Blu-ray

Part of the Severin Films ‘The Incredibly Strange Films of Ray Dennis Steckler’ Boxed Set

1964 / Color / B&w / 1:78 widescreen/ 82 min. / Street Date September 27 2022, 2022 / Available from / 219.95

Starring: Cash Flagg, Brett O’Hara, Atlas King, Sharon Walsh, Madison Clarke, Erina Enyo, Toni Camel, Jack Brady, Bill Ward, Neil Stillman, Joan Howard,...

Brandy Norwood is set to star in A24’s “The Front Room,” a psychological horror film from directors Max and Sam Eggers.

The Eggers brothers, whose older sibling Robert Eggers has collaborated with A24 on “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” will be directing in their feature filmmaking debut. They adapted the screenplay from Susan Hill’s short story of the same name.

“The Front Room” follows a young, newly pregnant couple forced to take in an ailing stepmother who has long been estranged from the family.

Along with Norwood, the ’90s music icon who is also of “I Know What You Did Last Summer,” “Moesha” and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Cinderella” fame, is co-starring alongside Kathryn Hunter (“The Tragedy of Macbeth”), Andrew Burnap and Neal Huff (“Spotlight”).

Norwood later shared the news on Instagram, telling audiences “ can’t wait for ya’ll to see this.”

View this post on Instagram...

The September release slate from Severin Films has been announced and detailed today, this latest batch of new releases headlined by 1980 classic The Changeling on 4K Ultra HD.

Severin Films will be haunting disc players across the continent with a new 4K edition of Peter Medak’s beloved ghost story The Changeling, along with landmark Spanish television series Tales to Keep You Awake, My Grandpa Is a Vampire via the Severin Kids imprint, and the entire Plaga Zombie Trilogy through sublabel Intervision Picture Corp.

As if that isn’t enough, Severin will also be putting out a Blu-ray double feature of Al Adamson’s Dracula vs. Frankenstein and Brain of Blood as a standalone release.

Read on for everything you need to know about Severin’s September slate…

The Changeling: It has been called “remarkable” (Paste Magazine), “utterly terrifying” (Mondo Digital) and “a ghost story guaranteed to freeze the...

Antonio Margheriti made several space epics about ‘errant planets’ posing dangers to Earth; this one gets all the attention via star casting. Claude Rains’ bombastic but brilliant scientist advises space command to blow up the planetoid, and then chooses attack day to go see its interior for himself. Toy rockets, overripe dialogue and thunderous acting from Rains ensue, leading to a finale in an ‘alien brain cave’ made of colored plastic tubes. This critical ‘triumph of the imagination’ indeed makes something entertaining out of very, very little. The presentation includes a half-hour docu hosted by Tim Lucas, a graduate class listed as ‘Italo Space Intro 101.’

Battle of the Worlds

Blu-ray

The Film Detective

1962 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date August 9, 2022 / Il pianeta degli uomini spenti / Available from The Film Detective

Starring: Claude Rains, Bill Carter, Umberto Orsini, Maya Brent, Jacqueline Derval, Renzo Palmer, Carlo d’Angelo, Carol Danell, Jim Dolen, Joe Pollini,...

The Cohen Film Collection brings to Region A its beautifully remastered disc of American fringe filmmaking’s weirdest, most obsessively arty shock-fest — a loving return to silent expressionist horror. The New York censors scuttled its commercial chances, and it wound up as a movie-within-a-movie footnote for Steve McQueen. We never thought we’d see the show look this good — John Parker memorialized Venice, California five years before Orson Welles. But the overall package packs a big disappointment, as I’ll explain.

Dementia

Blu-ray

Cohen Media Group

1955 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 56 min. / Street Date April 26, 2022 / Available from Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Adrienne Barret, Ben Roseman, Bruno VeSota, Ben Roseman, Angelo Rossitto.

Cinematography: William C. Thompson

Film Editor: Joseph Gluck

Original Music: George Antheil

Music director: Ernest Gold

Featured Vocal: Marni Nixon

New Concepts in Modern Sounds: Shorty Rogers and his Giants

Written, Produced and Directed by John J. Parker

The BFI first...

Writer, director, producer, editor, cinematographer, and actor Larry Fessenden chats with hosts Joe Dante & Josh Olson about some of his favorite movies.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Habit (1995)

Jakob’s Wife (2021)

Phantom Thread (2017)

The Last Winter (2006)

Attack of the Crab Monsters (1957)

The Crawling Eye (1958)

The Reptile (1966)

Peeping Tom (1960)

Casablanca (1942)

Jaws (1975)

Man Of A Thousand Faces (1957)

Scarlet Street (1945)

Suspicion (1941)

Rope (1948)

The Lady Vanishes (1938)

Night Of The Living Dead (1968)

Frankenstein (1931)

The Wolf Man (1941)

Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954)

Dracula (1931)

Dawn of the Dead (1978)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Taxi Driver (1976)

Mean Streets (1973)

One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (1975)

Playtime (1973)

The Thing (1982)

The Howling (1981)

An American Werewolf In London (1981)

An American Werewolf In Paris (1997)

I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957)

Ginger Snaps (2001)

The Terminator (1984)

The Wolfman (2010)

Van Helsing (2004)

The Mummy (2017)

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992)

Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1994)

The Invisible Man (1933)

The Invisible Man (2020)

Amazon Women On The Moon (1987)

Wendigo (2001)

Fargo (1996)

Raising Arizona (1987)

Seven (1995)

Man Bites Dog...

Ib Melchior’s best-directed movie is a futuristic space opera with a time travel theme, all done at a production level suitable for a Halloween fun house. Yet its talented crew comes up with exciting visuals to match Melchior’s flaky-but-fun eclecticism: Androids, Mutants, ‘deviants,’ hydroponic gardens, force fields, time warps… and a sexist attitude or two to remind us that we’re seeing 2071 through the eyes of 1964. And it’s one of the earliest Hollywood credits for cameramen Vilmos Zsigmond and Laszlo Kovacs.

The Time Travelers

Blu-ray

Scorpion Releasing / Kino Lorber

1964 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 84 min. / Street Date April 27, 2021 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Preston Foster, Philip Carey, Merry Anders, John Hoyt, Dennis Patrick, Joan Woodbury, Delores Wells, Steve Franken, Forrest J. Ackerman, Peter Strudwick, Wayne Anderson .

Cinematography: William Zsigmond (Vilmos Zsigmond)

Camera Operator: Leslie Kovacs (Laszlo Kovacs)

Lumichord Effects: Oskar Fischinger

Visual Effects: David L. Hewitt

Assistant directors: Lew Borzage,...

This bizarre, creepy and maudit masterpiece of silent expressionist horror is an independent 1950s production that never had a chance commercially. Butchered by a second distributor, its ignominious fate was to wind up as a movie-within-a-movie footnote for Steve McQueen. Cohen/BFI’s ‘rescue’ remastering of John Parker’s picture does some things great — we never thought we’d see it look this good. But the overall package packs a big disappointment, as I’ll explain.

Dementia (1955)

Region B Blu-ray + Pal DVD

BFI

1955 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 56 min. / Street Date October 19, 2020 / £15.89

Starring: Adrienne Barret, Ben Roseman, Bruno VeSota, Ben Roseman, Angelo Rossitto.

Cinematography: William C. Thompson

Film Editor: Joseph Gluck

Original Music: George Antheil

Music director: Ernest Gold

Featured Vocal: Marni Nixon

New Concepts in Modern Sounds: Shorty Rogers and his Giants

Written, Produced and Directed by John J. Parker

I screened John Parker’s Dementia at UCLA in 1972, at...

Roger Corman began his boom year of 1957 with a marvelous bit of ‘way-out’ sci-fi — a ‘Tidal Wave of Terror’ no less. This note just arrived from Donald J.’s Seafood Emporium: “You puny, dunderheaded humans, don’t let the campy title fool you! Soon you will be ‘absorbed’ into our crabby super-mentalities, heh heh heh. We atom-age crustaceans are made of electric anti-matter — it’s incredible! Our telepathy is the best telepathy ever — everybody says so! It is what it is!” The new Blu-ray will charm fans seeking prime ‘fifties monster nirvana.

Attack of the Crab Monsters

Blu-ray

1957 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 62 min. / Street Date August 25 , 2020

Starring: Richard Garland, Pamela Duncan, Russell Johnson, Leslie Bradley, Mel Welles, Richard Cutting, Beach Dickerson, Tony Miller, Ed Nelson, Charles B. Griffith, Maitland Stuart.

Cinematography: Floyd Crosby

Film Editor: Charles Gross Jr.

Assistants of all stripes: Maurice Vaccarino, Charles B. Griffith, Lindsley Parsons Jr., Beach Dickerson,...

Last February, our friends at Famous Monsters of Filmland announced a new series: Ack-Ives (a mashup of “Archives” and FM Editor-in-Chief Forrest J. Ackerman) will be reference guides on horror and sci-fi films curated from the publication’s 60-year history. The first Ack-Ive arrives this May, and it’s all about Godzilla: King of the Monsters! Today, […] The post First Look at Stunning Godzilla: King Of The Monsters Variant Cover of Famous Monsters Ack-ives appeared first on Dread Central.

If you’re a fan of The Twilight Zone, then I know you’re familiar with the episode “The Eye of the Beholder”. It’s considered by many to be one of the best episodes of the series.

I’ve recently learned that one of the original pig-nose prosthetic masks that was used in the episode is going up for auction next month. I love The Twilight Zone and I’ve collected a few Twilight Zone items over the years. I’d love to own this, but unfortunately I don’t have $10,000 to spend on it.

I’m surprised that there’s still one of these that exists! That in itself is pretty cool. Comisar ended up getting the piece from the late Forrest J. Ackerman, who was the magazine editor and sci-fi literary agent who represented famous authors such as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.

The pig nose prosthetic...

A solid mainstream hit for 1947, Loretta Young and Joseph Cotten’s political fairy tale maintains its charm despite the usual populist dodges — a spirited young woman finds both romance and The American Dream when she runs for Congress. But will the political system accept her?

The Farmer’s Daughter

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 97 min. / Street Date September 25, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Loretta Young, Joseph Cotten, Ethel Barrymore, Charles Bickford, Rhys Williams, Harry Davenport, Tom Powers, William Harrigan, Keith Andes, Harry Shannon, Lex Barker, Thurston Hall, Art Baker, Don Beddoe, James Arness, Anna Q. Nilsson, Charles McGraw, John Gallaudet, William B. Davidson, Cy Kendall, Frank Ferguson, William Bakewell, Charles Lane Forrest J. Ackerman, Robert Clarke.

Film Editor: Harry Marker

Original Music: Leigh Harline

Written by Allen Rivkin, Laura Kerr, from a play by Juhani Tervapää

Produced by Dore Schary

Directed by H.C. Potter

This year...

Favorite camp hilarity — a drive-in kick when new, Del Tenney’s gloppy monsters ‘n’ bikinis epic has persevered as a nutty exemplar of ‘sixties escapist fun. Mutated aquatic zombies with goo-goo-googly eyes ravage teen girls for their blood — in between sets by the swingin’ Del-Aires. And don’t forget the soulful housemaid, Eulabelle!

The Horror of Party Beach

Blu-ray

Severin Films

1963 / Color / 1:78 widescreen / 78 min. / Street Date August 28, 2018 / 29.98

Starring: John Scott, Alice Lyon, Allen Laurel, Eulabelle Moore, Marilyn Clark, Augustin Mayer.

Cinematography: Richard Hilliard

Film Editors: Leonard De Munde, Richard L. Hilliard, David Simpson

Original Music: The Del Aires: Bob Osborne, John Becker, Gary Robert Jones, Ronnie Linares

Written by Richard L. Hilliard

Produced by Alan V. Iselin

Directed by Del Tenney

1964 was the breakout year for teen monster fandom, when Forrest J. Ackerman and his monster fad was featured in major magazines. It was also the big year for A.

John Landis made his first dent in Hollywood with this hilarious parody of Z-grade monster movies, and it was big enough to launch a film career. The kudos go to Landis’ comic monkey-man performance, wearing a Schockthropus ape suit by the 20 year-old self taught makeup whiz Rick Baker. Only monster movie fans will understand, but they’ll be charmed. This foreign edition is stacked with schlock-thropic extras.

Schlock

Blu-ray + DVD

Turbine Media Group

1973 / Color / Region Free / 1:78 widescreen (Blu-ray); 1:37 Academy (Ntsc DVD) / 79 min. / Available from Rakete Shop (De) / Street Date April 27, 2018 / Euros 29.99

Starring: John Landis, Saul Kahan, Eliza Garrett, Joseph Piantadosi, Enrica Blankey (Harriet Medin), Forrest J. Ackerman, Jack H. Harris, Donald F. Glut, John Chambers, Ivan Lepper.

Cinematography: Robert E. Collins

Film Editor: George Folsey Jr.

Makeup Artist: Rick Baker

Original Music: David Gibson

Produced by George Folsey Jr., Jack H. Harris, James C. O’Rourke

Written and...

Stars: Rosanna Arquette, Michelle Pfeiffer, Arsenio Hall, Donald F. Muhich, Monique Gabrielle, Lou Jacobi, Erica Yohn, Phil Hartman, Corey Burton, Peter Horton, Griffin Dunne, Joe Pantoliano, Steve Forrest, Forrest J. Ackerman, Sybil Danning, David Alan Grier, Steve Guttenberg, Henry Silva, Robert Picardo, Rip Taylor, Ed Begley Jr., Dick Miller, Matt Adler, Kelly Preston, Howard Hesseman, Russ Meyer, Andrew Dice Clay, Carrie Fisher, Paul Bartel | Written by Michael Barrie, Jim Mulholland | Directed by Joe Dante, Carl Gottlieb, Peter Horton, Robert K. Weiss, John Landis

One of many, many anthologies to have graced the silver screen over the years (another of which, the horror anthology Nightmares is also being released on Blu-ray by 101 Films), Amazon Women on the Moon features madcap sketches and shorts centred around the eponymous film-within-a-film, a satire of low-budget, 1950s-style sci-fi. Featuring appearances from Rosanna Arquette, Carrie Fisher, Steve Guttenberg, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sybil Danning and Ed Begley,...

The world of cinema has always been filled with dreamers, and a lot of those dreamers start out with nothing more than a Super 8 or 16mm camera, all the way up to the latest iPhones; little backyard excursions with friends and sisters or parents to fill out the cast for a monster on the loose or a super sleuth flick. Every once in a while there’s genuine talent to back up the enthusiasm; our Raimi’s and Coscarelli’s bear this out. But before them a group of enthusiastic teens actually had their vision realized, and eventually a mutated form of it invaded drive-ins as Equinox (1970), an inspirational and energetic full blown monster mash.

Released in October, Equinox began as a project in the mid ‘60s for creature kids Dennis Muren, David Allen and Mark McGee, combining their love of Famous Monsters of Filmland and Ray Harryhausen’s mesmerizing...

Hard-media home video is making a comeback, and Kino Lorber shows its faith in the medium with an extravagant collection of its entire silent holdings of the Fritz Lang library. Mythical heroes, sacrificing heroines, criminal madmen and uncontrolled super-science are his themes; it’s a paranoid’s view of the first half of the 20th Century, expressed with fantastic innovations that literally re-write the rules of cinema.

Fritz Lang The Silent Films

Blu-ray

Kino Classics

1919-1929 / B&W / 1:37 Silent Aperture / 1894 min. / Street Date November 21, 2017 / “The Complete Silent Films of German Cinema’s Supreme Stylist” / Available through Kino Lorber / 149.95

Films: The Spiders, Harakiri, The Wandering Shadow, Four Around the Woman, Destiny, Dr. Mabuse The Gambler, Die Nibelungen, Metropolis, Spies, Woman in the Moon, The Plague of Florence.

Directed by Fritz Lang

Kino Lorber has been a happy home for many marvelous discs of silent German classics. Thanks to their ongoing...

I have known for years, many people will not watch black and white movies, of any kind. It has to be color and no older than 10 years, preferably movies made this year, or last year. I have had people look at me with astonishment when I tell them I not only watch black and white movies regularly but even silent movies. I’ve had people admit they didn’t know movies were being made in 1927, much less 1915.

So for this Hallowe’en, when movie geeks thoughts turn to scary movies here is my personal and eclectic list of great, old, scary movies, filmed in glorious black and white.

10. Nosferatu 1922

The Great Grand Daddy of all Dracula movies, and the template for every vampire movie ever made, the first, one of the best and still creepy, even if you’ve seen it repeatedly. A silent masterpiece by Fw Murnau and with...

Leapin’ Lizards! The original cavemen vs. dinosaurs saga is a winner — if viewer involvement trumps visual effects, it’s got a narrow lead over the Hammer/Harryhausen remake. Victor Mature, Carole Landis and Lon Chaney Jr. all made career hay out of their weeks spent running in loincloths, out in the desert. And Vci’s new disc is a terrific UCLA Archive restoration.

One Million B.C.

Blu-ray

Vci

1940 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 80 min. / Street Date September 12, 2017 /

Starring: Victor Mature, Carole Landis, Lon Chaney Jr., Conrad Nagel, John Hubbard, Nigel De Brulier, Mamo Clark, Jean Porter, Inez Palange, Edgar Edwards, Jacqueline Dalya, Mary Gale Fisher.

Cinematography: Norbert Brodine

Film Editor: Ray Snyder

Original Music: Werner R. Heymann

Visual Effects: Roy Seawright, Jack Shaw, Frank Young

Written by Mickell Novack, George Baker, Joseph Frickert

Produced and Directed by Hal Roach

In the late 1930s fantasy and science fiction movies were few and far between,...

*Sigh* — Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my escaped brontosaurus. This wonder movie of the silent era, which pits five intrepid explorers against Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fantastic South American plateau where marvelous animals from the dawn of time still live. Blackhawk Films and Lobster’s latest digital restoration includes footage never before seen, in original tints; it’s dedicated to film restorer David Shepard.

The Lost World

Deluxe Blu-ray Edition

Flicker Alley

1925 / Color / 1:37 Silent Ap / 110 min. / Street Date September 19, 2017 / 39.95

Starring: Wallace Beery, Lloyd Hughes, Bessie Love, Lewis Stone, Alma Bennett, Arthur Hoyt, Margaret McWade, Bull Montana, Frank Finch Smiles, Jules Cowles, George Bunny, Leo White.

Cinematography: Arthur Edeson

Writing credits: Marion Fairfax from the novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

New Music Score: Robert Israel

Technical Director: Willis O’Brien, assistants & effects men Marcel Delgado, Ralph Hammeras, Fred Jackman, Devereaux Jennings, Hans Koenekamp,...

A Mixed Bag In A Big Box

By Darren Allison

‘I was there; I was in that picture, fighting the Cyclops on the beach, running from the dragon! I was enthralled. It's one of my strongest childhood memories.’ It’s very hard to argue with director John Landis’s vivid account of his earliest memories and the fantasy films of Ray Harryhausen and producer Charles H. Schneer. They seemed to touch us all in an indelible manner and took us into a fantasy realm far beyond our imagination. Indicator has (for the first time in the UK) combined the three Sinbad adventures in one very handsomely produced package. It’s a magical box that has very little trouble in sending us on a journey, and back to a place called innocence…

The Seventh voyage of Sinbad (1958) was something of a revelation back in its day. Ray Harryhausen’s pioneering stop-motion...

It was a serious sucker punch to all film fans when we lost Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds within a day of each other. There have been many tributes to Carrie Fisher and rightfully so. I have not seen that many for Debbie Reynolds so I would like to pay her tribute by reviewing one of her lost gems of a movie, Goodbye Charlie from 1964, based on a play by George Axelrod and directed by Vincent Minnelli.

I can recall seeing this on a network movie night in the late 60s or early 70s, I remember liking it but seeing it again after this many years I was astonished at how funny it really is, and how touching.

The setup is simple, Charlie Sorrell is a writer, sometime screen writer and notorious womanizer. At a Hollywood party on a yacht he is shot by a jealous husband (Walter Matthau in...

Created in 1969 by Forrest J. Ackerman, Vampirella has become an icon of horror, a vampire superhero who has battled the forces of evil for decades. Artists such as Frank Frazetta, Sanjulian, Bill Hughes, Jose Gonzalez, Enrich, Esteban Maroto, and… Continue Reading →

The post Have You Ever Wanted a Vampirella Tarot Card Set? Here’s Your Chance! appeared first on Dread Central.

You Axed for it, as Forry would say: the grade Z horror movie that launched a thousand bad puns is also an unbeatable party favorite. Idiotic island natives clash with condescending Anglo scientists, when a death curse initiates the hell- spawning of a horrifying, vengeance-seeking pagan demon-monster. Sounds great — but what we get is Tabonga, a walking rubber tree stump with knotholes for eyes and a permanent scowl on its teakwood face. The excellent, flawless scan allows us to appreciate the mighty Tabonga for what it is — absurd, lovable, awful.

From Hell it Came

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1957 / B&W / 1:78 widescreen / 71 min. / Street Date April 25, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Tod Andrews, Tina Carver, Linda Watkins, John McNamara, Gregg Palmer, Suzanne Ridgeway.

Cinematography: Brydon Baker

Film Editor: Jack Milner

Original Music: Darrell Calker

Written by Richard Bernstein, Dan Milner

Produced by Jack Milner

Directed by Dan Milner

“You say Tomayto,...

Seddok, l’erede di Satana (Atom Age Vampire)

Region 2 Pal DVD

Terminal Video Italia Srl

1960 / B&W / 1:66 flat letterbox / 103 min. / Street Date June 12, 2011 / available through Amazon.it / Eur 6,64

Starring: Alberto Lupo, Ivo Garrani, Susanne Loret, Sergio Fantoni, Rina Franchetti, Franca Parisi, Roberto Bertea.

Cinematography: Aldo Giordani

Film Editor: Gabrielle Varriale

Makeup Effects: Euclide Santoli

Original Music: Armando Trovajoli

Written by: Gino De Santis, Alberto Bevilacqua, Anton Giulio Majano; story by Piero Monviso

Produced by: Elio Ippolito Mellino (as Mario Fava)

Directed by Anton Giulio Majano

Let me herewith take a break from new discs to review an Italian release from six years ago, a movie that for years we knew only as Atom Age Vampire. Until sporadic late- night TV showings appeared, it existed for us ’60s kids as one or two interesting photos in Famous Monsters magazine. Forry Ackerman steered away from adult films, with the effect that...

Forrest J Ackerman[2] (born Forrest James Ackerman; November 24, 1916 – December 4, 2008) was an American magazine editor, science fiction writer and literary agent, a founder of science fiction fandom, a leading expert on science fiction, horror, and fantasy films,[3] and acknowledged as the world’s most avid collector of genre books and movie memorabilia.[4] […]

The post Famous Monsters of Filmland Halloween Monster Bash appeared first on Famous Monsters of Filmland.

It’s no secret that I’m a pretty huge fan of Guillermo del Toro’s cinematic work, as well as his endless imagination and infectious enthusiasm for the world of genre films. There is perhaps no greater supporter out there for both the craftsmanship that goes into making horror and sci-fi movies and the rabid fandom that’s engrained into our very souls whenever we’re discussing our favorite movies with fellow fans (and even with non-fans, too), which is why del Toro has always been a standout presence to me ever since I first laid my eyes on Cronos while still in college in the late 1990s. Not only was he “one of us,” but he was also interested in making movies “for us,” and that hit me deep within my movie-loving soul.

So, when it was announced earlier this year that del Toro would be creating his...

A Strange Night With Coffin Joe takes place Sunday October 9th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E. Lockwood Ave.) beginning at 7:30pm. The event will consist of a double-bill of This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse (1967) and Embodiment Of Evil (2008). There will be an appearance by Raymond Castile, who played the young Coffin Joe in Embodiment Of Evil

The Webster University Film Series is going to honor José Mojica Marins with ‘A Strange Night With Coffin Joe’ which takes place Sunday, October 9th beginning at 7:30pm at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 E. Lockwood Ave.) The event will consist of a double-bill of This Night I Will Possess Your Corpse (1967) and Embodiment Of Evil (2008). This will be the first time these films have been officially screened back to back in the United States. Though made over 40 years apart, the first film directly leads into the second.

Keep up with the wild and wooly world of indie film acquisitions with our weekly Rundown of everything that’s been picked up around the globe. Check out last week’s Rundown here.

– L.A.-based outfit Strand Releasing has acquired U.S. rights to Michael O’Shea’s Cannes premiere “The Transfiguration.” The film was sold by Protagonist Pictures at Toronto, and it marks the feature debut of writer-director Michael O’Shea. The atmospheric feature puts a new spin on the vampire movie.

“Mr. O’Shea’s film is a unique hybrid that audiences and critics will be compelled by,” said Strand Releasing’s partner Jon Gerrans, who discovered the film at Cannes. No word yet on release plans.

– Oscilloscope Laboratories has announced that Joel Potrykus’s latest dark comedy, “The Alchemist Cookbook,” will be available worldwide for pay-what-you-wish via BitTorrent Now on October 7, before it screens in select theaters across the country.

Did you know cosplaying did not start off in Japan? Well, I didn’t. The word "cosplay" was invented by a Japanese reporter sent to the '84 WorldCon held in Los Angeles. He made the word cosplay to describe what he saw at the Con, people dressing up in costumes taking the words costume and play. Mashing them together he made the word ‘cosplay.’

The very first cosplays were actually sci­-fi related, and the very first documented cosplayer was actually Forry Ackerman in 1939 at WorldCon (Science Fiction Convention) held in New York City. His sci-­fi costume was a sensation at the con.

When Ackerman returned to the con 17 years later, everybody was dressed up like he was 17 years ago. Cosplaying went from sci-­fi to comic books in the 1970s. Then cosplaying went global with the rise of anime and video games in the 1980s. Japan then became...

To celebrate the success of a variety of Game of Thrones merchandise, HBO is hosting a scavenger hunt for fans at Comic-Con starting on Wednesday, July 20th at 6:00pm! Also: Famous Monsters at Sdcc 2016, Tales of Poe DVD and Digital HD release details, and info on Spell on Wheels‘ first issue debut.

Game of Thrones Sdcc 2016 Scavenger Hunt Details: Press Release: “Wednesday, July 13, 2016 — HBO Global Licensing is excited to debut a wide array of new Game of Thrones products and convention exclusives at this year’s San Diego Comic Con, and to highlight some of its bestselling products released throughout the series’ run. To help celebrate, HBO is inviting fans to participate in a Comic-Con Scavenger Hunt, sending them on a quest to find some of the coolest Game of Thrones products available on the Comic-Con floor.

Starting Wednesday, July 20th, at 6 p.m. Pt when the convention floor opens for Preview Night,...

“We used to go to the movies. Now we want the movies to come to us, on our televisions, tablets and phones, as streams running into an increasingly unnavigable ocean of media. The dispersal of movie watching across technologies and contexts follows the multiplexing of movie theaters, itself a fragmenting of the single screen theater where movie love was first concentrated and consecrated. (But even in the “good old days,” movies were often only part of an evening’s entertainment that came complete with vaudeville acts and bank nights). For all this, moviegoing still means what it always meant, joining a community, forming an audience and participating in a collective dream.” –

From the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s programming notes for its current series, “Marquee Movies: Movies on Moviegoing”

Currently under way at the Billy Wilder Theater inside the Armand Hammer Museum in Westwood, the UCLA Film and Television Archive’s far-reaching and fascinating series “Marquee Movies: Movies on Moviegoing” takes sharp aim at an overview of how the movies themselves have portrayed the act of going out to see movies during these years of seismic change in the way we see them. What’s best about the collection of films curated for the series is its scope, which sweeps along from the anything-goes exhibition of the silent era, on through an examination of the opulent era of grandiose movie palaces and post-war audience predilection for exploitation pictures, and straight into an era—ours—of a certain nostalgia for the ways we used to exclusively gather in dark places to watch visions jump out at us from the big screen. (That nostalgia, as it turns out, is often colored by a rear-view perspective on the times which contextualizes it and sometimes gives it a bitter tinge.) As the program notes for the Marquee Movies series puts it, whether you’re an American moviegoer or one from France, Italy, Argentina or Taiwan, “the current sense of loss at the passing of an exhibition era takes its place in the ongoing history of cultural and industrial transformation reflected in these films.”

The series took its inaugural bow last Friday night with a rare 35mm screening of Matinee (1993), director Joe Dante and screenwriter Charlie Haas’s vividly imagined tribute to movie love during a time in Us history which lazy writers frequently like to describe as “the point when America lost its innocence” or some other such silliness. For Americans, and for a whole lot of other people the world over, those days in 1962 during what would come to be known as the Cuban Missile Crisis felt more like days when something a whole lot more tangible than “innocence” was about to be lost, what with the Us and Russia being on the brink of nuclear confrontation and all. The movie lays down this undercurrent of fear and uncertainty as the foundation which tints its main action, that of the arrival of exploitation movie impresario Laurence Woolsey (John Goodman, channeling producer and gimmick maestro William Castle) to Key West, Florida, to promote his latest shock show, Mant!, on the very weekend that American troops set to sea, ready to fire on Russian missile installments a mere 90 miles away in Cuba.

Woolsey’s hardly worried that his potential audience will be distracted the specter of annihilation; in fact, he’s energized by it, convinced that the free-floating anxiety will translate into box office dollars contributed by nervous kids and adults looking for a safe and scary good time, a disposal cinematic depository for all their worst fears. And it certainly doesn’t matter that Woolsey’s movie is a corny sci-fi absurdity-- all the better for his particular brand of enhancements. Mant!, a lovingly sculpted mash-up of 1950s hits like The Fly and Them!, benefits from “Atomo-vision,” which incorporates variants of Castle innovations like Emergo and Percepto, as well as “Rumble-rama,” a very crude precursor to Universal’s Oscar-winning Sensurround system. The movie’s Saturday afternoon screening is where Dante and Haas really let loose their tickled and twisted imaginations, with the help of Woolsey’s theatrical enhancements.

Leading up to the fearful and farcical unleashing of Mant!, Dante stages a beautifully understated sequence that moved me to tears when I saw it with my daughters last Friday night at the Billy Wilder Theater. Matinee is seen primarily through the eyes of young Gene Loomis (Simon Fenton), a military kid whose dad is among those waiting it out on nuclear-armed boats pointed in the direction of Cuba. Gene is a monster-movie nerd (and a clear stand-in for Dante, Haas and just about anybody—like me—whose primary biblical text was provided not by that fella in the burning bush but instead by Forrest J. Ackerman within the pages of Famous Monsters of Filmland), and he manages to worm his way into Woolsey’s good graces as the producer prepares the local theater to show his picture. At one point he walks down the street in the company of the larger-than-life producer, who starts talking about his inspirations and why he makes the sort of movies he does:

“A zillion years ago, a guy’s living in a cave,” Woolsey expounds. “He goes out one day—Bam! He gets chased by a mammoth. Now, he’s scared to death, but he gets away. And when it’s all over with, he feels great.”

Gene, eager to believe but also to understand, responds quizzically-- “Well, yeah, ‘cause he’s still living.”

“Yeah, but he knows he is, and he feels it,” Woolsey counters. “So he goes home, back to the cave. First thing he does, he does a drawing of a mammoth.” (At this point the brick wall which the two of them are passing becomes a blank screen onto which Woolsey conjures an animated behemoth that entrances Gene and us.) Woolsey continues:

“He thinks, ‘People are coming to see this. Let’s make it good. Let’s make the teeth real long and the eyes real mean.’ Boom! The first monster movie. That’s probably why I still do it. You make the teeth as big as you want, then you kill it off, everything’s okay, the lights come up,” Woolsey concludes, ending his illustrative fantasy with a sigh.

But that’s not all, folks. At this point, Dante cuts to a Steadicam shot as it moves into the lobby hall of that Key West theater, past posters of Hatari!, Lonely are the Brave, Six Black Horses and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?. The tracking shot continues up the stairs, letting us get a really close look at the worn, perhaps pungent carpet, most likely the same rug that was laid down when the theater opened 30 or so years earlier, into the snack bar area, then glides over to the closed swinging doors leading into the auditorium, while Woolsey continues:

“You see, the people come into your cave with the 200-year-old carpet, the guy tears your ticket in half—it’s too late to turn back now. The water fountain’s all booby-trapped and ready, the stuff laid out on the candy counter. Then you come over here to where it’s dark-- there could be anything in there—and you say, ‘Here I am. What have you got for me?’”

Forget nostalgia for a style of moviegoing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more compact, evocative and heartfelt tribute to the space in which we used to see movies than those couple of minutes in Matinee. The shot and the narration work so vividly together that I swear I could whiff the must underlying that carpet, papered over lovingly with the smell of popcorn wafting through the confined space of that tiny snack bar, just as if I was a kid again myself, wandering into the friendly confines of the Alger Theater in Lakeview, Oregon (More on that place next week.)

Dante’s movie is a romp, no doubt, but its nostalgia is a heartier variety than what we usually get, and it leaves us with an undercurrent of uneasiness that is unusual for a genre most enough content to look back through amber. Woolsey’s words resonate for every youngster who has searched for reasons to explain their attraction to the scary side of cinema and memories of the places where those images were first encountered, but in Matinee there’s another terror with which to contend, one not so easily held at bay.

Of course the real world monster of the movie— the bomb— was also, during that weekend in 1962 and in Matinee’s representation of the missile crisis, “killed off,” making “everything okay.” But Dante makes us understand that while calm has been momentarily restored, something deeper has been forever disturbed. The movie acknowledges the societal disarray which was already under way in Vietnam, and the American South, and only months away from spilling out from Dallas and onto the greater American landscape in a way so much less containable than even the radiative effects of a single cataclysmic event. That awareness leaves Matinee with a sorrowful aftertaste that is hard to shake. The movie’s last image, of our two main characters gathered on the beach, greeting helicopters that are flying home from having hovered at the precipice of nuclear destruction, is one of relief for familial unity restored—Gene is, after all, getting his dad back. But it’s also one of foreboding. Dante leaves us with an extreme close-up of a copter looming into frame, absent even the context of the sky, bearing down on us like a real-life mutant creature, an eerie bellwether of political and societal chaos yet to come as a stout companion to the movie’s general air of celebratory remembrance.

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The “Marquee Movies” series has already seen Matinee (last Friday night), Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) paired with Polish director Wojciech Marczewski’s 1990 Escape from Liberty Island (last Saturday night), and Ettore Scola’s masterful Splendor (1989), which screened last Sunday night.

But there’s plenty more to come. Sunday, June 12, the archive series unveils a double bill of Lloyd Bacon’s Footlight Parade (1933) with the less well-known This Way, Please (1937), a terrific tale of a star-struck movie theater usherette with dreams of singing and dancing just like the stars she idolizes, starring Charles ‘Buddy’ Rogers, Betty Grable, Jim Jordan, Marian Jordan and the brilliantly grizzled Ned Sparks.

Wednesday, June 15, you can see Uruguay’s A Useful Life (2010), in which a movie theater manager in Montevideo faces up the fact that the days of his beloved movie theater are numbered, paired up with Luc Moullet’s droll account of the feud between the French film journals Cahiers du Cinema and Positif, entitled The Seats of the Alcazar (1989).

One of my favorites, Tsai Ming-liang’s haunting Goodbye, Dragon Inn (2003) gets a rare projection at the Wilder on Sunday, June 19, along with Lisandsro Alonzo’s Fantasma (2006), described by the archive as “a hypnotic commentary on cinematic rituals and presence.”

Friday, June 24, you can see, if you dare, Lamberto Bava’s gory meta-horror film Demons (1985) and then stay for Bigas Luna’s similarly twisted treatise on the movies and voyeurism, 1987’s Anguish.

Saturday afternoon, June 25, “Marquee Movies” presents a rare screening of Gregory La Cava’s hilarious slapstick spoof of rural moviegoing, His Nibs (1921), paired up with what I consider, alongside Matinee and Goodbye, Dragon Inn, one of the real jewels of the series, Basil Dearden’s marvelously funny The Smallest Show on Earth (1957), all about what happens when a newlywed couple inherits a rundown cinema populated by a staff of eccentrics that include Margaret Rutherford and Peter Sellers. (More on that one next week.)

And the series concludes on Sunday, June 26, with a screening of the original 174-minute director’s cut of Giuseppe Tornatore’s Cinema Paradiso (1988).

(Each program also features a variety of moviegoing-oriented shorts, trailers and other surprises. Click the individual links for details and show times.)

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(Next week: My review of The Smallest Show on Earth and a remembrance of my own hometown movie theater, which closed in 2015.)

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Later this year Matinee will be released by Universal in the U.S. (details to come) and by Arrow Films in the UK (with a nifty assortment of extras).

In his only Tfh commentary, the late Ib Melchior shares some backstage info on the making of this lesser-known but diverting sci fi fantasy that sports one of the most cleverly edited climaxes in the genre. That's Forry Ackerman, editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland, as one of the technicians transforming a circle into a square.

The Time Travelers can be seen online in its entirety here.