Original Cinemaniac

Movie Reviews by Dennis Dermody

The Deadly Spawn

            This scrappy, gory 1982 sci-fi cult classic, locally made on a low budget but with phenomenal special effects, is about a meteorite that crashes to earth carrying toothy little alien horrors which take up residence in the watery basement of…
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This Property is Condemned

            Out now from Imprint is a stunning-looking Blu-ray of an oddball 1966 Tennessee Williams adaptation, This Property is Condemned, starring Natalie Wood, Robert Redford, Kate Reid, Charles Bronson and Mary Badham. Studios at the time were strip-mining anything Tennessee Williams,…
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An Officer and a Spy

            Roman Polanski’s mesmerizing, exquisitely told account of the notorious “Dreyfus Affair” in France in 1894 when a 35-year-old Jewish French artillery officer- Alfred Dreyfus (Louis Garrel)- was wrongfully accused of treason, stripped of his rank and exiled to solitary confinement…
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The Big Heat

            Pauline Kael described Fritz Lang’s 1953 film The Big Heat as “A definitive film noir…it’s designed in light and shadows, and its underworld atmosphere glistens with the possibilities of sadism.” Criterion has just put out a stunning 4K UHD Blu-ray…
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