Arch Oboler’s ‘Bwana Devil’ Mauls the First 3D Movie Audience
Arch Oboler’s Bwana Devil kicked off the 1950s 3D movies craze with a man-eating lion story, and 70s years later it’s trying to get its claws into audiences.
Michael Barrett
Michael Barrett works in a public library. For more than 20 years, he wrote a monthly video column in the San Antonio Express News stressing classic and foreign films. His national publications include Video Watchdog, Nostalgia Digest and Retro Cinema. He's also written scripts that still await their destiny.
Silent Film Restorations ‘The Craving’ and ‘Annie Laurie’ Radiate the Medium
Francis Ford was an important silent film actor and director, and not just for being John Ford’s brother. Star Lillian Gish had the clout to get what she wanted.
Animated Sci-Fi ‘The Time Masters’ Challenges Conformity
René Laloux’s conformity-challenging animated sci-fi The Time Masters resonates with Hayao Miyazaki films and Jack Vance novels.
The Living Dead’s Problems in Spanish Horror Movies
These Spanish horror movies tapped into the anxieties of the final years of General Franco’s dictatorship while pretending to be merely tales set in foreign countries.
‘Six in Paris’ Cuts the City into New Wave Slices of Sex and Death
Filming with a handheld 16mm color camera, six filmmakers offer a cohesive snapshot of 1966 Paris and their obsessions with sex and death.
Mexico’s Golden Age of Cinematic Melodrama: ‘Victims of Sin’
In Emilio Fernández’s Victims of Sin, a galaxy of important Mexican film and music artists collaborate on a tale of mambo music, martyred mothers, and melodrama.
Retro Monsters and Sexual Politics Dominate These Three Sci-Fi Movies
Sci-fi movies Unknown Terror, The Colossus of New York and Destination Inner Space inject monsters into personal melodrama for masculine redemption.
Two Southern-Fried Slices of Sordid ’60s Hicksploitation Films
Angry old men, sexy strumpets, moonshiners, corrupt sheriffs, and dumb farmhands populate them thar hills in these two low-budget ’60s hicksploitation films.
Familial Neurosis in ‘Never Open That Door’ Film-Noirs
The family is the source of neurosis, and any hint of an allegedly happy ending in these three film-noirs must happen over someone’s dead body.
Feminine Discontents in ‘Back from the Dead’ and ‘The Other One’
Catherine Turney, a top-drawer writer of classic films about strong women, adapts her supernatural novel The Other One for Back from the Dead.
‘Time of the Heathen’ Mixes Atomic Angst with Racial Woes
Time of the Heathen is a nightmarish, hyper-edited, avant-garde freak-out as atomic angst and racial woes wend their way toward Shakespearean tragedy.
Philosophies and Ironies in Éric Rohmer’s ‘Tales of the Four Seasons’
In Éric Rohmer’s ‘Tales of the Four Seasons’, everything exists on an elevated Expressionist plane; every detail dovetails into its hermetic philosophies and ironies.