The Girl Can't Help It
Former animator Frank Tashlin sums up the 1950s in this hilarious live-action cartoon, a Mad Magazine parody come to life. The first major studio picture to showcase breakout rock&roll stars.
Apr 27, 2010•3 min
Trailers from Hell
Trailers from Hell showcases classic previews of past movie attractions punctuated with humorous commentary by iconic filmmakers. The series includes Joe Dante (Gremlins) on horror movie The Terror and Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead) praising one of his seminal influences Danger: Diabolik.
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Episodes
Horror of Dracula
Terence Fisher's seminal vampire triumph pits Cushing against Lee in their greatest Hammer pairing and sets the pace for the next two decades of movie horror. This is the original Universal theatrical trailer, not the video reconstruction that appears on the Warner dvd.
Apr 20, 2010•3 min
House of Bamboo
Former tabloid reporter Sam Fuller's dynamic movies have been called crude and primitive, but at their best they play like a punch in the jaw. Fox's Darryl F. Zanuck believed in him and afforded the indie-oriented Fuller his most mainstream commercial opportunities in the 50s. This is the most exotic of the group.
Apr 13, 2010•3 min
How to Make a Monster
Remarkably self-reflexive drive-in monster rally set at American International Studios, whose execs are being murdered by actors in monster makeups. Unofficial sequel to both Teenage Werewolf and Teenage Frankenstein.
Apr 06, 2010•3 min
I Was a Teenage Werewolf
Lightning in a bottle: AIP's penchant for making bargain- basement movies based on title and poster research paid off in spades with this hugely influential amalgam of juvenile delinquent and monster genres. The surprise hit of 1957.
Mar 30, 2010•2 min
Imitation of Life
Fannie Hurst's four-hankie bestseller had been filmed before in 1934, but Douglas Sirk's 1959 remake, his last Hollywood film, is the one to remember. Derided at the time by critics and audiences, it has come to sum up Sirk's serial attack on the hypocritical institutions of family and motherhood as practiced in '50s America.
Mar 23, 2010•3 min
International House
The long-vanished 1930s tradition of feature-length parades of vaudeville and radio acts reaches its zenith with this racy pre-code vehicle for performers both famous and forgotten. What we wanna know is, where can we find more of Colonel Stoopnagle and Budd??!
Mar 16, 2010•3 min
King Solomon's Mines
"Actually filmed in the wilds of the Dark Continent!" H. Rider Haggard's adventure classic gets the MGM treatment with spectacular location shooting that provided years of stock footage for cheaper jungle pictures.
Mar 09, 2010•4 min
The Black Swan
A great cast swashbuckles its way through Henry King's piratical spectacular with an assist from Leon Shamroy's Oscar-winning Technicolor cinematography. Splendid hokum in the overstuffed Darryl Zanuck tradition.
Mar 02, 2010•2 min
Blood Bath
Footage from several different movies has been cannibalized for this sleazy AIP favorite, which exists in alternate versions with various titles. Jack Hill, one of the co-conspirators, gives his side of the story for film scholars to pull out their hair over.
Feb 23, 2010•2 min
Bad Day At Black Rock
John Sturges' formalist masterpiece is also a progressive studio movie confronting post-WW2 racism. Andre Previn's possibly career-best music score turns up again in, of all places, the "Forbidden Planet" trailer!
Feb 16, 2010•4 min
Blood of the Man Devil/House of the Black Death
When is a movie not even a movie? When it's just a patchwork of senseless footage cobbled together to make an unfinished project marginally releasable. Even the trailer for this is a mess.
Feb 09, 2010•2 min
The Brain That Wouldn't Die
Shot near Tarrytown, New York as "The Head That Wouldn't Die", this sleazy little gem sat unreleased for two years until AIP picked it up in 1962. Their numerous censor cuts for reasons of "good taste" (as if!) have been since restored and the whole sordid farrago is now available pretty much everywhere in its full, fuzzy public domain gory, er, glory.
Feb 02, 2010•2 min
The Bride and the Beast
An angora-loving gorilla sets his sights on the curvy heroine in this bizarre Ed Wood jungle concoction that's evaded the Golden Turkey brigade only because he didn't direct it. They don't make 'em like this anymore, and anyway, they hardly ever did.
Jan 26, 2010•2 min
Bucket of Blood
"Life is an obscure hobo, bumming a ride on the omnibus of art." The wit and wisdom of writer Charles B. Griffith, Roger Corman's hipper-than-thou alter-ego, is in even fuller flower here than in his classic followup, "Little Shop of Horrors", aided immeasurably by Dick Miller's indelible performance as psychotic busboy Walter Paisley. Update: Chuck passed away the week of 9/26/07 at the age of 77, leaving a legacy of brilliantly off-center, if unjustly underappreciated, satirical comedy.
Jan 19, 2010•2 min
Once Upon A Time in the West
Sergio Leone's 1968 masterpiece gives the lie to the term "spaghetti western". In a hastily shortened version it was a box-office disappointment in the U.S.but it played in the same theater in Paris for years.
Jan 12, 2010•3 min
The Pit and the Pendulum
Probably the best known of the AIP Corman/Poe series, circa 1961. Writer Richard Matheson had to concoct an almost entirely new story incorporating Poe's central situation. The great Paul Frees narrates the trailer.
Jan 05, 2010•3 min
She Demons
Castaways on a tropical island run by Nazi fugitives who turn native girls into monsters! If that sounds appealing to you, then this threadbare 1958 drive-in cheapie is up your alley!
Dec 29, 2009•2 min
The Raven
Having added some comedy to his earlier Poe trilogy "Tales of Terror", Roger Corman went all out for humor in this popular 1963 entry, which was nevertheless sold basically as a straight horror film. But the image of Peter Lorre in a bird costume was kind of a tipoff...
Dec 22, 2009•3 min
Psycho
A most unusual trailer (almost a short subject at nearly 7 minutes long) from 1960, when Hitchcock had merchandised himself a la Walt Disney into one of the most recognizable movie directors on earth. WARNING! MR. LANDIS REQUESTS YOU WATCH THIS TRAILER FIRST WITHOUT HIS VOICEOVER TO ENJOY MR. HITCHCOCK'S NARRATION.
Dec 15, 2009•7 min
The Unearthly
If you want monsters, this last gasp (circa 1957) of the old-fashioned mad doctor movie delivers in spades. Made for a division of ABC television.
Dec 08, 2009•2 min
The Terror
This 1963 offshoot of Roger Corman's popular Edgar Allan Poe series has slipped into the public domain and is available on countless video labels, usually in crummy looking prints... this is from an original 35mm Technicolor print.
Dec 01, 2009•3 min
Village of the Damned
A "sleeper" is a boxoffice success that comes out of nowhere. And no one expected this modest 1960 British import, based on John Wyndham's "The Midwich Cuckoos", to catch the attention of a worldwide audience and inspire its own (some think even better) sequel.
Nov 24, 2009•2 min
The Vampire Lovers
The first coproduction between England's Hammer Films and American International Pictures is an appropriately lurid affair, with many heaving bosoms showing the telltale marks of Carmilla, the lesbian vampire. Not as arty as Roger Vadim's superior "Blood and Roses", this was a big enough hit in 1970 to spawn two pulchritudinous follow-ups, "Lust for a Vampire" and "Twins of Evil".
Nov 17, 2009•3 min
X - The Man with the X-Ray Eyes
It's not exactly "The Lost Weekend", but Oscar-winner Ray Milland does pretty well for himself by this low-budget but intriguingly Promethean 1963 sci-fi outing from Roger Corman, which anticipates the alternate reality concepts of his later "The Trip". Of course the trailer is more interested in the "X-ray specs" aspects of the idea, like seeing through women's clothes!
Nov 10, 2009•3 min
The Incredible Petrified World
Petrified is right! 30 percent new movie plus 70 percent stock footage equals one of the more outrageous excuses for a feature film since, well, since the previous Jerry Warren picture! But you gotta hand it to Jerry -- he made Ed Wood look like Bernardo Bertolucci, but he got these things made and people paid to see 'em!
Nov 03, 2009•2 min
Monster From Mars A.K.A. Robot Monster
This much maligned and conversely beloved 1953 cheapie, one of the most bizarre and notorious "bad movies" ever, sports some surprisingly imaginative use of 3-D. Sold to tv only a few months after its theatrical release, it provided a surreal video jolt for fifties tykes with its lurid end of the world scenario. With a cool music score by the then-blacklisted Elmer Bernstein.
Oct 27, 2009•2 min
The Masque of the Red Death
This time the Corman/Poe series moves to England for what is generally considered the best film in the series. Tabloid news was made circa 1964 when costar Jane Asher's boyfriend visted the set: Paul McCartney.
Oct 20, 2009•2 min
House on Haunted Hill
William Castle followed up "Macabre" with this trend-setting, darkly comic quintessential B-picture whose 1959 success cemented Vincent Price as a horror icon for the next two decades.
Oct 13, 2009•3 min
House of Usher
First in Roger Corman's profitable series of Edgar Allan Poe adaptations, this 1960 excursion into quality from AIP spawned an entire series based on the idea that high school kids could watch them and then do book reports without reading the originals!
Oct 06, 2009•3 min
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