The modest, goofball “old dark house” adventure-comedy The Crooked Circle (1932, H. Bruce Humberstone) occupies an important, if almost totally forgotten, place in history. It was a cheap B-film quickie whose most notable stars were comedians Zasu Pitts (soon to ...

Part 1: Just as a Sigh Upon Their Desire There was something about it that made it different. Something about her. Sexy, sure, but it went beyond that. Alluring. Like a smooth cocktail lounge tune accompanying you on a breezy ...

Part 1: A Pagan Past There is a moment in Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr, an unimportant throw-away couple of seconds, where the nominal hero of the story catches sight of a couple of shadows, shadows with no physical ...

Life can’t be all hacking through the jungle with a machete or leading a team of frogmen in a suicide mission attempt to sabotage an enemy U-boat. Sometimes, you find yourself slipping out of your shoulder holster (don’t worry — ...

This is part of a series of features exploring British cinema and culture as reflected by the releases in the BFI Flipside series. There’s a song by Peggy Lee called “Is That All There Is,” in which she wearily reflects ...

This is part of a series of features exploring British cinema and culture as reflected by the releases in the BFI Flipside series. “But that’s how it always begins. Very small.” — Egg Shen, Big Trouble in Little China It seemed ...

Although he would become known for his crime and cannibal films, when Make ’em Die Slowly Umberto Lenzi was just a sprout of a director, his stock in trade was adventure epics on a miniscule budget. Following his debut, the ...

During the 1950s, and culminating with the glorious boondoggle Cleopatra in 1963, Italian film studios and craftspeople enjoyed a symbiotic relationship with Hollywood that resulted in, among many other things, a whole lot of ornate stuff piling up in prop ...

For most of his tenure in the “historical hellraiser” genre, Umberto Lenzi was able to mask the paucity of his budgets by leaning on existing costumes, sets, and stock footage. On occasion, however, no amount of lavish ornamentation or camera ...

This is the first in a series of features exploring British cinema and culture as reflected by the releases in the BFI Flipside series. A mass of hopped-up teenagers stampede onto a dancefloor, jerking and gyrating to a driving, twangy ...