Billy the Kid vs Dracula (1966)

Billy the Kid vs Dracula (1966)

  John Carradine loved to act. Well, of course he did. Actors do, generally. However, John Carradine really loved to act. Born Richmond Reed Carradine, he redubbed his own name in homage to his friend and idol John Barrymore. Mr. Barrymore was both the greatest actor of his day and remains one of Hollywood’s…
Fantomas III: The Murderous Corpse (1913)

Fantomas III: The Murderous Corpse (1913)

The further I get into things, the want to go into details. Surely interested readers will want to seek out the Fantômas set (perhaps through your local library) and give it a look for themselves. That said, this third film, the only one to follow a traditional cliffhanger, is easily the most morbid and…
Fantomas II: Juve vs. Fantomas (1913)

Fantomas II: Juve vs. Fantomas (1913)

Click here to read about the previous film, Fantomas in the Shadow of the Guillotine. With our cast introduced in the first film, our second hour-long feature can hit the ground running. As the title indicates, our hero moves closer to center stage this time. Indeed, he’s joins Fantômas  with his own opening montage…
Halloween (1978)

Halloween (1978)

I won’t embarrass myself by trying to express the sort of warm human emotions I have little facility for. I will simply note that the comradeship of the various members of the Cabal, past and present, through the last 15 years has been one of the great blessings of my life. To that can…
Swept Away (2003)

Swept Away (2003)

In one obvious respect, Madonna is an atypical focus for this roundtable. She has, after all, starred or costarred in a dozen movies over the years. Not for her the route of, say, Tony Bennett in The Oscar, who gave a performance so famously awful that he never worked as an actor again. One…
The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985)

The Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf (1985)

1981 was shaping up to be a big year for werewolf fans. Long neglected except for cheesy drive-in fare like Werewolves on Wheels or The Boy Who Cried Werewolf, lycanthropy was due to return to the silver screen in a big way. Fans remain divided on the results. John Landis’ American Werewolf in London…
Cruel Jaws (1995)

Cruel Jaws (1995)

Say what you will, but that title will prove all too accurate. (The film was also known as Jaws 5: Cruel Jaws. I'm not sure if Spielberg ever gave his permission for that, though.) Amongst the many services my good friend Sandy Petersen has afforded me over the years, one of the more dubious…
Steel Justice (1992)

Steel Justice (1992)

Pretty much from the beginning of this site, and thus way back in the days of the VHS tape, I maintained that the last, great untapped source of Jabootu fare was the bad TV pilot. Sadly, these have historically been nearly impossible to track down. A few were released to VHS, but few indeed…
Butterfly (1981)

Butterfly (1981)

By 1940, the 25 year-old Orson Welles was an established, bona fide wunderkind.  He was one of the first multimedia superstars, having established by that tender age brilliant careers both as a stage actor and director and as a radio star and personality. 1938 brought him lasting fame, or perhaps notoriety, following his infamous…