Next SFF Author: Joseph Fink
Previous SFF Author: Gemma Files

Series: Film / TV


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Billy the Kid Versus Dracula: Bar-B doll

Billy the Kid Versus Dracula directed by William Beaudine

New York City-born director William Beaudine didn’t acquire the nickname “One Shot” for nothing. Working at a furious and efficient pace, Beaudine managed to helm no fewer than 178 films, starting in the 1920s and extending all the way to 1966. In his final year as a filmmaker, Beaudine brought all his vast experience to bear and managed to come up with two entertainments that have been flabbergasting audiences for over half a century now. The two films — Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter and Billy the Kid Versus Dracula — served as a perfectly well-matched double feature,


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A Place Of One’s Own: A subdued but highly effective British ghost story

A Place Of One’s One directed by Bernard Knowles

In October 1945, the horror anthology film Dead of Night was released in England, and to this day, almost 75 years later, it remains one of the scariest pictures ever to come out of that country. But Dead of Night was hardly the first shuddery cinematic exercise to be released there that year. Some five months earlier, in May ’45, a smaller and admittedly less frightening cinematic offering had been released to the public, and that film was A Place of One’s Own,


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Willard: Attack of the ticked-off track bunnies

Willard directed by Daniel Mann

Here in NYC, the subway workers of the MTA who labor in the tunnels have a nickname for the rats that they frequently encounter: “track bunnies.” It’s a cute name that masks the fact that for most New Yorkers, the Rattus rattus is an animal that they feel should ONLY be seen down in the subway tracks, from the safe perspective of the subway platform. The sight of one of those grisly rodents anywhere else is guaranteed to engender disgust and an atavistic terror. And perhaps it was with this very knowledge that the producers of the 1971 film Willard felt confident that they would have a surefire hit on their hands,


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Dead Men Walk: Zucco x 2

Dead Men Walk directed by Sam Newfield

As I have written elsewhere, the history of the 1940s horror film can practically be summarized with two words: Universal and Lewton. But while Universal Studios was busily churning out its remarkable run of Frankenstein, Dracula, Wolf Man and Invisible Man films during that decade, and producer Val Lewton over at RKO was turning out some of the most artfully done horror films of all time (such as Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie), some of the other, lesser studios in Hollywood were coming out with their own shuddery fare,


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King Kong: Long live the king!

King Kong directed by Meriam C. Cooper & Ernest B. Schoedsack

Of all the titles that appear on my personal Top 10 Films list, this is the one that I have a feeling every single person who is reading this has already seen. For we baby boomers, this is a film that has always been with us. We’ve seen it over and over on television, and many of us, including myself, have seen it over and over on the big screen. It has been an acknowledged classic ever since it first premiered in NYC on March 2,


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The Power: A great cast just barely puts it over

The Power directed by Byron Haskin

Between the two of them, director Byron Haskin and producer/director George Pal had previously been responsible for such marvelous sci-fi/fantasy films as From the Earth to the Moon, Robinson Crusoe on Mars, Destination Moon, When Worlds Collide, The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine and The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao; working as a team, they had put together the highly regarded Conquest of Space AND The Naked Jungle.


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The Invisible Boy: “Boy, what a trip!”

The Invisible Boy directed by Herman Hoffman

If I were to ask a random group of people what their fondest memory is of MGM’s classic 1956 sci-fi film Forbidden Planet, I would, in all likelihood, receive many different responses. For some, it would be that incredible starship, the C-57D, the first faster-than-light craft to be portrayed on film. For others, it would be the ravening Id Monster, snarling and wailing as it comes in contact with a force field barrier. Some other folks would fondly recall the many underground wonders of the dead Krell race that Prof.


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Jessica Jones Season Two: A stuttering start but gets there in the end

Jessica Jones Season Two

Let’s face it, Jessica Jones’ season two was always going to suffer, at least from the outset, in comparison to season one for one simple reason: it was going to be pretty much impossible to come up with anything like the combination of Killgrave and David Tennant — an incredibly compelling villain played by an actor who so wonderfully (if one can use that word) and seductively inhabited that character. And there’s no doubt season two feels that lack of a compelling villain (one fully realizes how large a hole Tennant’s absence creates when he briefly returns in what I’d say was probably the best episode of the season).


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Sandy’s 2017 Film Year in Review

Anyone who knows me well could tell you that I don’t see a lot of new films. As a matter of fact, of the 116 films that I saw in 2017, only 7 were new, and 109 were old. Thus, my annual Top 10 Best and Worst lists are necessarily different than most. With me, any film that I saw for the first time in 2017 was eligible for either list. If the film made me laugh, or think, or tear up, or sit suspensefully on the edge of my seat, or amazed me with something that I had not seen before,


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Between Two Worlds: See it before your own ship sets sail

Between Two Worlds directed by Edward A. Blatt

Featuring a raft of experienced Warner Brothers lead and character actors as well as one up-and-coming future starlet, 1944’s Between Two Worlds reveals itself to be a pleasing supernatural fantasy, indeed, and one that should hold up very well for modern audiences, now almost 75 years since its release. The film was based on the 1923 play Outward Bound by British playwright Sutton Vane, which had been adapted to film once before, as an early-sound vehicle for Leslie Howard, under that original title,


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Next SFF Author: Joseph Fink
Previous SFF Author: Gemma Files

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