English Mono

Intro

Here we have perhaps the most ambitious of all the biblical epics. John Huston’s film isn’t content with dealing with just one story from the Bible. Oh no. This is the first 22 chapters of Genesis. Needless to say, the scope is BIG.

Synopsis

Do you know your Book of Genesis? Then you know the plot. God creates the world, Adam and Eve screw up, Noah collects the animals, the tower of Babel is overthrown, and so on right up to Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac. Huston gathered a big cas...

Intro

It’s amazing the effect that the passage of time has. It was hard to find a series that had a cheaper and nastier reputation than the Friday the 13th films back when they were first released. Now, in the wake of the slick postmodernism of Scream and its ilk, these slashers seem oddly quaint and innocent. Watching one is an exercise in Generation X nostalgia, and not at all an unpleasant one at that.

Synopsis

If you really don’t know what happens in a Friday the 13th flick, then you should be reading a different review. But for those of you who tuned in late, Tommy, who killed Jason at the end of Part IV, is now a seriously disturbed young man.

Intro

“If you have a taste for terror, you have a date with CARRIE.” So intones the original theatrical trailer for 1976’s “Carrie,” Brian de Palma’s cinematic adaptation of Stephen King’s identically named novel. This is a revenge story: Carrie is a high school student (at “Bates High” – yes this did come out after Psycho) who is tormented by her peers for her lack of physical prowess, weird family, homeliness, et cetera. Her contemporaries mysteriously overlook that fact that she is telekinetic and can...

Intro

This was the last of the notable Rat Pack films. No more Sinatra and Martin after this, only dire stuff with Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford.

Synopsis

We’re in pretty familiar territory here. Call it Rat Maverick. Sinatra and Martin are cowboys engaged in jocular warfare over big money and the riverboat scene. They don’t really want to kill each other. Victor Buono and Charles Bronson, on the other hand, DO want to put paid to our heroes. Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress provide...