THE BIG GOODBYE: CHINATOWN AND THE LAST YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
This book is ostensibly about the making of CHINATOWN (1974), but its true concerns are Hollywood in the early 1970s and one of that milieu’s most contentious figures: one Roman Polanski
THE APPLE WAR
A self-proclaimed “happy and mystic film” from Sweden with a highly eccentric critique of imperialism (of the cultural and environmental variety)
BLACK CHRISTMAS
It’s probably wrong to criticize this book overmuch, as novelizations are by nature an extremely hasty and disreputable form of literature. It’s true that occasionally a novelization will transcend its limitations, but this one doesn’t.
TO BE TWENTY
This Italian oddity is among the most notorious grindhouse productions due solely to its final ten minutes
Robert Forster: 1941-2019
2019 is shaping up as, among other things, a year in which quite a few vital character actors breathed their last breath
THE BURNING HELL
This hour long atrocity dramatizes the fire and brimstone preachings of Estus W. Pirkle, a Baptist minister, by the veteran sleazemeister Ron Ormond
Sid Haig: 1939-2019
Oftentimes it can be difficult to grasp just how much a skilled supporting player adds to the movies s/he graces—until, that is, the player in question is no longer with us
SIX-HUNDRED & SIXTY SIX
An evangelical film with a difference, which is to say that unlike most such films SIX-HUNDRED & SIXTY SIX, hailing from 1972, is almost good
KEN RUSSELL: A DIRECTOR IN SEARCH OF A HERO
A short book but also a valuable one, representing as it does a meeting of two most interesting minds: author Colin Wilson and filmmaker Ken Russell
Fifty Years of Manson-sploitation
August 9, 2019 marked the fiftieth anniversary of the murders committed by the Manson family