Hello, everyone! It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to do an installment of my Phantom Thread series, but I’m finally back on the beat and this newest entry is quite an oddball in the realm of Phantom of the Opera-related adaptations. Directed by Gene Levitt and starring the likes of Peter Lawford, Jack Cassidy, Broderick Crawford, and Jackie Coogan (who most genre fans know from his role as Uncle Fester in the Addams Family TV series), this made-for-tv movie first aired on CBS in February 1974 and features a mysterious masked entity who is stalking the backlot of Worldwide Films as the studio prepares to sell the property off to the highest bidder.
And while there’s a lot of unevenness to The Phantom of Hollywood that makes its plotting feel choppy at times, as someone who adores the history of Old Hollywood, I...
And while there’s a lot of unevenness to The Phantom of Hollywood that makes its plotting feel choppy at times, as someone who adores the history of Old Hollywood, I...
- 2/23/2021
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
December’s home entertainment releases are starting off strong, as we have a great selection of horror and sci-fi titles to get excited for this Tuesday. First up are a pair of holiday horror films: Chris Peckover’s Better Watch Out and the awesome special edition Blu-ray for Silent Night, Deadly Night from the fine folks at Scream Factory. Twin Peaks: A Limited Event Series makes its way to both formats this week as well, and Arrow Video has put together a special edition release for The Witch Who Came From the Sea.
Other notable releases for December 5th include The Crucifixion, Dementia 13, 60 Seconds to Die, Werewolves of the Third Reich, and a 4K box set for the Men in Black trilogy.
Better Watch Out (Well Go USA, Blu-ray & DVD)
This holiday season, you may be home, but you re not alone... In this fresh and gleefully twisted spin on home-invasion horror,...
Other notable releases for December 5th include The Crucifixion, Dementia 13, 60 Seconds to Die, Werewolves of the Third Reich, and a 4K box set for the Men in Black trilogy.
Better Watch Out (Well Go USA, Blu-ray & DVD)
This holiday season, you may be home, but you re not alone... In this fresh and gleefully twisted spin on home-invasion horror,...
- 12/5/2017
- by Heather Wixson
- DailyDead
Paul Bartel’s 1975 road race movie Death Race 2000 is one of the great exploitation films of all time, a model of how to use the creative freedom of working with limited resources within a marketable genre for the purposes of subversive satire. Produced by Roger Corman, it has a deliciously nasty premise: in the (then) future, the population is kept pacified by gory reality entertainment in the form of a cross-country road race in which drivers receive points for mowing down pedestrians. Bartel and screenwriters Robert Thom and Charles Griffith milk this conceit for all that it’s worth, ramping […]...
- 2/3/2017
- by Jim Hemphill
- Filmmaker Magazine - Blog
Roger Corman's Death Race Race 2050 burns rubber on Blu-ray, DVD, and Digital HD on January 17th courtesy of Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, and to help hold fans over until that day arrives, the official cover art, trailer, and release details have now been unveiled.
Press Release: Universal City, California, October 6, 2016 – A delirious blend of high-octane action, razor-sharp political satire and full-throttle mayhem, Roger Corman’s Death Race 2050 arrives on Blu-ray™ combo pack, DVD and Digital HD January 17, 2017, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. The highly anticipated reboot of the cult classic Death Race 2000, the Universal 1440 Entertainment original production straps viewers into the driver’s seat of the ultimate auto showdown, a blood-splattered no-holds-barred virtual-reality show that gleefully pits hardened road warriors against each other — and their audience. Exclusive bonus features reveal how filmmakers transformed the deadliest competition on wheels into a hair-raising, savagely funny game of life or death.
Press Release: Universal City, California, October 6, 2016 – A delirious blend of high-octane action, razor-sharp political satire and full-throttle mayhem, Roger Corman’s Death Race 2050 arrives on Blu-ray™ combo pack, DVD and Digital HD January 17, 2017, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment. The highly anticipated reboot of the cult classic Death Race 2000, the Universal 1440 Entertainment original production straps viewers into the driver’s seat of the ultimate auto showdown, a blood-splattered no-holds-barred virtual-reality show that gleefully pits hardened road warriors against each other — and their audience. Exclusive bonus features reveal how filmmakers transformed the deadliest competition on wheels into a hair-raising, savagely funny game of life or death.
- 10/7/2016
- by Derek Anderson
- DailyDead
Shelley Winters, Christopher Jones and Diane Varsi star in American-International's most successful 'youth rebellion' epic -- a political sci-fi satire about a rock star whose opportunistic political movement overthrows the government and puts everyone over 35 into concentration camps... to be force-fed LSD. Wild in the Streets Blu-ray Olive Films 1968 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 97 min. / Street Date August 16, 2016 / available through the Olive Films website / 29.98 Starring Shelley Winters, Christopher Jones, Diane Varsi, Hal Holbrook, Millie Perkins, Richard Pryor, Bert Freed, Kevin Coughlin, Larry Bishop, Michael Margotta, Ed Begley, May Ishihara. Cinematography Richard Moore Film Editor Fred Feitshans Jr., Eve Newman Original Music Les Baxter Written by Robert Thom from his short story "The Day it All Happened, Baby" Produced by Burt Topper Directed by Barry Shear
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Back around 1965 - 1966 we endured this stupid buzzword concept called The Generation Gap, a notion that there was a natural divide between old people and their kids.
Reviewed by Glenn Erickson
Back around 1965 - 1966 we endured this stupid buzzword concept called The Generation Gap, a notion that there was a natural divide between old people and their kids.
- 8/22/2016
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
As the golden age of high-def horror continues, we aren’t just getting bells-and-whistles Blu-rays of films we never expected to receive such treatment—titles like The Mutilator and Squirm—but also of films some of us barely new existed. American Horror Project Vol. 1, the new Blu-ray box set from Arrow Video, collects three such films: low-budget independent horror movies from the 1970s that have either been forgotten or are in danger of being lost forever.
In attempting to find obscure titles that are still in good enough condition to be restored in high-def, the curators of American Horror Project Vol. 1 (among them Stephen Thrower, author of Nightmare USA, as well as books on both Lucio Fulci and Jess Franco) could easily have found esoteric films that fit the criteria but were, for lack of a more diplomatic way of saying it, better off staying lost. But that couldn’t be further from the case.
In attempting to find obscure titles that are still in good enough condition to be restored in high-def, the curators of American Horror Project Vol. 1 (among them Stephen Thrower, author of Nightmare USA, as well as books on both Lucio Fulci and Jess Franco) could easily have found esoteric films that fit the criteria but were, for lack of a more diplomatic way of saying it, better off staying lost. But that couldn’t be further from the case.
- 4/6/2016
- by Patrick Bromley
- DailyDead
In a commendable effort to save forgotten genre items either cloaked in obscurity or in danger of disappearing completely due to degrading source materials, distributor Arrow Video releases its first volume of a new series called American Horror Project. Fans of vintage indie horror from a game changing golden era should be enthused for this trio of inventive efforts even if not all live up to the excitement promised by the vibrant packaging. Lurid, carnivalesque, and even tawdry, it’s a new formidable platform for films unfairly dismissed upon release and deserving of another opportunity to provoke.
The earliest film here is the ungainly titled Malatesta’s Bucket of Blood, the 1973 debut and solo feature of Christopher Speeth. The plot synopsis promises palpable weirdness, concerning a middle aged couple, Mr. and Mrs. Norris (Paul Hostetler, Betsy Henn) who show up seeking employment at a seedy, run down carnival. Their zeal is a ruse,...
The earliest film here is the ungainly titled Malatesta’s Bucket of Blood, the 1973 debut and solo feature of Christopher Speeth. The plot synopsis promises palpable weirdness, concerning a middle aged couple, Mr. and Mrs. Norris (Paul Hostetler, Betsy Henn) who show up seeking employment at a seedy, run down carnival. Their zeal is a ruse,...
- 3/15/2016
- by Nicholas Bell
- IONCINEMA.com
‘Ryan’s Daughter’ actor Christopher Jones dead at 72: Quit acting following nervous breakdown after Sharon Tate murder, in later years turned down Quentin Tarantino movie offer Christopher Jones, who had a key role in David Lean’s 1970 romantic epic Ryan’s Daughter, died of complications from gallbladder cancer last Friday, January 31, 2014, at Los Alamitos Medical Center, approximately 35 km southwest of downtown Los Angeles. Christopher Jones (born William Franklin Jones on August 18, 1941, in Jackson, Tennessee) was 72. After growing up in a children’s home, joining the army at 16 and then going Awol, being handpicked by Tennessee Williams for a small role in the playwright’s The Night of the Iguana in 1961, and starring in the television series The Legend of Jesse James (1965-1966), Christopher Jones began getting film roles. His first was the title role in Allen H. Miner’s 1967 clash-of-generations drama Chubasco, in which Jones plays a misunderstood youth...
- 2/6/2014
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
On The Road Letter: Jack Kerouac Wanted Marlon Brando for Dean; Kerouac Would Play Sal [Photo: Leslie Caron.] On the Road was never made into a movie during Jack Kerouac's lifetime. However, the lesser-known The Subterraneans, which Kerouac mentions in his letter to Marlon Brando, was turned into an MGM movie in 1960. Needless to say, the final film had little in common with Kerouac's semi-autobiographical novella about an interethnic romance. In the Subterraneans movie, Kerouac's character, Leo Percepied, is played by George Peppard. The "colored" girl, Mardou Fox, minus the color but with the addition of a French accent is played by Leslie Caron. Others in the film's cast were Janice Rule, Roddy McDowall, Anne Seymour, and Jim Hutton (as the fictional Allan Ginsberg). Former screenwriter Ranald MacDougall (Mildred Pierce, Possessed, The Hasty Heart) directed from a screenplay by Robert Thom. "While none of the portrayals is distinguished," wrote A.H. Weiler in the New York Times,...
- 1/9/2012
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
Chicago – The year was 1959, and the film was “The Diary of Anne Frank,” based on the 1955 Pulitzer Prize winning stage play, which in turn was adapted from the famous diaries of a young girl hiding from Nazi occupiers in WWII Holland. Two actresses, Millie Perkins (Anne) and Diane Baker (her sister Margot), made their movie debuts in this renowned film.
The director of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the celebrated George Stevens, led a nationwide search for the lead teenage actress to portray Anne, after Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood and Susan Strasberg (Anne in the original play) passed on the role. The film won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress (Shelley Winters), Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography, and was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director.
Millie Perkins and Diane Baker were participating in the “Hollywood Celebrities and Memorabilia Show” in September when they talked to HollywoodChicago.com.
The director of “The Diary of Anne Frank,” the celebrated George Stevens, led a nationwide search for the lead teenage actress to portray Anne, after Audrey Hepburn, Natalie Wood and Susan Strasberg (Anne in the original play) passed on the role. The film won Academy Awards for Best Supporting Actress (Shelley Winters), Best Art Direction and Best Cinematography, and was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director.
Millie Perkins and Diane Baker were participating in the “Hollywood Celebrities and Memorabilia Show” in September when they talked to HollywoodChicago.com.
- 1/7/2012
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Filming for 'The Phantom of Hollywood' took place during the actual dismantling of the MGM backlot in the 70's which makes for an Easter-egg extravaganza for anyone with vast knowledge of classic film and television. For everyone else the film won't be nearly as easy to appreciate.
The Setup
Worldwide Films was the biggest of the big, the grandest of the grand. But the era of dream factories has gone, replaced by the era of quick-bucks real estate. It’s time to sell the studio, parcel by parcel. Not so fast, a mysterious someone says – someone who has secretly lived amid the sets and soundstages for decades, someone who will kill to preserve his backlot home.
Director: Gene Levitt
Writers: George Schenck, Robert Thom
Stars: Skye Aubrey, Jack Cassidy and Jackie Coogan
This made-for-tv film isn't really much different than the direct-to-dvd horror/thriller releases of today and...
The Setup
Worldwide Films was the biggest of the big, the grandest of the grand. But the era of dream factories has gone, replaced by the era of quick-bucks real estate. It’s time to sell the studio, parcel by parcel. Not so fast, a mysterious someone says – someone who has secretly lived amid the sets and soundstages for decades, someone who will kill to preserve his backlot home.
Director: Gene Levitt
Writers: George Schenck, Robert Thom
Stars: Skye Aubrey, Jack Cassidy and Jackie Coogan
This made-for-tv film isn't really much different than the direct-to-dvd horror/thriller releases of today and...
- 10/7/2011
- Cinelinx
It shouldn’t have worked. Going on premise alone, Death Race 2000 should have been a forgettable, dreary slog, a body-count picture with cars instead of knives. On the supplementary material to the 1975 film’s new Blu-ray release, producer Roger Corman talks about finding an original short story by Ib Melchior, liking its race-and-murder element, but deciding it needed humor to really make the transition to the big screen. He was right, and he deserves credit for the insight, but the lion’s share of the praise goes to director Paul Bartel and screenwriters Robert Thom and Charles B ...
- 7/7/2010
- avclub.com
By Dylan Stableford
We haven’t have a good ol’ fashioned media smackdown in awhile, so I must say this is quite refreshing.
On Monday, the New York Times published a story (“Under Murdoch, Tilting Rightward at The Journal”) by its “Media Equation” columnist David Carr about the ideological shift that’s occurred at the Wall Street Journal since Rupert Murdoch bought Dow Jones two years ago.
Carr writes that under the watch of Dow Jones editor Robert Thom...
We haven’t have a good ol’ fashioned media smackdown in awhile, so I must say this is quite refreshing.
On Monday, the New York Times published a story (“Under Murdoch, Tilting Rightward at The Journal”) by its “Media Equation” columnist David Carr about the ideological shift that’s occurred at the Wall Street Journal since Rupert Murdoch bought Dow Jones two years ago.
Carr writes that under the watch of Dow Jones editor Robert Thom...
- 12/14/2009
- by Dylan Stableford
- The Wrap
Several wide releases try their hand at the box office. Universal's "Death Race" incarnation starring Jason Statham unspools into around 2,400 locations. Paul W.S Anderson helms and adapts the new version based on the 1975 screenplay penned by Robert Thom, Ib Melchior and Charles B. Griffith. Also starring are Joan Allen, Ian McShane and Tyrese Gibson. Columbia Pictures' "The House Bunny" starring spoof comedy princess Anna Faris sees somewhere around 2,600 venues. Helmer Fred Wolf's track record is weak with a single directing credit for uber flop "Strange Wilderness" starring Steve Zahn. Writing is by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith of "Legally Blonde," "10 Things I Hate About You" and "Ella Enchanted" fame...
- 8/21/2008
- Upcoming-Movies.com
Several wide releases try their hand at the box office. Universal's "Death Race" incarnation starring Jason Statham unspools into around 2,400 locations. Paul W.S Anderson helms and adapts the new version based on the 1975 screenplay penned by Robert Thom, Ib Melchior and Charles B. Griffith. Also starring are Joan Allen, Ian McShane and Tyrese Gibson. Columbia Pictures' "The House Bunny" starring spoof comedy princess Anna Faris sees somewhere around 2,600 venues. Helmer Fred Wolf's track record is weak with a single directing credit for uber flop "Strange Wilderness" starring Steve Zahn. Writing is by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith of "Legally Blonde," "10 Things I Hate About You" and "Ella Enchanted" fame...
- 8/21/2008
- Upcoming-Movies.com
Several wide releases try their hand at the box office. Universal's "Death Race" incarnation starring Jason Statham unspools into around 2,400 locations. Paul W.S Anderson helms and adapts the new version based on the 1975 screenplay penned by Robert Thom, Ib Melchior and Charles B. Griffith. Also starring are Joan Allen, Ian McShane and Tyrese Gibson. Columbia Pictures' "The House Bunny" starring spoof comedy princess Anna Faris sees somewhere around 2,600 venues. Helmer Fred Wolf's track record is weak with a single directing credit for uber flop "Strange Wilderness" starring Steve Zahn. Writing is by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith of "Legally Blonde," "10 Things I Hate About You" and "Ella Enchanted" fame. Fmaily drama/comedy "The Longshots" stars Ice Cube and "Akeelah and the Bee" star Keke Palmer and is based on the true story of eleven-year-old Jasmine Plummer who became the first femal player ever to play in the Pop Warner football tournament.
- 8/21/2008
- Upcoming-Movies.com
Several wide releases try their hand at the box office. Universal's "Death Race" incarnation starring Jason Statham unspools into around 2,400 locations. Paul W.S Anderson helms and adapts the new version based on the 1975 screenplay penned by Robert Thom, Ib Melchior and Charles B. Griffith. Also starring are Joan Allen, Ian McShane and Tyrese Gibson. Columbia Pictures' "The House Bunny" starring spoof comedy princess Anna Faris sees somewhere around 2,600 venues. Helmer Fred Wolf's track record is weak with a single directing credit for uber flop "Strange Wilderness" starring Steve Zahn. Writing is by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith of "Legally Blonde," "10 Things I Hate About You" and "Ella Enchanted" fame...
- 8/21/2008
- Upcoming-Movies.com
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