Put on a Happy Phase

Time for a history lesson, Tom Flynn-style…or, I should say, this will be ancient history for old-timers like myself, but might be news for some of you young’uns, so I hope you enjoy the enlightenment or the memories, as the case may be. And since I don’t have Tom’s facility for explicating record albums, it’s [...]

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On the Fritz

Okay, I will leave the explication to the professionals, but I do feel obliged as a kind of public-service announcement (and no, I don’t get kickbacks!) to point out that the restoration du jour of Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent classic Metropolis is coming to Manhattan’s Film Forum May 7-20. I say “du jour” because this [...]

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Bradley’s Hundred #61-70

Continuing the explication of my hundred favorite films, listed on the B100 page accessible above. Laura: Closer to the spirit than the letter of, and decidedly superior to, Vera Caspary’s novel, Otto Preminger’s noir masterpiece is highlighted by David Raksin’s unforgettable title song, delectable dialogue, and a superlative cast: Gene Tierney, luminous in flashbacks as [...]

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The Day of the Hunter

Mother’s Day came early this year, at least in the BOF branch of the Bradley clan, when I took Wednesday off to treat Mom to a showing of Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala (1975), brought briefly back to Manhattan’s Film Forum by popular demand after its inclusion in their centennial retrospective (see “Kurosawa’s Hundred (Years) et [...]

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Byron Haskin

On the occasion of his 111th birthday, we revisit this SF-oriented profile written for the late, lamented original Scifipedia website. While Byron Haskin worked in many genres during his four decades as a director, dating back to the silent era, he is best known for his work with producer George Pal on The War of [...]

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Will MGM Succeed Where Blofeld Failed?

Word is out that work on the as-yet-untitled twenty-third film in the official James Bond series has been stopped indefinitely, due to the ongoing financial woes of distributor MGM. You might reasonably expect that the reaction of a guy who saw his first theatrical Bond in 1969 at the tender age of 6 (Dad was [...]

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The Other Titan, Part VI

Continuing our reflections on the late, great Elleston Trevor. After our initial meeting in New York, the few times I was blessed to see Elleston and his charming wife, Chaille, in person were at the annual conventions for mystery writers, readers, and publishers that are held in different cities each year. I was able to represent [...]

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If I Had a Hammer, Part II

Continuing our idiosyncratic survey of some noteworthy Hammer films and related items. The Snorkel (1958): Right around the time they began continuing the adventures of everybody’s favorite bloodthirsty Baron in Terence Fisher’s The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958), Hammer made this neat suspense film. Except for director Guy Green, the crew is pretty much the usual [...]

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Yost ‘n’ Translation

I wanted to wait until just the right moment to say something substantive about Elmore Leonard’s new Tuesday-night FX series Justified, and with this week’s fifth episode, “The Lord of War and Thunder,” I knew the moment had come. First, a quick word about the show’s other primary creative force, head writer Graham Yost, who [...]

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Bradley’s Hundred #51-60

Continuing the explication of my hundred favorite films, listed on the B100 page accessible above. Horror Express (aka Panico en el Transiberiano [Panic on the Trans-Siberian Express]): One of those little gems I stumbled onto years ago and started telling everybody about. Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, and Telly Savalas star in this nifty Italian-Spanish co-production [...]

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