Keep your expectations low to the ground when slithering your way into Calamity of Snakes. This is, after all, a Hong Kong film whose opening credits include such crew positions as “lighiting” and “propesman.” However, Bruceploitation-vet director and co-writer Chi Chang makes up for any spelling errors with serpents, and lots of ’em. Our hero … Continue reading Calamity of Snakes (1983)
If the phrase “hook echo” gives you a boner, The Day After Tomorrow is a movie tailor-made for you. For the rest of us, it’s just Independence Day with worse weather and better actors. As some sort of weather researcher, Dennis Quaid implores the world governments to do something about the current global warming situation … Continue reading The Day After Tomorrow (2004)
Like a redneck version of American Graffiti, the relatively obscure comedy Drive-In chronicles one crazy day and night in the humdrum life of several residents, mostly high schoolers, of an unnamed rural Texas town. Beyond a ramshackle skating rink, the main source of entertainment appears to be the local Alamo Drive-In, where the movie takes … Continue reading Drive-In (1976)
Sex begins with a kiss, which must be why the 1896 featurette The John C. Rice-May Irwin Kiss — all 47 seconds of it — provoked such a uproar among a puritanical public. Distributed by Thomas Edison’s company, The Kiss (as it is better known) depicted just that and nothing more — a fleeting peck, … Continue reading Dirty Words and Filthy Pictures: Film and the First Amendment