Ray Harryhausen

On the occasion of his 90th birthday, we revisit this profile written for the late, lamented original Scifipedia website. “When King Kong fell from the Empire State,” Ray Bradbury recalled in Ronald V. Borst’s Graven Images, “he killed two kids with one slam, me and my pal Ray Harryhausen. Kong changed our lives, only for [...]

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Bad to the Bone, Part III

Six more examples of Bad Cinema, ranging from hilariously awful to simply wretched. “It’s Alive!”: Not to be confused with writer-director Larry Cohen’s It’s Alive, this is a film no sane person would want to own—unless they thought it exerted the train-wreck fascination of a Plan 9 from Outer Space or a Beast of Yucca [...]

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I AM the Muffin Man

I’ve seen a lot of stuff in the media marking June 25 as the first anniversary of the day Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson died, and that coverage brought me to tears…but not for either of them. Like many young men of my last-gasp Baby Boom generation, I had an unhealthy obsession with Farrah’s iconic [...]

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Marvel Snapshot: 1974

For those of you who haven’t figured it out already, I’m kind of anal-retentive when it comes to things like lists, and when I was a lad, I actually created a 14” x 17” chart for each year from 1974 to 1980, indicating who wrote which issue of most of the major Marvel Comics. That [...]

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Everybody Loves Raymond, Part II

Concluding our overview of Raymond Chandler’s screen career and that of his best-known creation, private eye Philip Marlowe. The less said about Marlowe’s next appearance, Lady in the Lake (1947), the better, and even “appearance” is a bit of a misnomer for a film in which he is visible only when he walks in front [...]

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Everybody Loves Raymond, Part I

I’m savoring the prospect of introducing my daughter to The Blue Dahlia (1946), which I recently taped from TCM, and which I understand indirectly gave the 1947 Black Dahlia murder its name. Not because I’m under any illusion that it’s a masterpiece, but it does star the stellar screen team of Alan Ladd and Veronica [...]

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Bad to the Bone, Part II

Six more examples of Bad Cinema, ranging from hilariously awful to simply wretched. Dracula Vs. Frankenstein (1970, aka Blood of Frankenstein): The late Al Adamson’s no-budget nonsense is a giant in the field of Bad Cinema, a patch-job jerry-rigged from footage shot in three different batches in an attempt to salvage the abortive earlier versions. [...]

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I Dream of Geena

The recent death of baseball player Dorothy “Dottie” Kamenshek, one of the inspirations for the character of Dottie Hinson in Penny Marshall’s fine film A League of Their Own (1992), prompts me to ask, “What the hell happened to Geena Davis?” Since she, like David Lynch, has had the dubious honor of multiple screwings by [...]

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If I Had a Hammer, Part V

Concluding our idiosyncratic survey of some noteworthy Hammer films and related items. Dracula A.D. 1972 (1972): Hammer made a howling error bringing Dracula into the present with this entry in its declining series, but setting much of the story in an abandoned church helps (as do Stephanie Beacham and Caroline Munro). Adding insult to injury [...]

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Irwin Allen

On the occasion of his 94th birthday, we revisit this SF-oriented profile written for the late, lamented original Scifipedia website. “Among those who have kneed science fiction in the groin Irwin Allen must rank high,” wrote John Baxter in Future Tense. Before the blockbusters The Poseidon Adventure (1973) and The Towering Inferno (1974) made him [...]

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