Category Archives: Film

Billy The Kid’s Range War (1941, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Billy the Kid was a big damn hero.

At least that’s the claim of Billy The Kid’s Range War, in which Billy (played by middle-aged Bob Steele) is a do-gooder with a comedic sidekick named Fuzzy (Al St. John) and a hankering to help Ellen Gorman (Joan Barclay) bring a new stagecoach line to town.  Williams (Karl Hackett) does want to the Gorman family to success so he hires Buck (Rex Lease) to dress up like Billy the Kid and ride a horse that looks like Billy the Kid’s and commit crimes, like killing Ellen’s father.  Framed for all those crimes that he didn’t commit and with his best friend (Carleton Young) ordered to arrest him, Billy decides to go under cover so that he can clear his good name.  Someone pretending to be Billy the Kid got him into this mess.  Now, Billy’s going to get out of it by pretending to be someone else.

The action is pretty standard for a B-western.  Mostly, it’s interesting to see a movie where Billy the Kid is actually a nice guy who gets framed.  No wonder a whole generation grew up with no idea about true history of the American frontier.  Sam Newfield directed a handful of Billy the Kid films and the capable Bob Steele starred in most of them but this is the only one that I’ve sat down and watched and it actually left me missing the production values of the Johnny Mack Brown films.  For fans of these type of westerns, there’s the promise of seeing familiar actors like George Cheseboro and Ted Adams doing there thing.  Even the outstanding character actor Milton Kibbee makes an appearance.  For those who do not like westerns, this film is not going to change their minds.

Despite the promise of the title, there is no range war in this movie.  There’s just Billy the Kid, trying to clear his good name.

Live Tweet Alert: Join #FridayNightFlix For Gamera: The Invincible!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

As some of our regular readers undoubtedly know, I am involved in a few weekly live tweets on Twitter and Mastodon.  I host #FridayNightFlix every Friday, I co-host #ScarySocial on Saturday, and I am one of the five hosts of #MondayActionMovie!  Every week, we get together.  We watch a movie.  We tweet our way through it.

Tonight, at 10 pm et, #FridayNightFlix presents Gamera: The Invincible!

If you want to join us this Friday, just hop onto twitter, start the movie at 10 pm et, and use the #FridayNightFlix hashtag!  It’s a friendly group and welcoming of newcomers so don’t be shy.

Gamera is available on Prime and Tubi!  See you there!

Quickie Review: The Monkey (dir. by Osgood Perkins)

Posted on by Arleigh

Yes, dying is quite fucked up and Osgood Perkins follow-up to his 2024 horror cult-hit Longlegs points and shows this to the audience in spades (and buckets of blood).

The Monkey, based on the Stephen King short story of the same name, tells the story of a drum-playing toy monkey which happens to cause the the deaths of random individuals when it stops playing the drums. Right from the start we see that The Monkey veers away from Perkins usual moody and atmospheric horror language and goes for the absurdist take on the genre.

Anyone who has seen the supernatural horror series Final Destination will recognize the Rube Goldberg-esque ways each kills in that series has become its signature will appreciate how truly absurd some of the kills in The Monkey turns out. To say more would be too much of a spoiler and should be experience by anyone willing to watch this film.

Osgood Perkins still brings to the table his own brand of horror comedy by exploring the ideas and themes of death’s inevitability and randomness, but also childhood trauma and how it impacts the lives of those children even to their adulthood. Where some films would be more subtle in exploring these themes, Perkins decides on drumming it on thickly which, at time, does come off as cringe.

Yet, despite the heavy-handedness of Perkins’ screenplay (he also wrote the screenplay adaptation of King’s tale), The Monkey still succeeds in delivering an early horror hit for 2025 that should be seen with a crowd. this is a film that is actually better when seen as part of a collective experience rather than with a small group.

Twice In A Lifetime (1985, dir by Bud Yorkin)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Today, for obvious and tragic reasons, people everywhere have been thinking about their favorite Gene Hackman performances.  Hackman was an actor who always brought his all, even when he was appearing in a lesser film.  I think you could ask five different people for their five favorite Hackman performances and they would all give five different answers.  His performance as Lex Luthor in Superman and Superman II has always been one of my favorites.  Others will undoubtedly cite his award-winning performance as Popeye Doyle in The French Connection or his great work as Norman Dale in Hoosiers or his work in classic neo-noirs like The Conversation and Night Moves.  Let’s not forget his most unexpectedly great turn, as the blind man in Young Frankenstein.  Hackman gave so many great performances that some of them were for films that are not even remembered today.

Twice In A Lifetime is one of those forgotten films but I think it features one of Hackman’s best performances.  He plays Harry Mackenzie, a steelworker who is married to Kate (Ellen Burstyn, made up to look frumpy) and who has two daughters (Amy Madigan and Ally Sheedy).  Harry is the type of everyman that Hackman excelled at playing.  He’s a hard worker, a good family man, and a good friend.  What no one, not even Harry realizes, is that he’s also having a midlife crisis.  On his 50th birthday, he goes out to the neighborhood bar with his buddies and falls for the new barmaid, Audrey (Ann-Margaret).  Harry ends up leaving his wife for Audrey, pursuing the spark that his marriage no longer gives him.  The movie follows Harry and Kate and their daughters as they adjust to their new lives and they plan for the younger daughter’s wedding.

Twice In A Lifetime was one of many 80s films that dealt with divorce and it has the same flaws that afflicted many of them.  These films, which were often made by middle-aged directors who had just gone through their own divorces, rarely played fair when it came to depicting why the marriage failed.  Twice In A Lifetime stacks the odds in Harry’s favor just by suggesting that Ann-Margaret would end up working at a bar frequented by steelworkers.  Harry has to choose between his plain and boring wife and Ann-Margaret.  That’s going to be a difficult choice!  The twist that Harry’s decision was ultimately the right thing for Kate doesn’t feel earned.

But damn if Gene Hackman isn’t great in this film.  Even though he was one of the most recognizable actors in the movie, Hackman is totally believable as both a steelworker and a man who worries that he’s destroyed his family.  It’s not just one moment or scene that makes this a great performance.  It’s the entire performance as a whole, with Hackman portraying all of Harry’s conflicted emotions both before and after leaving his family.  Hackman gives a performance that is more honest than the film’s script or direction.  The movie believes Harry did the right thing but Hackman shows us that Harry himself isn’t so sure.  Hackman captures the middle-aged malaise of a man wondering if his life is as good as it gets.  When the movie works, it is almost totally due to the emotional authenticity of Hackman’s performance.  Twice in a Lifetime may be a forgotten film but it’s also proof of how great an actor Gene Hackman really was.  There will never be another one like him.

Billy Bob Thornton in A SIMPLE PLAN (1998) – The great performances! 

Posted on by Bradley Crain

Sam Raimi directed A SIMPLE PLAN, a movie about two brothers and a friend who find a crashed plane on a nature reserve that just happens to have a bag of cash containing $4.4 million. What starts out as the potential answer to all of their problems turns out the biggest problem they’ll ever have to deal with. 

Bill Paxton, Billy Bob Thornton & Brent Briscoe play the guys who find the money and come up with a plan to keep it. As you can imagine, it all goes to hell, with one thing leading to another thing that leads to another thing, and none of it good. The performances in this film are uniformly excellent, with Thornton as the standout. He completely disappears into his character and received an Oscar nomination for his work. It’s a great film, but it’s not exactly a fun film as we watch these characters’ lives turn into a slowly unfolding bus wreck. I watched it recently for the first time since I saw it in the theaters in 1998. Although I highly recommend it, I’m probably good for another couple of decades.

This scene with Paxton and Thornton is pretty sad and a pretty strong indicator of why money ultimately can never bring true happiness. 

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special Elizabeth Taylor Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today is the birthday of one of the greatest films stars ever, Elizabeth Taylor!  And you know what that means.  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 Elizabeth Taylor Films

A Place in the Sun (1951, dir by George Stevens, DP: William C. Mellor)

Suddenly, Last Summer (1959, dir by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, DP: Jack Hildyard)

Cleopatra (1963, dir by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, DP: Leon Shamroy )

Boom! (1968, dir by Joseph Losey, DP: Douglas Slocombe)

Gene Hackman Has Passed Away

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Gene Hackman has passed away.  He was 95 and reportedly found dead in his Santa Fe home, along with his wife and dog.  That’s what the authorities are saying.  They also say there’s no sign of foul play.  I’m sure there will be a lot of online speculation about what that all means.  That’s the way of the world nowadays and it’s a shame.

Gene Hackman was one of the greats.  He went into acting after a stint in the Marines and, according to most accounts and his own interviews, he never lost that grit and that expectation of professionalism from everyone he worked with.  A former roommate of Robert Duvall’s, a close friend of Dustin Hoffman’s (from the days when they were both unknown stage actors), Hackman went from doing episodic television to becoming one of our best film actors.  He was hardly a traditional leading man but his talent was undeniable.  His Popeye Doyle was the classic eccentric cop.  His Lex Luthor was a great comedic villain while his performance as Little Bill Daggett in Unforgiven proved to be the perfect portrayal of the authoritarian impulse. Interestingly enough, he was reportedly set to make his directorial debut with The Silence of the Lambs but he withdrew from the project, saying he didn’t like the violence.  (Reports vary on whether he would have also played Lecter or Jack Crawford.)  Hackman was a liberal but of the old-fashioned, blue collar variety.  He once said starring in The French Connection changed his whole view of policing.  It takes courage to admit to having changed your mind on anything.  It’s not something that a lot of celebs have the guts to do anymore.

I’ve always respected that Hackman retired under his own terms.  Faced with spending the latter part of his career appearing in movies like Welcome to Mooseport, he said, “I’m done.”  Someone would have to be the once great star who humiliated himself by taking the lead role in Dirty Grandpa but it wasn’t going to be Gene Hackman.

Gene Hackman, RIP.  He had a great career and gave us many great performances and that’s all we can really ask of an actor.

Boothill Brigade (1937, directed by Sam Newfield)

Posted on by Jedadiah Leland

Rancher Jeff Reynolds (Frank LaRue) used to be one of the good guys on the frontier but he’s recently changed.  He fired all of his loyal ranch hands and instead hired a motely crew of outlaws.  He’s buying up land and evicting the squatters who have been living there.  About the only good thing he does is hire Lon Cardigan (Johnny Mack Brown) to be his new herd boss.  Lon is engaged to Reynolds’s daughter, Bobbie (Claire Rochelle).  With the help of Bobbie and comic relief cook Calico Haynes (Horace Murphy), Lon tries to figure out why Reynolds is now doing the bidding of the evil John Porter (Ed Cassidy).

The title is the most exciting thing about this movie, which is one of those old B-movies that puts the “creak” in creaky.  There’s surprisingly little gunplay but there is a lot of horse riding.  For a film that runs less than an hour, a surprising amount of it is just shots of people riding from one location to another.  The horses’ hooves sound impressive on the soundtrack but it’s not exactly exciting.  As always, Johnny Mack Brown is a convincing cowboy.  It’s a good thing he looks like he knows what he’s doing when he’s riding a horse!  The plot was standard B-western fluff.  Johnny Mack Brown appeared in a ton of westerns and almost all of them seemed to feature the same range war.  There are better Johnny Mack Brown movies out there.  This one is for completists only.

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special James Wan Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, we wish a happy birthday to one of the directors who brought the horror genre back to box office life in the aughts and 2010s, James Wan!  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 James Wan Films

Insidious (2011, dir by James Wan, DP: John Leonetti))

The Conjuring (2013, dir by James Wan, DP: John Leonetti)

Aquaman (2018, dir by James Wan, DP: Don Burgess)

Malignant (2021, dir by James Wan, DP: Michael Burgess)

Scenes I Love: Reggie Bannister in Phantasm

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

I read yesterday that Reggie Bannister, one of the most beloved horror character actors out there, isn’t doing too well.  He has gone into hospice care.  Those words — “hospice care” — will always bring a tear to my eye.  My Dad went into hospice care last year and died a month later, which I was told was longer than most people survive in hospice.  Being the naive idiot that I was, I have to admit that, up until the end, I was still expecting my Dad to make a full recovery and just magically get out of bed.  Sadly, that’s just not the way these things work.  Hospice is end-of-life care and any medical professional who doesn’t make that clear while recommending it is doing a disservice to not only their patients but also their families.

Reggie Bannister is best-known for his appearances in the work of Don Coscarelli.  He’s one of those actors who just makes you smile whenever he appears on screen.  Anyone who has watched Phantasm loves Reggie, with his ice cream truck and his guitar and his whole laid back vibe.  Today’s scene that I love is a simple but wonderfully human moment from 1978’s Phantasm, featuring Bill Thornbury and the great Reggie Bannister.