Swashbuckling matinee idol Tyrone Power was cast against type as a self-centered con artist who gets his comeuppance in  1947’s offbeat noir NIGHTMARE ALLEY. Power and director Edmund Goulding teamed the previous year for the hit THE RAZOR’S EDGE, and the star desperately wanted his next movie to be based on the dark novel by William Lindsay Gresham. Studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck didn’t like the idea, but since Power was 20th Century-Fox’s biggest star, he agreed to greenlight the film. Turned out Zanuck’s instincts were right: audiences rejected the handsome Power in the role of a heel, and although he received good reviews for his performance, NIGHTMARE ALLEY bombed at the box office. Today it’s regarded as one of the genre’s best, its unique backdrop and theme setting it apart from other noirs of the era.

Stan Carlisle (Power), the type of guy who could talk a cat off a fish wagon (as my grandmother used to say) loves everything…

Next (and last) in our little “Netflix Halloween Hangover” mini-round-up we have 2014’s Kristy, a flick that, like Bound For Vengeance, plays upon the “damsel in distress” theme, but unlike it, does so more from the traditional angle of trying to prevent something bad from happening rather than showing us nothing but events that play out well after most of the shit’s already hit the fan (also, like that film, it was added to the Netflix streaming queue with scant hours to go before Halloween itself was over, so I think I can be forgiven for getting this review in a bit “late,” as it were). Care to guess if I liked this one any better?

Anchored by a very strong lead performance from Haley Bennett and the taut, suspenseful direction of Oliver Blackburn, Kristy is an almost unbearably tense affair that, admittedly, takes some time to…

I guess it’s fair to say that this review and the next are coming to you as an act of “digital housekeeping,” if you will, in that I meant to include them as part of my “Netflix Halloween 2015” round-up, but sadly ran out of time. So, in the spirit of “better late than never,” I present to you a (very) short addendum to last month’s over-arching theme that we’ll call “Netflix Halloween Hangover” simply because, hey, it’s a Sunday evening and I can’t really think of any snappier title than that. My apologies.

First under the microscope we have 2015’s Bound For Vengeance, which was also released in various overseas territories under the decidedly uninspired (if understandable) title of Reversal, a flick that bills itself as turning the tables on classic “rape/revenge” horror “thrillers” but that really does nothing of the sort because, well — when you…

If I was forced to make a list of Top Ten favorite movies, IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD would definitely make the cut. Featuring a veritable Who’s Who of comedy, this film (like The Dirty Dozen) has been often imitated, but never duplicated. TCM ran it in prime time last night, and after watching the horrors unfolding in Paris on the news channels, I figured I could use a good laugh. IT’S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD never fails to disappoint in that department!

The plot is simple: a car goes flying off the road and crashes. Four parties get out of their vehicles to inspect the scene. The dying driver, Smiler Grogan (Jimmy Durante) tells them about $350,000 in cash buried in Santa Rosita Park “under the Big W”, then kicks the bucket (literally). The four parties decide to find the dough and split it, but greed…

Welcome to the not-so-distant future , where a biological attack has rendered the entire American population, both male and female, incapable of having children. Sounds like the invitation to start a 40-or 50-year party to me, but let’s face it — in a nation where siring offspring is seen by most as some sort of God-given right, it wouldn’t take long for the entire population to have a massive freak-out. And to start looking elsewhere for little angels to call their own —

So goes the intriguing premise behind newcomer (at least to my knowledge) writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson and artist Matthew Dow Smith (geez, guys, I love ya both, but remember when people just went by their first and last names?)’s new four-part Boom! Studios min-series, Last Sons Of America, and while there’s definitely a distinct Children Of Men influence on the proceedings here, the idea that the…

Ever since the first solicits for the new seven-part mini-series Superman : American Alien started showing up several months ago, I’ve been unsure what to make of the whole enterprise — sure, the line-up of talent involved is impressive, particularly on the artistic side, but do we really need another re-telling of The Man Of Steel’s origin? And, furthermore,  is that what this book even is?

Apparently DC “suits” got in touch with screenwriter Max Landis (of Chronicle and American Ultra fame, among others) a couple of years back after being reasonably impressed by his short film The Death And Life Of Superman (which is more than a tad ironic given that one of the things Landis seems to relish doing in that movie is pointing out the various gaping plotholes contained within that legendary story arc of the same name) and offered him carte blanche to write the…

Question for all you long-time Vertigo readers out there — is it just me, or has it been awhile since a new monthly ongoing that went out under their label gave you that feeling? You know the one I’m talking about — the one that says “hey, this is the start of something seriously fucking special.” I remember getting such a “vibe,” if you will, with The Sandman #1, for certain, and a few years later with Preacher #1, and some time well after that with Y: The Last Man #1, and later still with Scalped #1, but since then — well, it’s been notable for its absence more than anything else, hasn’t it?

Which isn’t to say that there haven’t been plenty of good Vertigo series in more recent years : I liked FBP  and Coffin Hill quite a bit, truth be told, and I’m hoping that whatever publishing…

If you’ve been sampling the wares of Archie Comics’ new “mature readers” imprint, Dark Circle, chances are that you’ve been a bit surprised (hopefully pleasantly) by how “all over the place” these books have been in terms of their tone. The Black Hood has proven to be every bit as grim n’ gritty as advertised, and that’s been terrific and all, but Dean Haspiel and Mark Waid’s relaunch of The Fox has been just as accessible-for-all-ages as its previous iteration at the defunct-again Red Circle, while The Shield has the flavor of an old-school superhero yarn.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking any of these books — truth be told, I’ve been digging every single one of ’em — but when Archie first announced that they were “updating” all these classic characters for the fallen times in which we live, their press releases touting the new line definitely emphasized…

Happy Veteran’s Day and thank you to all who’ve served!

One of my favorite WW2 movies to watch is THE DIRTY DOZEN. This rousing all-star epic, flavored with superb character actors and moments of humor, was a box office success and remains a perennial favorite among action lovers. The formula (a band of military misfits unite to battle the enemy) became so popular it’s been rehashed several times in several ways, but none have ever come close to having the panache of director Robert Aldrich’s lively original.

Army Major Reisman is given the assignment of whipping twelve convicts into fighting shape and taking on what amounts to a suicide mission: conduct a raid behind enemy lines on a chateau where high ranking Nazi officers assemble for R’n’R. Reisman’s a rebellious sort (“very short on discipline”) with contempt for his higher-ups, especially rival Col. Breed. One of the officers calls him “the most ill-mannered, ill-disciplined officer…

Call me low-brow. Call me plebian. Call me a low-brow plebian. Hell, call me Ishmael if you want, I don’t care! I just don’t like ERASERHEAD. I’ve watched the film at least a half dozen times, thinking maybe I’m missing something. Nope. ERASERHEAD to me is a tedious piece of work with nothing to offer. Don’t misunderstand, I like most all of David Lynch’s work. I know this is his first feature, but the man is capable of giving us so much better. There’s TWIN PEAKS, BLUE VELVET, THE ELEPHANT MAN, MULHOLLAND DRIVE, DUNE….okay, maybe not DUNE. It’s not Lynch’s surrealistic style that bugs me so much as there’s nothing going on here.

As for the plot…there isn’t one. Alright, I hear you out there saying it’s an “art film”, it’s the director’s commentary on the alienation of the outsider in society, blah blah blah. But the theme of the societal outcast doesn’t…