Over the last few months, I’ve been steadily working my way through some of director Ken Russell’s early work, particularly the episodes he made for the BBC series Monitor, a British arts program that ran from 1958 to 1965 and ...

Not many people have heard of the death rock band Kettle Cadaver, but it is a name you won’t ever forget if you have. Rock stars are no strangers to controversial antics which go against the grain of social norms, ...

So far in my Ken Russell column, I’ve covered a number of his early films for the BBC program Monitor — particularly his artist biographies like Elgar and The Debussy Film — and this later documentary, Always on Sunday (1965), ...

“Pleasure is the law.” -Claude Debussy Though it was technically an episode made for the BBC’s Monitor program, a series primarily comprised of art documentaries, Ken Russell’s The Debussy Film (1965) is a feature length film, and though Russell had ...

Recently I began my Ken Russell retrospective with a look at Elgar (1962), one of the director’s early yet influential composer biographies, made as a lengthy episode of the BBC series Monitor. Russell was involved in the series from 1959 ...

Recently, I finished a lengthy series on Polish director Andrzej Zuławski and, though I definitely intended to take a few weeks off before deciding on another under-appreciated arthouse director to explore, Ken Russell just would not be denied. The idea ...

Formed in London in the late ‘60s by former scientologists, husband and wife team Robert and Mary Ann DeGrimston, the Process Church of the Final Judgement has long been a source of mystery and fascination for me, and pretty much ...

This is one of those projects that I feel like I’ve been reporting on forever. The documentary Unearthed and Untold: The Path To Pet Sematary is finally about to make its way to the fans.  Directors Justin White and John ...

Kent Jones’ documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015)  is in theaters now. It tells the story of a monumental interview with Alfred Hitchcock conducted by François Truffaut in 1962 and the subsequent book that would inspire countless filmmakers since. Diabolique has reviewed the film, ...

In 1962 François Truffaut, the newly world-renowned director and film critic, sat down with Alfred Hitchcock for an extended interview. This interview, in which the two discussed Hitchcock’s films—and cinema in general—was immortalized in Hitchcock: The Definitive Study of Alfred Hitchcock, ...