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  • Dark Cinema: Holiday Noir

    The season of good cheer can be as dark as it is merry. It is a time of crowded stores, a hectic pace and maybe even a bit of loneliness. Sometimes a heartwarming holiday flick just doesn't fit the mood. The antidote? A healthy helping of noir. Check out these films that view the holiday season from the dark side: They Live...

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  • Silent Wonders: Early Landmarks in Special Effects

    The farther back one pursues a love of vintage films, a theme becomes increasingly clear: the speed of technology. Cinema was driven by rapid advances in photography, set design, and props. Consider first the format of commercial films: coin-operated peep shows in 1894, public exhibition of short films in 1896 (some of them clips of a minute or less), a popular narrative film (The Great Train Robbery) in 1903, a charming cartoon, Gertie the Dinosaur, in 1909, and feature fil...

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  • Silent Cinema: Paris in Silent Film

    Ask anyone to name the cities with the greatest cultural impact and Paris likely makes the list. Hollywood loves Paris as much as anyone, and that love goes all the way back to the silent era. Of course, no two filmmakers are going to see a city in the same way and this is where things get interesting. We are going to be looking at the assorted ways Paris was portrayed in silent film. Those Wacky Middle Ages The most lavish films set in Paris take the ...

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  • Dana Andrews: Son of a Preacher Man

    Dana Andrews was born Carver Dana Andrews on New Year's Day, 1909, in Mississippi. He was a preacher's son, one of a large family which would eventually include his little brother, actor Steve Forrest, who was born William Andrews when Dana was 16. Dana came to California in the early '30s, intent on being an actor. He worked in a variety of jobs, and in the mid-'30s a pair of Van Nuys businessmen he knew took the unusual step of 'investing' in Dana, supporting him while he took a...

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  • Five of a Kind: The Odd Life of the Dionne Quintuplets

    If the Dionne quintuplets had been born today, they would have been reality television stars or a YouTube sensation. However, there's nothing in modern life that can compare to the sensation the girls created when they became the first recorded quintuplets to live beyond infancy. Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emilie and Marie Dionne were born to poor farmer, Oliva-Edouard, and his wife Elzire in the village of Corbeil, Ontario, Canada in 1934. Arriving two months early, it was assumed ...

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  • Classics 101 - Presenting Alfred Hitchcock: Part 2, the British Masterpieces

    In the first part of this retrospective; we tracked young Alfred Hitchcock through his earliest films. In 1934, he purchased the rights to Bulldog Drummond's Baby (but not the Bulldog Drummond character) and began fashioning one of his most famous thrillers.'I think you'll find the real start of my career was The Man who Knew too Much.' - Alfred Hitchcock Non-stop fun and much closer to what the director would give us from now on than what he'd given ...

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  • TV TIME: Horror Icons on the Small Screen

    Like many stars of the golden age of Hollywood, some of the most notable horror icons of the era eventually transitioned to television. I won't argue their best work was done on the small screen, but there is a lot of enjoyable material from them on DVD. Let's examine some of the classic television appearances of these legendary performers. One legendary movie monster who is not a regular on the tube is Bela Lugosi, who is of course Dracula in the 1931 Universal ...

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  • The Old Corral: The Lone Ranger in 'The Ghost of Coyote Canyon'

    The Lone Ranger was ABC's top-rated show throughout its original run, and the network's first big success of the 1950s. Of course, the character had been around since his radio debut in 1933, created by George Trendle and Frank Striker. And while the show, novels, comics and movie serials were big hits, it was the TV show, starring Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels, became a true phenomenon. For many of us, Clayton Moore is the Lone Ranger, the same way Sean Connery is J...

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  • Zero at the Bone: Chilling Moments in Classic Films

    My article title comes from Emily Dickinson; it is how she described the feeling of coming upon a snake as it slid past her in the grass. It is a feeling film makers have produced in willing audiences since the silent days. With its sensory presentation, film is the perfect medium for the thriller. While we often date the modern thriller from the premiere of Psycho in 1960, movies had been scaring the socks off people for half a century. In 1910, in fact, there was a one-reel Fra...

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  • Easy Living at the Lone Pine Film Festival

    The 25th Lone Pine Film Festival took place in Lone Pine, California, in early October, providing film fans with a very special time in an area where hundreds of classic-era movies were filmed. Although I've been to the charming little Sierra town of Lone Pine on many occasions, this was my first visit to the festival, and I can't underline enough what a good time I had. Anyone who loves classic films, especially Westerns, will want to put the Lone Pine Film Festival on their 'mus...

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