The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982)

Was it a dream or was it a memory? I have this vague recall of being a child and seeing the video cover art for The Sword And The Sorcerer (1982), one of those beautiful painted medieval fantasy posters that carry over the lurid charge of thick paperback novels and comic-books, muscular men with gleaming […]

Scarlet Street (1945)

When a movie is in the public domain and is available everywhere, I often think that makes people less likely to check it out, particularly when there are some shocking versions in poor quality or if its a black-and-white movie that’s been colourised. Scarlet Street (1945) is in the public domain and I was also […]

The Tingler (1959)

I grew up with a copy of the Cinemania 97 CD-ROM as a kid, which featured a John Waters commentary all about 1950s filmmaker William Castle who was a great influence on Waters and other filmmakers (including Joe Dante who made a fictional tribute to the guy in the John Goodman comedy, Matinee). A sort […]

Tales From The Crypt (1972)

One of the many horror anthologies that British studio Amicus produced in the 1970s, Tales From The Crypt (1972) is based on the William Gaines EC comics well before HBO revisited them with a quippy animatronic ghoul in the 1990s. Here, the Cryptkeeper is played by Sir Ralph Richardson, basically wearing brown robes and acting […]

Lured (1947)

Pre-sitcom superstardom, Lucille Ball was apparently synonymous with B-pictures and I never realised she’d starred in a few film noirs during the 1940s before I Love Lucy came to define her iconic legacy. I really liked Ball’s turn as a private detective’s helpful secretary in The Dark Corner, which I watched for the first time […]