This particular version of the Robin Hood story is a rather lacking one. I’m not one to go around blaming one particular person when it involves such a collaborative craft as filmmaking, but it’s clear that this is all star Richard Todd’s fault. Todd’s problem as Robin Hood is mainly that he doesn’t look or act like a convincing rogue, but like a guy playing dress up in the school play. Continue reading “The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men (1952)”
Category: 1950s
I Vampiri (1957)
Riccardo Freda was the director who started I vampiri, but it was cameraman and future legendary director Mario Bava who finished it after Freda got huffy and quit the movie after filming for ten days.
That might not seem like such a big deal, but Freda had made a bet with the money men behind the movie that he could shoot it in ten days! Mario swooped in and finished everything up in 48 hours, apparently “padding” the film to its anemic 78 minute running time by using stock footage and those swirling newspaper headline scenes that are mandatory in movies about a crazed killer stalking a city. Continue reading “I Vampiri (1957)”
Blood of Dracula (1957)
Nancy Perkins is your standard teenage hothead with the expected stepmother issues, giving her much put upon father a bunch of lip just because he’s moved on with his life after the death of her mother. And despite it being six long weeks since they planted Mom’s dead ass in the ground! Good gravy, Nancy! Do you expect your old man to be a monk the rest of his life? Continue reading “Blood of Dracula (1957)”
Terror Is a Man (1959)
For those of you who can’t get enough of those silly stories about mad scientists who somehow think that giving plastic surgery to large non-biped animals is going to turn those animals into people, we have this Filipino version of H.G. Wells’ story, The Island of Dr. Moreau. This version isn’t as flamboyant as the more popular Charles Laughton version (Island Of Lost Souls), chiefly because there is no one here poured into a white ice cream suit like the tubby Moreau was in that version. Continue reading “Terror Is a Man (1959)”
Torch Song (1953)
I’m assuming that there was a time when Joan Crawford didn’t resemble the cartoonish hag that Faye Dunaway portrayed her as in Mommie Dearest. By the time Torch Song was made however, that time had sadly passed. Continue reading “Torch Song (1953)”
The Deadly Mantis (1957)
If you’ve ever sat through Son of Godzilla or Godzilla: Final Wars and wished that all the Godzilla garbage was excised so that the focus could be on Kamacuras, The Deadly Mantis is a dream come true! Continue reading “The Deadly Mantis (1957)”
Written on the Wind (1956)
Finally, a movie that dramatizes the shame of being a rich alcoholic guy with a low sperm count! Continue reading “Written on the Wind (1956)”