Filmmaker John Frankenheimer earned his first major big screen success with Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), his third theatrical feature and his second collaboration with producer/star Burt Lancaster (they would make five films together all told). Lancaster delivers an angry, brooding performance as real life criminal Robert Stroud, a violent killer who developed into an internationally […]
Tag: Telly Savalas
‘The Dirty Dozen’ – the original World War II caper on HBO Max
The 1960s were full of big budget wartime caper-style films—The Great Escape, Where Eagles Dare, Kelley’s Heroes, just to name a few—but none of them have the brawny machismo and wily bad boy gusto of The Dirty Dozen (1967), Robert Aldrich’s testosterone-fueled tough guy classic. Lee Marvin is the hard-as-nails Major who is “volunteered” to […]
‘Naked City’ – the complete classic cop drama free on IMDbTV
“There are eight million stories in the Naked City. This has been one of them.” The acclaimed cop show Naked City: Complete Series (1958-1959), set and shot on the streets of New York City, is ostensibly inspired by the influential 1948 film of the same name, a film noir with documentary immediacy. But it plays […]
Halloween Picks: The best of Mario Bava on Amazon Prime and Fandor
Mario Bava essentially created the genre of baroque horror known as “giallo,” a distinctly Italian twist on stalk and kill horror film. Under his direction, Grand Guignol gore is transformed into lush, visually elegant cinematic spectacle, a waking nightmare with the poetic grace of a musical and a demented edge of sexual perversity. After rising […]