Claws & Saucers

  • “Peggy Sue Got Married” (1986) Review

    PEGGY SUE GOT MARRIED (Francis Ford Coppola, 103 min, color, 1986) What’s Happening:  Middle-aged heroine awakens as her 18-year-old self Famous For: Coppola’s most sensitive film It’s also his most nostalgic film, taking the heroine back to 1960 when Coppola and his generation would be in high school or college.  The cars, clothes, music, furnishings,…

  • GIALLO CINEMA: SEX AND MURDER, ITALIAN STYLE

    GIALLO CINEMA: SEX AND MURDER, ITALIAN STYLE In an earlier article, I discussed Italy’s sword-and-sandal “peplum” movies.  These movies yielded to Italian “Spaghetti” Westerns by 1965.  But the Westerns yielded to giallo movies (“gialli” in plural) by 1970.  The first gialli actually appeared alongside the first Westerns, around 1964.  But it wasn’t until 1970 that…

  • “Bad Taste” (1987) Review

    BAD TASTE (Peter Jackson, 92 min, color, 1987) What’s Happening: Goofy commandos battle aliens seeking to market humans as food Famous For: First feature film from director of Lord of the Rings Considering that Bad Taste started as a short inspired by Phantasm and Evil Dead, got expanded into a feature film on weekends over…

  • Master Of Suspense: An Alfred Hitchcock Primer

    MASTER OF SUSPENSE: AN ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRIMER Alfred Hitchcock made A LOT of movies.  We’ve heard of many of them, we’ve seen a few of them, but when it comes to really nailing things down – really describing what makes Hitchcock so great – we tend to balk because of the sheer volume that lies…

  • “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988) Review

    “WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT” (1988) REVIEW WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT (Robert Zemeckis, 104 min, color, 1988) What’s Happening: Murder mystery in 1940s Hollywood where cartoon characters live for real Famous For: Perfect synchrony among live and animated characters Hugely ambitious, highly original, very complicated to produce, and very expensive to create, Roger Rabbit was also…