I saw an angel once. It was in the 1970’s- my first summer in Provincetown, on Cape Cod. I consumed several bad clams, got hepatitis and turned the color of a stick of Land O’Lakes butter. One morning, half-crazed with…
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If ever there was a director who deserves critical reevaluation it’s the Czech-born Hugo Haas who wrote, produced, directed and starred in over a dozen movies in the 1950s. Very few are available on home video. In Leonard Maltin’s Movie…
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When times get hard some people reach for the bottle for comfort. Others shop extravagantly to dull their depression. But for me, I always reach for a movie to find solace. There are certain key films that can always cheer…
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My favorite movies are the kind that leave you shaking in disbelief afterwards saying: “What the fuck was that?” I think they’re worthy of their own film festival. If you looked up “deranged” in the dictionary you might find any…
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There were certainly movies about criminal couples on the run before Bonnie And Clyde captivated audiences in 1968, but that controversial surprise hit became such a cultural phenomenon that it spawned countless imitators. Down the line many similarly themed movies…
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When I was young I used to lie in bed dreaming up titles of stories and movies I wanted to write. The titles always came first, before the plots. I would mull over such scintillating titles as Torture Me, Gently…
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There is no God. If there was, Kim’s Video would still be open. But I want to believe there is a heaven. Not the kind you see in picture books with angels and harps and pearly gates, but a B-movie…
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In the pantheon of showbiz families, from the Barrymores to the Baldwins, the most fascinating has to be the Ormonds. This strange bunch directed Lash La Rue westerns, took the Three Stooges on tour and made country-western hokum and sleaze…
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Many singers have transitioned nicely into movies. Look at Frank Sinatra, Barbra Streisand, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Whitney Houston, David Bowie, Bette Midler, Jennifer Hudson. But personally, I’m fascinated with the cinematic hiccups- and not the obvious disasters like Mariah…
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I was recently spring cleaning and getting rid of a lot of old VHS tapes when I came across a pile I had squirreled away in the closet that really started me laughing. In the old days, I used to…
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