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Warning: Spoilers ahead for American Primeval.

The eerie French family in Netflix's epic period Western series American Primeval draws comparisons to the cannibalistic family in a classic 1977 Wes Craven horror film. American Primeval was written by Mark L. Smith, who co-wrote the screenplay for The Revenant with Alejandro G. Iñárritu. Peter Berg directs all six episodes of American Primeval. Taylor Kitsch leads an ensemble cast as Isaac Reed, which features Betty Gilpin, Dane DeHaan, Saura Lightfoot-Leon, Shea Whigham, Lucas Neff, and Kim Coates as Brigham Young. In addition to Young, American Primeval alters several real-life historical details and figures.

Despite its 59% Rotten Tomatoes score, it earned an 86% audience score and has been in Netflix's Top 10 TV Shows in the United States since it was released on January 9, 2025. Kitsch previously starred in the Peter Berg film Lone Survivor alongside Mark Wahlberg and Berg's classic television series Friday Night Lights.

There were car chases in movies before Peter Yates' "Bullitt," but the notion of the car chase as a showstopping set piece did not really exist before Steve McQueen hopped in a Highland Green Ford Mustang Gt fastback and tore ass all over the hilly streets of San Francisco. Suddenly, vehicular mayhem was an obligatory bit of business for any action film set in the time of automobiles. And just as suddenly, these scenes became cliche-laden snoozefests shot on second-unit autopilot.

Those cliches — commandeering a civilian's car, dodging baby carriages, etc. — are not a feature of Yates' pioneering sequence, but they are key elements of Popeye Doyle's frenetic pursuit of an elevated subway train hijacked by a drug dealer's hitman in William Friedkin's "The French Connection." Did Friedkin, who passed away today at the age of 87, know he was establishing the template for the modern action movie when he terrorized Bensonhurst,...

The French Connection is famous for having one of the wildest car chases in film history, and the filming of the sequence was just as dangerous as it looks on the screen. The 1971 movie offers the perfect mix of the action and thriller genres, following a ruthless narcotics detective who embarks on a savage pursuit of Alain Charnier, a French drug dealer who secretly runs the world's largest heroin-smuggling operation. The French Connection was directed by William Friedkin, whose filmography's biggest trademark is intensity: from The Exorcist to Sorcerer, he knew how to apply high tension to every frame of a movie.

The great car chase scene that made The French Connection so famous was ahead of its time and only becomes more impactful within the context of the movie. In the anxiety-inducing scene, detective Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) desperately runs after Charnier (Fernando Rey) but misses him when the...

Legendary stuntman Buddy Joe Hooker joins Josh and Joe to discuss the movies that made him.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Harold And Maude (1971)

White Lightning (1974)

Blazing Saddles (1974)

White Line Fever (1975)

Bound For Glory (1976)

Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)

The Outsider (1980)

Freebie And The Bean (1978)

Sharky’s Machine (1981)

First Blood (1982)

Night Shift (1982)

Rumble Fish (1983)

Against All Odds (1984)

To Live And Die In L.A. (1985)

F/X (1986)

Tucker The Man And His Dream (1988)

Sea of Love (1989)

Miami Blues (1990)

Thelma & Louise (1991)

Demolition Man (1993)

The Crow (1994)

Waterworld (1995)

From Dusk Till Dawn(1996)

Grosse Point Blank (1997)

Django Unchained (2012)

Kiss Meets The Phantom Of The Park (1978)

Once Upon A Time In Hollywood (2019)

Seven Samurai (1954)

Kagemusha (1980)

Ran (1985)

The Fugitive (1993)

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

The Bourne Identity (2002)

Casino Royale (2006)

Quantum of Solace (2008)

The Fast And The Furious (2001)

The Strongest Man In The World (1975)

The War of the Worlds (1953)

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Bullitt (1968)

Robbery (1967)

S.O.B. (1981)

Vanishing Point...

He-bull womanizer Robert Mitchum spars with wife Eleanor Parker for the future of their son George Hamilton in Vincente Minnelli’s attractive, sprawling tale of cruel family unrest. The real winners in the picture are the fresh-faced George Peppard and Luana Patten, whose small-town romance is more interesting than the main bout.

Home from the Hill

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1960 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 150 min. / Street Date August 14, 2018 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Robert Mitchum, Eleanor Parker, George Peppard, George Hamilton, Everett Sloane, Luana Patten, Constance Ford, Ray Teal, Bill Hickman, Denver Pyle, Stuart Randall, Dub Taylor, Guinn ‘Big Boy’ Williams.

Cinematography: Milton Krasner

Film Editor: Harold F. Kress

Original Music: Bronislau Kaper

Written by Harriet Frank Jr., Irving Ravetch from the novel by William Humphrey

Produced by Edmund Grainger, Sol C. Siegel

Directed by Vincente Minnelli

Two and a half hours for a dramatic film was considered long in 1960, but...

Philip D’Antoni, producer of the first R-Rated film to win the Oscar for Best Picture, “The French Connection,” died last week of kidney failure, according to his son-in-law, Mark Rathaus. He was 89.

D’Antoni made his name in the ’60s and ’70s as a producer of films with iconic car chases. In “French Connection,” New York detective Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle (Gene Hackman) chases down a subway train holding a wanted sniper with a stranger’s Pontiac. D’Antoni was also producer on the famous 1968 crime film “Bullitt,” which is known for a climactic car chase through the streets of San Francisco with Steve McQueen behind the wheel of a Ford Mustang.

Also Read: Verne Troyer, Mini-Me Actor in 'Austin Powers,' Dies at 49

After those films, D’Antoni also served as producer on several more crime movies and TV shows, including ABC’s “Strike Force,” and the 1973 Roy Scheider film “The Seven-Ups,” the latter of which he also directed.

Like “Bullitt” and “French Connection,” “Seven-Ups” features a major car chase, with Bill Hickman getting chased by Scheider in a pursuit on the streets of New York in a pair of Pontiacs. In all three films, Hickman was involved as a stunt driver in the chase sequences.

Also Read: Avicii Mourned by Calvin Harris, Zedd, Liam Payne: 'I'm Crying on the Airplane'

New Hollywood filmmaker William Friedkin, who directed “The French Connection,” honored his friend and collaborator on Twitter.

Phil D’Antoni. My friend and the great producer

Of The French Connection has died. May he Rest

In peace

– William Friedkin (@WilliamFriedkin) April 23, 2018

D’Antoni is survived by his wife, five children, and nine grandchildren.

Read original story Philip D’Antoni, ‘French Connection’ Producer, Dies at 89 At TheWrap...

Forget All Singing! – All Dancing! Tonight’s bill of fare is wall-to-wall high grade crime action. Roy Scheider leads a great cast in an all-New Yawk tale of gangsters, kidnapping and betrayal. The police tactics of Scheider’s special felony crime squad would today land them all in jail, but they’re all stand-up guys. And buckle up for one of the best, most realistic pre-cgi auto chase scenes ever filmed.

The Seven-Ups

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1973 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 103 min. / Street Date March 20, 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Roy Scheider, Tony Lo Bianco, Victor Arnold, Jerry Leon, Ken Kercheval, Larry Haines, Richard Lynch, Bill Hickman, Joe Spinell.

Cinematography: Urs Furrer

Film Editors: Jerry Greenberg, John C. Horger, Stephen A. Rotter

Stunt Coordinator: Bill Hickman

Original Music: Don Ellis

Written by Sonny Grosso, Alexander Jacobs, Albert Ruben

Produced by Philip D’Antoni, Kenneth Utt, Barry J. Weitz

Directed...

There’s nothing like a good car chase in a movie. Maybe it’s the daring-do of the stunt drivers that makes you feel you’re in danger even though you’re comfortably in your seat, or the high stakes of the moment in which the characters we’re rooting for will either get out of the situation or have a gruesome finale, but an impressive car-chase scene can make even a mediocre movie a beloved classic. What makes a car chase legendary, you ask? They’re the ones that keep you at the edge of your seat and actually fit in with the rest of the plot.

Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver opens Wednesday, June 28th. Baby (Ansel Elgort), is an innocent-looking getaway driver who gets hardened criminals from point A to point B, with daredevil flair and a personal soundtrack running through his head. That’s because he...

Stop! Don't touch that dial... if you like your atom-age propaganda straight up, MGM has the movie for you, an expensive 1946 docu-drama that became 'the official story' for the making of the bomb. The huge cast includes Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker, Tom Drake, Audrey Totter, Hume Cronyn, Hurd Hatfield, and Joseph Calleia. How trustworthy is the movie? It begins by showing footage of a time capsule being buried -- that supposedly contains the film we are watching. Think about that. Mom, Apple Pie, the Flag and God are enlisted to argume that we should stop worrying and love the fact that bombs are just peachy-keen dandy. The Beginning or the End DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 112 min. / Street Date September 22, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Brian Donlevy, Robert Walker, Tom Drake, Beverly Tyler, Audrey Totter, Hume Cronyn, Hurd Hatfield, Joseph Calleia, Godfrey Tearle, Victor Francen,...

Robert Mitchum ca. late 1940s. Robert Mitchum movies 'The Yakuza,' 'Ryan's Daughter' on TCM Today, Aug. 12, '15, Turner Classic Movies' “Summer Under the Stars” series is highlighting the career of Robert Mitchum. Two of the films being shown this evening are The Yakuza and Ryan's Daughter. The former is one of the disappointingly few TCM premieres this month. (See TCM's Robert Mitchum movie schedule further below.) Despite his film noir background, Robert Mitchum was a somewhat unusual choice to star in The Yakuza (1975), a crime thriller set in the Japanese underworld. Ryan's Daughter or no, Mitchum hadn't been a box office draw in quite some time; in the mid-'70s, one would have expected a Warner Bros. release directed by Sydney Pollack – who had recently handled the likes of Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, and Robert Redford – to star someone like Jack Nicholson or Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman.

By

Alex Simon

Hollywood, like any place that is more about its lore than the actual sum of its parts, is full of unsung heroes who have given audiences some of their most cherished cinematic moments. Odds are if you’re a movie buff, you’ll remember the car chases in iconic films like Bullitt, The French Connection and The Seven-Ups. Stuntman, stunt driver and later, stunt coordinator Bill Hickman was one of those people who remained virtually anonymous during his lifetime, but is responsible for some of cinema’s most iconic, and hair-raising moments.

The Los Angeles native was born in 1921 and had been working in Hollywood for ten years before landing his first (visible) role in Stanley Kramer’s legendary The Wild One, the 1953 film that cemented star Marlon Brando’s status as an icon of post-war teen rebellion. Hickman can be seen as one of Brando’s...

Veterans Day movies on TCM: From 'The Sullivans' to 'Patton' (photo: George C. Scott in 'Patton') This evening, Turner Classic Movies is presenting five war or war-related films in celebration of Veterans Day. For those outside the United States, Veterans Day is not to be confused with Memorial Day, which takes place in late May. (Scroll down to check out TCM's Veterans Day movie schedule.) It's good to be aware that in the last century alone, the U.S. has been involved in more than a dozen armed conflicts, from World War I to the invasion of Iraq, not including direct or indirect military interventions in countries as disparate as Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. As to be expected in a society that reveres people in uniform, American war movies have almost invariably glorified American soldiers even in those rare instances when they have dared to criticize the military establishment.

By Todd Garbarini

Scream Factory continues their winning streak of releasing horror film favorites with their double feature Blu-ray release of 1988’s Bad Dreams and 1982’s Visiting Hours. They originally released these films together on DVD in September 2011.

Bad Dreams opened on Friday, April 8, 1988 and is, in hindsight, eerily prescient of David Koresh, the leader of the Branch Davidian religious sect who met a horrific end when the FBI closed in on him and his compound ignited into a conflagration on April 19, 1993 in Waco, TX. Jim Jones and the Jonestown deaths in 1978 also come to mind. In this film, the late Richard Lynch plays a cult leader named Harris who convinces a group of people that love and unity are the only ways to live, and he shows that love by dousing them all in gasoline and lighting them on fire. Jennifer Rubin plays Cynthia, a confused and reluctant holdout...

Review by Sam Moffitt

The private investigator has been with us for years, decades really. When I was younger I read as many private eye mysteries as I did science fiction and horror novels and short stories. I read as much of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett and Mickey Spillane as I could find. I also read a lot of the two MacDonald’s, Ross MacDonald’s novels about Lew Archer (one of which made a great movie with Paul Newman as Harper) and John D. MacDonald’s novels about Travis McGee. Although McGee was not strictly speaking a Pi he still functioned as one in MacDonald’s color coded novels like Darker Than Amber (which made a great movie with Rod Taylor).

I used to stay up late to watch classic private eye movies like The Maltese Falcon, Kiss Me Deadly (the best Mike Hammer movie ever, seriously!) Murder My Sweet,...

Director/Writer Patrick Lussier and writer Todd Farmer put together a list of their favorite cinematic car chases in honor of Drive Angry that will hit theaters February 25, 2011.Hit the jump to see the list and what they think about each scene.<b>Crazy Mary, Dirty Larry</b> (Patrick)The Helicopter/Car Chase. Near the climax of this film, Peter Fonda, Susan George and Adam Roarke are desperately trying to flee police captain Vic Morrow. What's amazing in this is the helicopter-to-car action that was clearly actually done. Long before CG was even thought of, the stunt performers and actors are driving at unbelievable speeds. What's more incredible is that in several shots it is clearly the actors themselves behind the wheel with the helicopter perilously close, and several shots of Vic Morrow in the front seat of the chopper are terrifying as it flies ever closer to Peter Fonda's Charger.

Summit Entertainment has release a bad-ass motion poster:

Also, director Patrick Lussier and writer Todd Farmer unveil their top car chases in movies:

Crazy Mary, Dirty Larry (Patrick)

The Helicopter/Car Chase. Near the climax of this film, Peter Fonda, Susan George and Adam Roarke are desperately trying to flee police captain Vic Morrow. What’s amazing in this is the helicopter-to-car action that was clearly actually done. Long before CG was even thought of, the stunt performers and actors are driving at unbelievable speeds. What’s more incredible is that in several shots it is clearly the actors themselves behind the wheel with the helicopter perilously close, and several shots of Vic Morrow in the front seat of the chopper are terrifying as it flies ever closer to Peter Fonda’s Charger.

The Bourne Identity (Todd)

Every so often the Bond films will lose their way, thus thank goodness for Jason Bourne.

The car chase scene in Steve McQueen's Bullitt will always be my choice for the greatest sequence of its kind, but a close second appeared in William Friedkin's The French Connection.

In that scene, Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle (Gene Hackman) is forced to chase down an elevated train by driving like a madman through the crowded New York City streets. It's no easy task, as the cop repeatedly hits other vehicles, nearly kills innocent pedestrians and crashes into a wall or two on his quest to keep pace with the train. It's a fantastic driving sequence and they really don't make them like this anymore.

AFI had an open forum interview with director William Friedkin and the filmmaker tells some really great stories about how he and the crew got the scene they wanted. Friedkin talks about how he motivated famous stunt driver Bill Hickman to give him his best effort.

When referring to a movie that nabbed a second life, typically home video is the savior. There are countless movies that didn’t fare well in their original theatrical runs but have earned a so-called second life thanks to profitable video sales and rentals that make them much stronger than they ever were when they first arrived. Examples of this trend vary greatly, whether you’re referring to genre, era, proliferation (or magnitude of the “second life”) and, of course, how deserving it is. Most that get a boost long after its premiere got where it is now slowly, spread wide by word of mouth and critical re-analysis. Most of them were not well received during the initial run, and many are re-evaluated, and mistakes are mended. Among them: 2001, The Princess Bride, The Day the Earth Stood Still, The Big Lebowski, Fight Club, Office Space and Dazed and Confused. These...