One can appreciation the idea behind Ronald Schwartz’s Houses of Noir: Dark Visions from Thirteen Film Studios without doing the same for the execution. That idea is simple: Pick the best example of film noir from each studio in play of that golden era, and discuss it. Granted, this mean the work is driven by … Continue reading Houses of Noir: Dark Visions from Thirteen Film Studios
Fifteen years after being raped as a child (and mute ever since), farm girl Frigga (Swedish sexploitation star Christina Lindberg, Maid in Sweden) rather naïvely accepts a ride from a stranger (Heinz Hopf, Exposed). Instead of delivering her to her doctor’s appointment, Tony takes her out for a steak dinner, then back to his rape … Continue reading Thriller: A Cruel Picture (1973)
Dressing down a pesky journalist in the first scene of 10 to Midnight, Charles Bronson’s Lt. Leo Kessler proclaims, “I’m a mean, selfish son of a bitch. And I know you want a story, but I want a killer, and what I want comes first!” I felt like cheering right then and there, and the … Continue reading 10 to Midnight (1983)
After being absent from the Resident Evil franchise director’s chair since the 2002 original, Paul W.S. Anderson returned for the fourth, Resident Evil: Afterlife, the first in 3-D. It’s a definite improvement over Apocalypse and Extinction, but still well below the sheer coolness factor of the first. One problem is that Anderson has overestimated viewers’ … Continue reading Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010)