That's funny that Scatman Crothers wasn't the first choice for "The Shining." I think Pauline kael complained about "The Shining" that it was racist because the only person killed in the movie was black.

I cry at the end of "City Lights," but then most people do. I cry at some unexpected films too. Perhaps the most unusual is that I can't make it through "Lili," the Leslie Caron film about the girl whose only friends are puppets, without crying. Another thing that makes me weep i...

I like Fairbanks in "Three Musketeers" and "Iron Mask," but I didn't like "Black pirate" all that much. To me, Errol Flynn is the great swashbuckler. "Captain Blood" and "Adventures of Robin Hood" are the peak of the genre. "Scaramouche" wi...

This is the movie that "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" (the Steve Martin noir parody) lifts the climax from. Shortly after "Dead men" came out, the UHF station in Cleveland aired "The Bribe." I watched it, but it was mostly to find the scenes that the Carl Reiner-directed f...

"Battle of Algiers" is a terrific movie. It is hard to believe that it contains no newsreel footage.

I'm glad to see that I'm not alone in thinking the Malick "Thin Red Line" was a poor adaptation of Jones' novel. I liked the movie when I saw it, but then when I started reading the novel, I couldn't believe what Malick omitted and changed. It was as if he approached the novel believing th...

I like "Old Dark House" a lot. It is different from the Frankenstein movies, but it has an intensity that makes me connect it to "Straw Dogs." The one Whale horror film that I've never really gotten excited about is "The Invisible Man." The first half-hour is good, and ...

I was struck by two things when I saw "Cloak and Dagger" several years ago. I liked Cooper's first mission, when he thinks he's being clever, and it turns out that he was making all sorts of mistakes. Then I still can't get over the fight between Cooper and Marc Lawrence, which struck me a...

The big chase at the end of "Never Give a Sucker an Even Break" has always been a favorite of mine, starting from the moment that Fields thinks the large woman seeking a cab for the maternity hospital is pregnant and needs to get there as fast as possible (she is actually just visiting som...

I don't think any of the younger actors in "Rio Lobo" ever went on to anything in acting, but I think one of the females became a successful producers for a while. Todd McCarthy's biography of Hawks says that "Rio Lobo" was a pretty unhappy experience. Wayne basically took the fi...

In a lot of ways, "Black Angel" reminds me of "Phantom Lady" in terms of its plot: a woman puts on a masquerade to solve a murder that her beloved/husband is accused of. Woolrich also wrote the novel, "Black Alibi," that eventually became Val Lewton's "The Leopard ...

Certainly, the Seventies were the heyday of dystopian science fiction movies. "A Clockwork Orange" is brilliant. "Westworld" and "Rollerball" are still interesting. "Time After Time," H. G. Wells pursues Jack the Ripper to "modern" San Francisco is a...

"Night Gallery" was a hit or miss proposition. When NG was good, "Fear of Spiders," "The Caterpillar," "Sins of the Fathers," "Pickman's Model," it was terrific. But there were a lot of dud episodes along the way, and those lousy little "funny&q...

I just watched "Seven Chances" last week on DVD. Wow, the chase at the end of the film is outstanding. And all done without computers. Keaton is unbelievable as he summersaults down the mountain with the boulders all around. I tend to like the less known Keaton films (Seven Chances, Go Wes...

I probably ought to give this movie a second try. I thought it was okay in 1986. I was a huge Kathleen Turner fan then. It's too bad she hasn't been in more movies, but I guess she has had success on the stage.