I’ll confess that I was a bit skeptical when I began watching The Birds. I was thinking to myself, “this is a two hour movie about a woman being pecked by some whacko birds. How interesting can that be? Sounds like a bunch of bird doody to me!” And as is usually the case, I was right! The Birds is all about the world turning to bird doody as Alfred Hitchcock unleashes a very effective apocalyptic vision of nature rebelling against man! And by nature, I mean some stinky birds. Read More

I think I must have missed the wedding. You know, the one where Dario Argento (Suspiria) got married to the steadicam. I think John Carpenter gave the bride away. When you watch Argento’s take on The Phantom of the Opera (not to be confused with the regular version of the film he did about 11 years later), you’re alternately impressed with the sweeping shots of the opera house and nauseated by the floating views he uses to follow some of the action. Read More

I originally figured that since “tenebre” sounded a little like “tentacle” that maybe this movie was going to be about a giant squid. Then I discovered that it was an Italian flick so I figured that some giant squid was on the loose in Rome eating fashion models. It ended up though being a fairly straight forward slasher flick where the murders were all related to a book that Anthony Franciosa’s character Peter Neal had written, called Tenebre. Read More

After watching this movie I came to a couple of conclusions. The first is that despite this being directed by their idol, Lucio Fulci, the gorehounds will be somewhat disappointed with it. The second thing I figured out is that in spite of Fulci’s reputation, anyone that enjoys a good, unsettling thriller will come away feeling very satisfied with what they’ve seen. The last and by far the most important thing I learned was that the title refers to a retarded girl’s Donald Duck doll. Read More

Do not be fooled by the bold visuals and the spectacular murder set pieces that Dario Argento uses in this, the first of a trilogy of films which also includes Inferno and Mother Of Tears. When you look past the style he dresses this one up in, it all still boils down to a coven of super powerful witches defeated by a wispy American ballet student who’s in something like her second week at the ballet academy where this all takes place. Read More

There’s some pretty poor decision making going on in Dario Argento’s Inferno. The dumb broad who tries to steal the most evil book this side of the Necronomicon? Be glad you only got murdered later on and didn’t get your face shoved in the pot of boiling gunk the dude with the monster claws was using to fix books with. Next time try using your library card! Read More

If Don’t Torture A Duckling is for people that want Lucio Fulci before he went and got himself married to the special effects department (best man? Eye gouge! Maid of honor? Maggot storm! Flower girl? Pig guts!), then Deep Red is for Dario Argento fans that found his films to be either impenetrable trash like Inferno or nonsensically complicated murder mysteries like Tenebre or Opera. Read More

In Dario Argento’s first film, Tony Musante plays Sam, an American writer who is in Rome trying to find inspiration for a new work. Apparently all the inspiration he was able to muster up was a work-for-hire project about birds. He turns in that project and is getting ready to leave the country, when, wouldn’t you know it, he happens to be aimlessly walking the nighttime streets of Rome and sees an attempted murder going on! Read More

The Deep is a movie long on scenes of Nick Nolte and Robert Shaw vacuuming up the ocean floor in search of Spanish treasure and short on anything resembling excitement. The movie has also been “credited” with starting the wet T-shirt craze with scenes of Jacqueline Bisset diving around in a clingy top (what? You thought it was because of the scenes where Robert Shaw was diving around in a clingy top?), but once she gets relegated to bored girlfriend status and just hangs out on the boat while Nick and Robert battle Lou Gossett and a big eel, the movie loses whatever momentum it had. Read More

This movie teaches us the hard way that the only thing worse than a film ending with a big cello concerto is a film that drones on with lots of talk ten minutes after the big cello concerto. Watching Paul Henreid sitting there with a big violin between his legs while he makes all these “either I’m a musical genius or I’m in need of some serious fiber” faces while he plays some obnoxious dirge that composer/rival Claude Raines dreamed up in between bouts of surly self-pity at having lost the affections of Bette Davis, made me realize why you don’t see a lot of love triangle movies involving classical musicians these days. Read More