Basically a cat and mouse game revolving around a blackmail attempt. An explicit negative for some viewers would be the extortionists' graphic intersection with the porn industry of the mid-1980s. The chief villain is a charismatically vocal jerk who indulges in abrupt spasms of cruelty and violence.
Ann-Margaret seems to be there for no other reason than being Ann-Margaret (not much depth to her role). Though Roy Scheider's character only avoids similar because the script gives him more scenes with agency. Mildly above average (58% rating), though some critics back then like Ebert did praise it somewhat.
Classic film noir plot. Gullible private eye gets swept up in the machinations of a femme fatale carrying $850,000, who ran away from her psychotic, murdering boyfriend who stole from mobsters.
The studio never gave this movie a chance to fail properly at the box office, stopping promotion and distribution in the early going. The sweet revenge is that over the decades it rose from the ruins to a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Elsewhere, more realistic assessments place it between 60 and 75. Which is still far above the dismal fate that the end of the eighties consigned it to.
Currently free on countless YouTube channels (a 4K version even), as well as Tubi TV and Pluto TV.
The 13th film of Jack Nicholson, who was still stumbling around in corners of Roger Corman's discount world.
Varyingly described as everything from the first existential Western to the first acid Western, The Shooting was an arthouse hit in Paris for over a year. But just the opposite in the US, where no distributor wanted it. Eventually it was sold as a lowly television movie.
Screenplay was written by actress Carole Eastman. Director Monte Hellman snipped off the first ten pages that would have provided background for the characters and situation. Thus preempting Stanley Kubrick by a couple of years, who generated similar mysteriousness by eliminating a narrator piece from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The ending of The Shooting wasn't originally intended to be a "what the __" highlight. And it doesn't have to be if you pay close enough attention to the early dialogue.
100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but you know that's inflated -- albeit it definitely has legendary status.
Directed and written by Leslie Stevens, who later created the TV series The Outer Limits. His own house and the empty one next door were used as the primary setting. Kate Manx was also his wife, who died four years after the release of "Private Property".
Though tame by today's standards, the first 30 minutes are an overtly frank time capsule for an era still moderately struggling with censorship. Shot in an avant-garde style and sporting a theme of planned seduction by two seedy drifters, the movie was condemned as an abomination by organizations and reviewers of 1960. In contrast, after being classified as a lost film for many years, the refound and restored version of it in 2016 received widespread critical acclaim. An unsuccessful remake with the same title rolled out in 2022.
A surreal classic. Could a young David Lynch have been inspired by it at age 22? Who knows...
By the end you know it's an allegory about either the character's life or an abstract portrait of the generic suburbanite of that era. At the very least a trip through The Twilight Zone.
Though Burt Lancaster was athletic, he had a fear of water and literally had to take swimming lessons before the production.
Yet another film that had a lukewarm reception when it first came out but rests on Mount Olympus in this century. 100% rating on RT.
Dean Puckett's first feature film makes you wonder what else he could do if investors just gave him enough money. It has the horror aesthetics of The Witch and Hereditary rolled up into one, along with echoes of Jug Face.
Set in an isolated religious community of patriarchal male hypocrites, Emma Appleton plays the pastor's daughter, who is in an abusive marriage. Secretly killing her husband becomes a catalyst for attracting and eventually "fornicating with a primaeval beast in the woods" that then preys on a father who has been molesting his daughter. A witch hunt consequently ensues, as well as continued recruitment into the new, liberating dark side.
You can't be sure what time period the movie is really set in. Instead of the past, this could be a plain people cult confining themselves to antiquated technology in more recent decades. But the pagan withdrawal of 1973's The Wicker Man aside, it seems improbable that today's British Isles have space available for this degree of cultural seclusion.
Has a well-deserved 78% rating on RT, just for the moody, atmospheric cosmetics alone.
Currently free on Tubi TV. Didn't realize or already forgot that Robert Carradine died earlier this year at age 71.
An early road film of Melanie Griffith that literally features a peeing contest at one point. Also a secondary role by June Lockhart's daughter Anne, before she signed up to the original Battlestar Galactica (i.e., the truly lousy BG).
Three youthful idiots take a trip to Alaska because it's very cold there and everything costs a lot more. The two guys get drunk at the outset, lose their money, go to work for the pipeline (Griffith gets employed as a waitress). After hard times, they eventually gravitate to robbery and faux kidnapping.
A forerunner of movies that are difficult to classify, and strange that it's retrospectively condemned for that reason, when there are far better knocks against it. Erratic from start to finish, and unpredictable -- especially when it comes to what you expect to be the usual type of moral closure at the end.
Shot largely in Washington state locations, so if you wonder why Alaska looks narrowed to Juneau climate without the latter's restrictive mountainscape in the background...
A poorly rated product that fully warrants that assessment. And yet...
Everyone has seen this not-so-obscure film, that was the first of Pakula's three movies about paranoia, conspiracy, and surveillance. (The next two being The Parallax View and All the President's Men.) Gordon Willis's "prince of darkness" style of cinematography.
Mar 9, 2026 11:18 PM
(This post was last modified: Mar 10, 2026 03:32 AM by C C.)
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