Welcome to BlogHub: the Best in Veteran and Emerging Classic Movie Blogs
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943, Roy William Neill)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 26, 2010
Of all the Universal monster movies, The Wolf Man “deserved” a real sequel most. With Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, Lon Chaney Jr.’s abilities to essay the Larry Talbot role really shine through. I’ve read (and maybe even repeated here) Chaney never gets credit for playin read more
Don’t Bet On Love (1933, Murray Roth)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 12, 2010
Ayres is a degenerate gambler (who cleans up nice) and Rogers is the girl who loves him, despite herself, of course, in this breezy melodrama. In terms of particulars, it has almost nothing to recommend it. Ayres is a little bit too believable as the callous lead, who purposely eschews all advice a read more
Remember Last Night? (1935, James Whale)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 10, 2010
I wish I knew if Remember Last Night? is supposed to be a knock-off of The Thin Man or if it’s just a highly coincidental release, coming a year later, with a similarly intoxicated, ritzy couple solving crimes as they get more intoxicated (Robert Young and Constance Cummings play the couple i read more
A Christmas Story (1983, Bob Clark)
The Stop Button Posted by on Feb 5, 2010
I don’t get A Christmas Story‘s continued success. I mean, I get its initial success (I grew up with it, on video, and remember my friends talking about it before I got to see it and the film living up to expectations), but it’s hard to believe people still like it. I mean, what d read more
Wolfen (1981, Michael Wadleigh)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 27, 2010
Even with Albert Finney’s hair style, which seems to be inspired by a drag queen who just doesn’t care, Wolfen is a beautifully made film. The big action sequence at the end (the film’s genre progresses from police procedural to horror to thriller–Finney’s investigatio read more
Christmas Vacation (1989, Jeremiah S. Chechik)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 25, 2010
It’s telling how Christmas Vacation is probably John Hughes’s best film and no one noticed it when it came out. I mean, it’s got its problems–the introductory first half, where all the characters are established and Chevy Chase and company drive around that part of Wisconsin with the big read more
The Evil Dead (1981, Sam Raimi)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 20, 2010
For whatever reason, Sam Raimi now has The Evil Dead released in a matted version (to 1.85:1 from 1.37:1). It looks awful. Raimi’s strength as a director comes from his constantly agitated camera; his static shots are–well, I guess the shots of the sun setting and the moon rising in Evil Dea read more
The Towering Inferno (1974, John Guillermin)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 13, 2010
For a disaster movie to succeed, I suppose all it really has to do is keep you interested for its running time. The Towering Inferno runs almost three hours and manages that task, so much so, the ending seems a little abrupt. It’s not like the first act breezes by, either. In fact, it only ma read more
Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988, Tony Randel)
The Stop Button Posted by on Oct 26, 2009
So, Hellbound is a British production, but it dubs over the British cops (who are dressed like American cops and carry guns and don’t know how to use them–because they’re British?) with American accents. It’s a lame decision and one of the few gaffs in the film not related t read more
Commando (1985, Mark L. Lester), the director’s cut
The Stop Button Posted by on Oct 19, 2009
There are a couple good things about Commando–the opening titles and James Horner’s score. Otherwise, I suppose Schwarzenegger isn’t bad in the film, which takes his being Austrian into account, something the majority of his blockbuster roles do not. What’s interesting about read more
Hellraiser (1987, Clive Barker)
The Stop Button Posted by on Oct 12, 2009
So, Hellraiser is supposed to be scary, right? Because it seems like a poorly directed, completely illogical (if a wall split open in front of you, would you walk into it?) mess. It’s only ninety-four minutes, including credits, but it’s this exceptionally boring “scary” mov read more
The Lost Boys (1987, Joel Schumacher)
The Stop Button Posted by on Oct 11, 2009
Not being a girl, I never really got The Lost Boys. I didn’t even see it until I was in my late teens, hunting down Jeffrey Boam’s screenwriting credits. Seeing it now, it’s not just clear how much the film wastes wasted Michael Chapman’s cinematography or how Schumacher mak read more
Thief (1981, Michael Mann)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 14, 2009
With Thief, Mann leaves plain an American standard–the gangster movie. Halfway through the film, I wondered how it fit, as the energy the film opens with is gone. The film moves these awkwardly handled scenes without much flare. These scenes are presented as the standard dramatic scenes, but read more
The Tomb of Dracula (1980, Okazaki Minoru)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 7, 2009
I read somewhere the Japanese started producing anime because there was no way to combat live action American imports. With its narration and lame plotting (it somehow isn’t epical–maybe because Tomb of Dracula was produced for television, complete with convenient commercial breaks), it read more
The Deep (1977, Peter Yates)
The Stop Button Posted by on Sep 3, 2009
I’m a little surprised Donna Summer did the theme song for The Deep, seeing as how she’s black and, according to The Deep, every black person is a villain of some kind or another. Even with his blond locks, I’ve never thought of Nick Nolte as particularly aryan (maybe because his read more
Lethal Weapon (1987, Richard Donner)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 29, 2009
One of the more impressive things about Lethal Weapon is Danny Glover convincingly playing a fifty year-old at, approximately, the age of forty. It’s never a problem in a film rife with problems. First, Lethal Weapon‘s plot doesn’t really make any sense. There are huge jumps in lo read more
Lethal Weapon 2 (1989, Richard Donner)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 29, 2009
Lethal Weapon 2 opens with the Looney Tunes music. It’s appropriate. I don’t think any other film series has so successfully adapted the sitcom to the big screen. The whole point of Lethal Weapon 2 is not to think–maybe as a ten year-old, I believed the South Africans could get aw read more
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984, Wes Craven)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 7, 2009
The best thing about A Nightmare on Elm Street is the font in the opening titles. It’s something sans serif and it’s slightly off and it looks good. To be fair to the movie’s reputation, I did jump twice, both times at the end; maybe because it was waking me up. As opposed to enco read more
Humanoids from the Deep (1980, Barbara Peters)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 3, 2009
Maybe it’s James Horner’s score–which is solid, if a little too Jaws inspired–but if you squint your eyes and turn off your brain, Humanoids from the Deep almost seems like a real movie. It’s not, of course, it’s a New World picture. It’s got to be hard for read more
Central Airport (1933, William A. Wellman)
The Stop Button Posted by on Aug 2, 2009
Maybe the film should have been called The Lecher, the Floozie and the Rube, because Central Airport doesn’t have anything to do with the plot. I kept waiting for it to turn into a Grand Hotel at an airport, but it’s really a soaper about pilot Richard Barthelmess who romances air show read more