Expelled Grey Matter

Before Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Deodato Ruggiero, there was one undisputed king of Italian horror: Mario Bava.  Truthfully, it wasn't hard to be such when he was the only one making such movies for a while.  Benito Mussolini, during his time as the country's dictator, had banned the making of horror films, and most post-war Italian directors seemed more interested in either more realistic or artistic cinematic pursuits.   Bava himself was born to a father who worked in cinema, so young Mario followed in his footsteps and soon became one of  the most in-demand cinematographers in the country.  Thus, when he finally got to do his own film, the studio had confidence in him, giving him a larger budget and an extended shooting schedule.  Their faith was rewarded as La maschera del demonio , known internationally as Black Sunday , not only made money for Galatea Studios in Italy, but became American International's biggest hit up to that point in the United States.   In the

Dario Argento, before becoming internationally famous for his horror films, had made a name for himself in the Italian giallo genre.  Giallo is a specific type of Italian crime movie, usually dealing with a serial killer, combining amateur detective work and police procedural with a number of gruesome murders and, as the genre went on, buxom victims.  While Argento did not invent the genre - Mario Bava pretty much worked out the bare bones of it with Blood and Black Lace - he became the one that popularized it and, eventually, mastered it, becoming known as the "Italian Hitchcock".  That all started with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage. Sam Dalmas (Tony Musante) is an American writer that has come to Italy to attempt to get over his writer's block.  He is about to return to the United States with his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall) when he witnesses a woman named Monica (Eva Renzi) struggling with a black-clad figure in an art gallery.  He begins working, reluctantly a

For some reason I had always thought Memento was Christopher Nolan's first movie, and I was all set and prepared to watch it again.  Then I found out his first was a small, minimal-budget noir film that barely makes it to the feature movie length called Following .  Since his success with the Batman trilogy his movies have largely been big-budget affairs, full of CGI and practical effects, with big stars and lots of money invested.  Memento was the only one I could remember that was not, so I figured it would be interesting to see what he could do when he had to keep things simple. The Young Man (Jeremy Theobald) is an unemployed writer who begins to follow random people to see where they go.  Originally making sure he only follows people once, his curiosity gets the best of him and he starts repeatedly following a man with a bag.  That man turns out to be Cobb (Alex Haw), a burglar who is more in it for the voyeurism than for the valuables, although he still makes sure he makes mo

Like most recent years 2020 was scheduled to be filled with loads of expensive blockbusters.  It was to be another routine year of dull, workmanlike action films aimed at the Chinese market while totally ignoring that there was an audience at home that may be hoping for something to look forward to other than Marvel films.  It was poised to be another year in which big budget films barely broke even or flopped hard.  What was not predicted is that the biggest summer hits were going to be small screenings of 30- to 40-year-old movies.  Instead of its second sequel, Ghostbusters was once again number one at the box office.   This was all due to a pandemic and, regardless of one's view on whether there was an overreaction, the fact is that almost every movie theater in the United States was shut down from March until early fall, completely wiping out the entire blockbuster season.  Even though things supposedly got better in China, they weren't as lucrative either.  With the only

Jonathan Demme is a director that more people outside of those that follow movies should know.  He was the director of The Silence of the Lambs , a movie I still consider my favorite of all time.  However, he had a long and varied career.  He won an Oscars for both that film and Philadelphia , one of the early mainstream films to to tackle the AIDS crisis.  In addition he directed Stop Making Sense , which is one of the best concert films ever made, as well as shorter concert films such as Storefront Hitchcock.  He had comedies, dramas and just about everything under his belt - including this tongue-in-cheek women in prison film.  Caged Heat was his first movie as a director.  He had written The Hot Box  and Black Mama White Mama, among other similar exploitation films for Roger Corman, so it was no surprise that out of the gate he would do a similar type of film.  However, in this case, he brought it back to the United States and set it in the South.  He also didn't make any effor

David Cronenberg is a man with a lot of issues and these have frequently spilled out into his movies.  In particular he has had an obsession over the years with various horrors being done to the human body.  The follow-ups to this movie - Rabid and The Brood  - manage to handle his themes better, with the strange obsessions he has with parasitic infections and venereal disease.  The roots of that can be found in Shivers  which, in some ways, seems to be a dry run for Rabid .  Starliner Apartments is an exclusive residential block on an island in Montreal.  Unfortunately, it's also the home Dr. Hobbes (Fred Doederlin), who has been doing experiments on a young student named Annabelle (Cathy Graham).  Originally a project in partnership with Dr. Rollo Linsky (Joe Silver) to replace organs with benign parasites, Hobbes instead decided to breed something that would free humans of sexual inhibitions.  Hobbes has second thoughts and kills Annabelle (and then himself) to make sure the par

David Lynch is almost expected these days to produce a movie that is made up of strange scenes that barely fit together as a whole.  That is strange since early Lynch, including Eraserhead , is pretty straightforward in its approach to film making.  Keep in mind that after presenting what is a unique vision of his own his next two movies were The Elephant Man  and Dune .  Both had elements that were definitely Lynch, but were in no way as tricky a narrative as later movies like Lost Highway .  The next movie he wrote on purely original idea of  his own - Blue Velvet - didn't really stray from a traditional narrative either.  I understand how many people who have seen the film would wonder how  Eraserhead can be considered a traditional narrative.  While it is surreal, recalling often in both style and humor the short films that Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel made together, it has a rather clear plot - only that it is distorted by the fact that the main character is dreaming it.  Man

It is hard to believe but "reality television" has been around so long now that, even though there are still complaints about it being the lowest common denominator is programming, it really isn't that shocking anymore.  From The Real World to Keeping Up with the Kardashians , the idea of watching others' lives - especially if they have much more money than most of the audience, and behave trashier - is no longer something reserved for "what if?" movies.  For those who put down one type of reality programming there is still something for those who want to pretend they are watching something different, or more high-brow.  I watched at least a couple of seasons of The Osbournes  myself, enjoyed seeing b-list celebrities (and Jane Wiedlin) on The Surreal Life and still like to watch cooking competition shows.  While I would never watch anything with the words Real Housewives or Honey Boo-Boo  in them, it really comes down to degrees of trash television.  Some o

The problem with expanding on a student film to make it watchable for a general audience is not just budget, but often getting rid of certain pretentions.  Luckily John Carpenter didn't have that worry; Dark Star was his student film, made with a number of his friends and cowritten with Dan O'Bannon, who famously would go on to write the script for Alien after Alejandro Jodorowsky's attempt to bring Dune to the big screen failed. Carpenter, rather than making an experimental film with poetry readings and a heavy dose of "meaning" went ahead and made a goofy science fiction film.  As can be imagined this was difficult with the budget he had, but he managed to repurpose children's astronaut costumes, household items and actual trash to build sets as well as dress his characters.  He combines ideas from a myriad of science fiction authors, from Ray Bradbury to Philip K. Dick, with enough new material to make it work.  His goal was to make a great student film. 

I always thought that, like the first Piranha film, this was another quickie done by Roger Corman.  Instead, it was produced (and mostly directed) by an Italian film maker named Ovidio G. Assonitis.  As a stipulation for doing the film it had to have an American director, so Assonitis early on decided he would get someone whose name would be on it to fulfill that need, but whom he could fire almost immediately so he could take over the project.  James Cameron didn't know any of this.  Assonitis had originally hired Millard Clark, who had worked with Corman, but got rid of him almost immediately.  Cameron had been responsible for the special effects and set design on Galaxy of Terror , one of Corman's Alien knock-offs, and came highly recommended.  Unfortunately, when Cameron arrived in Jamaica, he found that nothing had been scouted and practically no preparation was made for the film.  He rewrote the script, scouted locations, made a number of the rubber puppets that would be

Roger Corman and his company, New World Pictures, were like the Asylum of the 1970s and 1980s - except, unlike Asylum, often Corman's copycat and ripoff films were enjoyable.  Also, unlike Asylum, Corman famously allowed those who worked on his movies and showed some sort of talent to get the break they needed to get into the business.  So it was that Joe Dante made his official directorial debut with a Jaws knockoff called Piranha, written by none other than John Sayles, who would also go on to become a popular independent director.  Joe Dante may not be a big household name, but he is the guy behind such movies as Gremlins , The Howling and The 'Burbs.  His horror films often have humorous elements to them and, even though Sayles is largely responsible for that this time around, it is something that Dante learned to temper his movies with.  In addition to working with Corman he had also been responsible for a compilation of horror film scenes that aired on television in the

Both William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy had a clause in their contracts when it came to Star Trek .  If one got a raise, or got to do something, the other was supposed to get the same treatment.  It was one of those things that happened over the years as it became apparent that, until Star Trek: The Next Generation , there was no use doing the show or movies without the two present.  So, after Nimoy got his chance to direct Star Trek III: The Search for Spock  and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home , it was now William Shatner's turn.   Like Nimoy before him Shatner had some previous experience directing for television, mainly for his series T. J. Hooker .  That meant he wasn't going into it blind, but it was his first feature film.  He had some pressure to do it right so, even though Harve Bennett had just about had it with Star Trek , he convinced the cowriter of the last three entries to stay on and help him out with the story he had developed, with David Loughery helping to flesh