Although "Shogun Assassin" was on my movie wish list Google Doc for several months, I never officially ordered it, nor did any of my loved ones or dear friends that have access to the list. So I am at an utter loss as to how it arrived at my doorstep a month ago. It must …
Richard Brooks’ “Fever Pitch”: The Erratic End to an Erratic Career
"You could live a long time and never see anything as awful as ''Fever Pitch,''' begins Janet Maslin's November 1985 New York Times review of director/writer Richard Brooks' final film. While she's not entirely wrong, I am saddened that there is not a wider audience for this movie, at least among camp/cult film lovers. I …
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Critic-Proof Wackiness: The Films of Charlie Loventhal
Imagine you're an insecure, unimposing male freshman at a school dominated by forthright, often angry women. Overwhelmed by your regular academic schedule, by the often humorless discourse in your psychology class (in which you are the only male student), you enroll in a film studies course, where you hope your goofy pluck will endear you …
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No Longer on Netflix: “Divorcing Jack” and “Enter the Ninja”
Since this blog is primarily about films not on Netflix, that should not exclude films that were on Netflix for a significant time and are now floating through the ether, looking for new distribution deals. Netflix has an annoying habit of telling viewers, last minute, that anywhere between 10 and 50 films available for streaming …
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“Over the Brooklyn Bridge” (1984)
After the financially struggling Cannon Films came under the ownership of Israeli producers/cousins Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, in 1979, the duo quickly boosted its profits by producing--and tirelessly promoting--schlocky, low-budget exploitation pictures. The model worked, and until the company's demise and takeover by an MGM affiliate in the late 1980s, it released a slew …
Jonathan Demme’s “Fighting Mad” (1976)
"Fighting Mad" (1976), the third film directed by Jonathan Demme ("Silence of the Lambs," "Rachel Getting Married"), and the only one of his films not listed on Netflix, has little of the quirky, whimsical touches that Demme suffused later efforts with. He would prove to be more at home with the small-time eccentrics that populated …
Enviable Debauchery: Interview with Norman Thaddeus Vane
Director/writer Norman Thaddeus Vane has certainly led a full life, if not always a successful one. He was a ladies man in high school in Long Island, in the hip Swinging Sixties nightclubs of Chelsea, London (some of which he owned and operated), in the Hollywood Hills during the sex-crazed 1970s and early 1980s. Judging …
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“Club Life” and the Oeuvre of Norman Thaddeus Vane
"Club Life," the mid-1980s saga of a young, cocky club bouncer's rise, fall and redemption (written and directed by Norman Thaddeus Vane), is the first movie I collected for this blog (off Amazon.com) that I decided to keep. I'd been curious about it since grade school, when I read a one-out-of-four star review in "Rating …
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My Life as a Sequel: Interview with “Drawing with Chalk’s” Todd Giglio
If you'd talked to aspiring filmmaker/musician Todd Giglio five years ago about his personal artistic struggles, his story would basically follow the same trajectory as that of anyone who flirted briefly with fame during his twenties. He majored in theater at SUNY Fredonia, graduated in 1990 and relocated a year later to New York City's …
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Interview with Paul Lynch
Paul Lynch's fascination with movies began at the age of 10. Saving up money from his part-time job of--in his words--walking horses on the beach, in the British seaside town of Hoylake, he bought a picture book of movie stars, but his mother made him return it, since money was tight for his working-class family. …
Hidden Films 