-
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…
-
The Terrors of Television
THE TERRORS OF TELEVISION A fair number of science fiction and horror pictures in the 80s betray worries over television: it fools us, it makes us violent, it brainwashes us, it substitutes illusion for reality, and it even provides a dimensional gateway for aliens or demons. Why these fears? Sociologists point first to the growing…
Claws & Saucers 