Greetings, Boils and Ghouls, long time no see. Well, I guess we can count this one as a Shameless Plug to help those who wound up here and herd them over to our more recent online endeavors at Confirmed, Alan_01. (Yes. That's a TRON reference.)
Anyhoo, we just completed an exhaustive two part series on Rene Daalder's Massacre at Central High (1976), where we explained the circumstances of how a Dutch filmmaker, an independent distributor out of Chicago, and Russ Meyer of all people came together for one strange little bugaboo of a movie; then try to unravel how a film that was specifically commissioned to be as equally grisly as The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1973), with a near double-digit body count, wound up instead an odd and offbeat lesson in civics and an all-out political allegory on the rise and fall of the Third Reich; and then decide if it works and ultimately unravel the film's treacherous path from obscurity to Cult Filmdom.
We also just completed a retrospective / memorial on the early film career of Roger Corman, with completely overhauled and updated reviews on The Gunfighter (1950), The Beast with a Million Eyes (1950), It Conquered the World (1956), Rock All Night (1957), Creature from the Haunted Sea (1961), X! The Man with the X-Ray Eyes (1963), and a brand new review of The Terror (1963), where we skewer the myth that the production tales of Corman's movies always proved more interesting / entertaining than the film they made. Sort of. We also did a massive update on our old 3B Theater review of Corman's Teenage Caveman (1958).
Here's a list of what we've published so far, including a two-part look at Phil Karlson's Framed (1975) and the rise and fall of Joe Don Baker. And I encourage you, Gentle Readers, that even if you've already read my take on these movies before, each entry has been extensively rewritten and updated -- like these reviews of Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), Beginning of the End (1957) and Under the Rainbow (1981) -- with an emphasis on proper attribution on a lot of those phantom quotes that have plagued my writing for years. (My bad. Working on it. And now with at least 30% less grammatical atrocities.)
Of course, I'm posting this right before I take off on the usual September Sabbatical, but that also means we'll return in October with something I refer to as Not Quite Hubrisween, where we do a marathon of specific and seasonally appropriate genre films. (Not 26 films though. I'm way too old for that anymore. Wow. How I managed to pull that off for so long is beyond me.) Also of note, we've resurrected The Morgue and the Poster Archive as well.
The end game / goal is to get all of my online writings finally in one place -- with even a few brand new reviews sprinkled in. (All of the old content will remain as is where it is.) And I wouldn't even call these things reviews anymore. Essays maybe? Term papers? Sermons? Treatise? Mindless Ramblings with an Occasional Anecdote? Desperate cries for help? That's me shrugging right now. Either way, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!
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