Tuesdays with Lorre: My Favorite Brunette (1947)
Posted inBlog

Tuesdays with Lorre: My Favorite Brunette (1947)

[Note the highly misleading poster art. Hope never wears anything like he is pictured here, and Dorothy Lamour certainly never appears in a bathing suit. And I seriously have no friggin' idea what those other ladies are supposed to represent.] Bob Hope was, save for W. C. Fields, the greatest solo film comic of…
7
Posted inBlog

Who Watches The Watch?

The opening paragraph of the Chicago Tribune review of this film mentions the awkwardness of releasing a film about a neighborhood watch following the Trayvon Martin shooting. "Timing is everything," Michael Phillips wrote. (He then ties in the Aurora shooting in the third paragraph. Review the film, ass. You're not a sociologist, you're a…
13
Monster of the Day #525
Posted inBlog

Monster of the Day #525

Is  this why I've always wanted a fez and smocking jacket?* Maybe. [*Seriously, I have. However, good smoking jackets cost way too much dough.]
23
Rock Baker’s Video Cheese: The Deadly Mantis (1957)
Posted inBlog

Rock Baker’s Video Cheese: The Deadly Mantis (1957)

"Universal International unleashes another mammoth insect upon 1950's America. Peter Gunn is on hand to handle the situation." The 1950's were, in almost every way, the zenith of American pop culture. You'd be hard pressed to find a time in which a better aesthetic and audible quality of entertainment existed. Certainly, monster movies were…
11
Tuesdays with Lorre: Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)
Posted inBlog

Tuesdays with Lorre: Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)

Following his cameo appearance in Irwin Allen’s craptastic The Story of Mankind (1957)—one of dozens of that movie’s ‘star’ turns—Peter Lorre became part of Allen’s stock company. We already examined Lorre’s negligible role in The Big Circus. This was followed a somewhat more substantial part in the movie Voyage to the Bottom of the…
24