Here is an animated short film by the late great Adam Beckett. I saw this at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1974. It blew my mind. What a great talent, such a sin that he died so young, just after he worked on Star Wars. An early alumnus of CalArts, the great experimental art school that’s now in Canyon Country, although I believe Beckett started there when it was in LA at a closed Catholic school. Anyway check out this genius of the elaborated loop, hand drawn, optical printed, super Cool
Here is the edited version of Ptushko’s great Ilya Muramets, cut down and dubbed by Roger Corman, released in the USA as The Sword and The Dragon A lot of cool foreign films were acquired by American International and other distributor, recut, dubbed and shown at Theaters, mainly to kids. You cans the original Cinemascope version on dvd.
Here is a condensed version of a film by the great Czech animator Karel Zeman. Joseph E. Levine bought the rights to Zeman’s Fabulous World Of Jules Verne in the early 60’s and released it in the US, exposing millions of American kids to it’s magic. See it in Mystimation! A roto-gravure effect where lines were added to images imitating illustrations from the 1800s. Hers’s the American trailer and a documentary on Zeman. Enjoy!
Here is an amazing Film Noir by the supremely talented one-eyed Hungarian director Andre de Toth. Onc again theat femme fatale Lizabeth Scott appears in all her ice cold blonde glory. See Dick Powell, star of Murder My Sweet as the chump who takes a wrong turn down a dirty alley and bumps into the evil Raymond Burr. Check out All- American wife Jane Wyatt, what a babe! Pre Father Knows Best and brilliant. And then just to wet your whistle for another great de Toth Noir, the trailer for CrimeWave.
Here is a film noir I ran across on YouTube. Featuring an ice cold blonde Femme Fatale. Talk about Evil, she takes the Devils Food Cake! Check it out! Would make a great double bill with the Ultra Sleazy, Too Late For Tears, See Dan Duryea out slimed by a super bad Lizbeth Scott!
Here is a nice documentary on one of the greatest actors of all time, Peter Lorre. He is unique,there will never be another like him. I guess his daughter had died by the time they made this doc. Lorre’s niece supplies the family point of view.
They restored Putney Swope and re-released it! It’s playing in several theaters in Los Angeles right now. I first saw it many years ago at a midnight show at the Park Theater in Caldwell, N.J. It blew my mind. Check it out if you can. I know and worked with the writer/Director Robert Downey Sr. He is a great guy, a prince. Funny and charismatic and an all around great human being. Meeting him made my career in films, I owe him a lot. So here is a trailer for Putney Swope, it was a big hit when it came out in 1969. Same time as Easy Rider.
Check out this great interview courtesy of Vanity Fair with Wu Tang Maestro RZA. He breaks it all down for you and he’s pretty funny too. PS A lot of these films are available on Amazon Prime!
I just happened to catch this flick on Channels, the cheap archive of Wierd Movies you can subscribe to on Apple TV for a couple of bucks. It was OK, an evil Queen, an Italian Hercules, a cene where Hercules is caught in these giant Jaws of Death for what seems like an eternity.
I left it on while I was brushing my teeth and putting on my socks. I’ve always had a soft spot for Hercules type movies, made in Rome in the 60’s, usually some crazy monster appears. Anyway I was sort of watching it when a sequence began, it took place in a huge cavern in the Mountain of Death, A Moon Man, looking like a futuristic Tin Woodsman crossed with an owl, was coducting a ceremony to bring the evil Queen back to life with the blodd of an innocent girl.
Suddenly there was an image of incomparable beauty, a throbbing purple orb slowly turning above their heards, then the moon appears in an opening in the roof of the cavern, it’s obscured by clouds but it comes closer through the mist. I immediately thought of Mario Bava, it had his fingerprints all over it. The film was made at Cinecitta, Bava’s hangout. I heard Bava would work on the Special Effects of other peoples films when he wasn’t busy on his own films, along with his father, a talented sculptor. Then I read that Tim Lucas, the Bava guru said he thought Bava worked on this film as well. So watch it for yourself and decide. The sequence I’m referring to is towards the end of the film.
Here’s a crazy Spaghetti Western available on Amazon Prime, Requiescant. It stars Lou Castel, who appeared in the SuperCool, Grazie Zia, which I wrote aboutherehttp://www.filmforno.com/?p=1147. This film also stars Mark Damon as the evil Southern rascist boss, some say the inspiration for Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Django Unchained. The other bonus in this picture is Pier Paolo Pasolini as a Mexican revolutionary. Pretty Cool. Here’s the trailer which is not the greatest.
If you want to catch up on your Spaghetti Western watching look no further than Amazon Prime. I guess they acquired the FilmRise catalog and have a whole slew of Italian Westerns from the 60’s. I’ve watched A Pistol For Ringo, The Return Of Ringo, Cemetary Without Crosses, Django Kill, and last night a crazy one with Lou Castel called Requiescant. But there are a ton on there. You can watch The Great Silence, The Grand Duel, Navajo Joe and many others. So saddle up companeros and tune into Westerns on Prime.
