Wim Wenders was never exactly a household name but the German filmmaker made a reputation as a thoughtful, sensitive director of stories about wanderers, travelers, and outsiders whose journeys are both an escape and a road back. His American odyssey Paris, Texas (1984) and Wings of Desire (1987), a journey of a celestial being from […]
The saw is family in Tobe Hooper’s brutal, brilliant debut The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) a grungy, grisly horror about a perverse Texas cannibal clan (inspired by the story of Ed Gein) and the teenagers who wander into their home (decorated in furniture constructed from human bones) and wind up on their meat hooks and […]
Basket Case (Arrow, Blu-ray) Ichi the Killer (Well Go, Blu-ray) Macon County Line (Shout! Factory, Blu-ray) The Hidden (Warner Archive, Blu-ray) Basket Case (1982), the debut feature of filmmaker Frank Henenlotter, is a gruesome little cult indie-horror drama of brotherly love and righteous vengeance shot on location in the seedier sections of New York City. […]
In Vampyres (1974, NC-17), one of the more interesting slices of seventies vampire Eurotica, Spanish filmmaker Joseph Larraz (aka José Ramón Larraz) reworks “Carmilla” and rewrites the vampire myth to make his bloodsucking lovelies the restless ghosts of lesbian lovers murdered while making love in their shadowy castle. Reappearing nightly in the twilight forest, they […]
The Yakuza (1974) (Warner Archive, Blu-ray) – Film critic turned screenwriter Paul Schrader put his passion for Japanese cinema and his insight into American genre movies into an original screenplay that he wrote with his brother, Leonard, and sold to Warner Bros. for a record payday that made the trade papers and gave Schrader a […]
Gone in 60 Seconds (1974) – H.B. Halicki’s classic 1970s car crunch chase film, about a car thief who must steal 48 cars in a week, is perhaps the ultimate drive-in car chase movie. If that sounds like a backhanded compliment, then you don’t know the sheer visceral thrill of a great tire squealing, chassis-slamming, […]
