Noticias

After merging his Atomic Monster film and TV production company with Jason Blum's Blumhouse Productions earlier this year, James Wan looks to have finally set his next movie to direct, a remake of the 1954 monster horror film Creature From the Black Lagoon. More on this upcoming movie and Wan's potential involvement below.

Many people might recognize Wan as the creator of the highly successful The Conjuring Universe. He's also the co-creator of other successful horror franchises, such as the Saw franchise and the Insidious film series. But while he's been signed on as producer or executive producer on recent projects, he hasn't sat in the director's chair since 2023's Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

Now, it's been reported that he's in early talks to direct a Creature From the Black Lagoon remake for Atomic Monster and Universal Pictures. He will reportedly produce the film through his Atomic Monster production company,...

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom director James Wan is set to return to the ocean for his next feature.

Universal has been trying to get a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon off the ground for a few years at this stage, and the project is finally moving forward with the horror maestro at the helm.

According to THR, Wan is in early talks to direct a reimagining of the black-and-white '50s classic, which was helmed by Jack Arnold.

The original focused on a group of scientists attempting to study an ancient prehistoric monster known as the Gill-Man, who soon becomes dangerous and begins to pick them off after taking a shine to Julia Adams' character. It's still viewed by many as one of the most influential horror films of all time.

This take is described as being "a grounded, modernized retelling that will lean into visceral horror,...

James Wan has been at the helm of several horror films, and he might have his take on a popular horror remake. Wan is currently in talks to helm a remake of Creature from the Black Lagoon.

James Wan is a very complex director with a preference for horror. He has created, co-created, and directed many popular horror franchises, including Saw, Insidious, and The Conjuring, but he's also had his shot at 2015's Furious 7 and the two Aquaman films. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Wan is currently in talks to have a new take on the classic Universal monster.

Related The Conjuring 4 Sets Theatrical Release Date, Confirmed as Final Mainline Entry

New Line announces when the final mainline installment in The Conjuring Universe will be released in theaters.

Wan and his collaborators reportedly presented Universe with a pitch for a remake of the classic horror film: Creature from the Black Lagoon.

1954's "The Creature From The Black Lagoon" was the last gasp of Universal Pictures' black-and-white horror heyday. Pivoting away from literary adaptations towards something more resembling contemporary man-in-suit monster movies, "Black Lagoon" introduced one last staple of the Universal Monster line-up: The Gill-man. A missing link in the evolutionary chain, the amphibian man has the same mix of terror and lovelorn pathos as his monstrous brethren.

It's not quite the pop-culture staple that "Dracula" and "Frankenstein" are, but "The Creature From The Black Lagoon" has been reimagined many times (most famously in 2017 with Guillermo del Toro's Best Picture-winning oddball romance "The Shape of Water" — it was almost black-and-white like "Black Lagoon" too). Now a new comic book starring the Gill-Man comes forth from Skybound Entertainment, boasting a title that belongs to a forgotten Universal Horror picture: "The Creature From The Black Lagoon Lives!"

Skybound isn't just revitalizing "The Transformers" and "G.I. Joe.

Phyllis Coates, the first actress to play Daily Planet reporter Lois Lane on television, only to leave the Adventures of Superman after just one season, has died. She was 96.

Coates, who also appeared in Republic Pictures serials and in such films as I Was a Teenage Frankenstein, died Wednesday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, her daughter Laura Press told The Hollywood Reporter.

A native of Wichita Falls, Texas, Coates first portrayed the headstrong Lois opposite George Reeves as the Man of Steel in the dark sci-fi movie Superman and the Mole Men (1951).

The success of that Lippert Pictures film — the first full-length theatrical feature starring the comic-book hero — led to the quick decision to start production on a syndicated show for television.

Coates segued to the series and got into jams as Lois in all 26 episodes of the first season...

John Sturges’ Road Show comedy western has more in common with 1941 than The Magnificent Seven, but Kino has MGM’s new remaster and the visual result is spectacular. The Ultra Panavision 70 epic is still a favorite of fans of out-of-control Hollywood filmmaking. Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton, Pamela Tiffin and a huge cast lead the charge for a convoy of frontier whisky. It’s all in a fine spirit of madcap fun. . . so where are the big laughs?

The Hallelujah Trail

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 156 165 min. / Street Date December 13, 2022 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton, Pamela Tiffin, Donald Pleasence, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, John Anderson, Tom Stern, Robert J. Wilke, Dub Taylor, Whit Bissell, Helen Kleeb, Val Avery, Hope Summers, John Dehner (narrator).

Cinematography: Robert Surtees

Art Direction: Carey Odell

Costumes: Edith Head

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Original Music: Elmer Bernstein...

Based on the Cosmopolitan story about a real-life health crisis, Earl McEvoy directs this uniquely noirish thriller from a script by Harry Essex. Evelyn Keyes stars as a smuggler sick with Smallpox trying to pass off some hot diamonds while infecting everyone she meets. The 1950 film features a great B-movie cast with Lola Albright and Whit Bissell. The music is by Hans Salter, composer for dozens of Universal monster movies.

The post The Killer That Stalked New York appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

If you have to name One movie that’s not likely to ever be screened in a prison, this one’s a good bet. In his sophomore starring outing Burt Lancaster leads a group of rebel convicts on a do-or-die bust-out against Hume Cronyn’s utter Nazi of a warden Captain. Richard Brooks’ script and Jules Dassin’s direction don’t sugarcoat the sadistic goings-on and producer Mark Hellinger pushed the result through the Production Code office. Sure, sure, plenty of noirs are violent … but this one must have been quite a head-spinner in ’47.

Brute Force

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 383

1947 / B&w / 1:37 Academy / 98 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 8, 2020 / 39.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Hume Cronyn, Charles Bickford, Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Blyth, Ella Raines, Anita Colby, Sam Levene, Jeff Corey, John Hoyt, Jack Overman, Roman Bohnen, Sir Lancelot, Howard Duff, Art Smith, Whit Bissell.

Cinematography: William Daniels...

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“Docu-noir At Its Finest”

By Raymond Benson

A sub-genre of film noir is that of the so-called “docu-noir,” a crime drama usually based on a true story and told as a Dragnet-style procedural. Most likely there is an omniscient voiceover narrator, a focus on the lawmen who are investigating the case, and all the other stylistic and thematic elements associated with film noir in general: starkly contrasting black and white photography, urban locations, shadows, gritty realism, angst and cynicism, and sometimes brutal violence.

Eagle-Lion Films was a British/American production company that existed for only a few years in the late 40s, disbanding in the early 50s. There was some talent involved, and they produced a variety of genres and pictures of varying quality (Powell and Pressburger’s The Red Shoes was a rare Best Picture nominee). Many of the studio’s pictures...

A group of young, scrappy and brilliant writers penned some of the most accomplished dramas presented live during the Golden Age of TV in the 1950s. Writers such as Paddy Chayefsky, J.P. Miller (“The Days of Wine and Roses”), Reginald Rose (“Twelve Angry Men”), Tad Mosel (“The Haven”), James Costigan (“Little Moon of Alban”) and Horton Foote.

But the most influential and best-known of these writers was Rod Serling, who became a superstar as not only creator and writer but host of the landmark 1959-1964 CBS sci-fi/fantasy anthology series “The Twilight Zone,” for which he won two Emmys for his writing. “The Twilight Zone” and even his less successful 1970-73 NBC anthology series “Night Gallery” has overshadowed his earlier work for which he won three Emmys for his writing.

Among his earliest work was the 1953 “Kraft Television Theatre” presentation “A Long Time Till Dawn,” which gave a 22-year-old James Dean...

As Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas tighten the screws in a life and death face-off between a traitorous general and his whistle-blowing aide, John Frankenheimer keeps upping the ante in this brilliantly directed political thriller scripted by Rod Serling in 1964. Good-guy politicos Fredric March and Edmond O’Brien push back against the gathering storm while conspirators Whit Bissell and Hugh Marlowe keep adding fuel to the fire.

The post Seven Days In May appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

As the first wave of ‘adult’ westerns began to fade, 1959 gave us a burst of genuinely adult stories about the famed lawless towns of the frontier. Henry Fonda is at his moody best in a replay of his earlier Wyatt Earp, de-mythologized as just one more self-oriented opportunist in a land where even lawmen have an angle to play. But Fonda’s gun skills are impressive, and his deadly Clay Blaisedell is halfway to becoming the soulless ‘Frank’ from Once Upon a Time in The West. Edward Dmytryk almost rights his capsized directing career, and Robert Alan Aurthur’s screenplay delivers both an intense drama, & great gunslinging action.

Warlock

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1959 / Colo / 2:35 widescreen / 122 min. / Street Date May 21, 2019 / Available from Twilight Time Movies / 29.95

Starring: Richard Widmark, Henry Fonda, Anthony Quinn, Dorothy Malone, Dolores Michaels, Wallace Ford, Tom Drake, Richard Arlen, DeForest Kelley, Frank Gorshin, Vaughn Taylor, Don Beddoe, Whit Bissell,...

A super-classic receives a super ‘Olive Signature’ Blu-ray release. CineSavant clears up some online rumors complaining that the disc producers didn’t do a full restoration. The original release Superscope version of Don Siegel’s soul-shaking chiller has been handsomely remastered — and with the extras we’ve awaited for 12 years.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1956 / B&W / 2:1 widescreen / 80 min. / Olive Signature Edition / Street Date October 16, 2018 / 39.95

Starring Kevin McCarthy, Dana Wynter, Larry Gates, King Donovan, Carolyn Jones, Jean Willes, Virginia Christine, Whit Bissell, Richard Deacon, Bobby Clark, Dabbs Greer, Marie Selland, Sam Peckinpah.

Cinematography Ellsworth Fredericks

Film Editor Robert S. Eisen

Original Music Carmen Dragon

Written by Daniel Mainwearing from a magazine serial by Jack Finney

Produced by Walter Wanger

Directed by Don Siegel

One of the greatest of 1950s science fiction films transcends the genre so neatly that many don’t see it as Sci-fi at all,...

As Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas tighten the screws in a life and death face-off between a traitorous general and his whistle-blowing aide, John Frankenheimer keeps upping the ante in this brilliantly directed political thriller scripted by Rod Serling in 1964. Good-guy politicos Fredric March and Edmond O’Brien push back against the gathering storm while conspirators Whit Bissell and Hugh Marlowe keep adding fuel to the fire.

The post Seven Days In May appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

One of my favorite classic Universal monster movies is The Creature From the Black Lagoon. There is just something about the setting, the characters, the story and the monster design that sucked me right in. 

The film was actually supposed to be part of Universal Pictures' Dark Universe, but we don't know exactly where that whole plan currently stands at the moment. Regardless, if the studio ever does decide to move forward with a remake of The Creature of the Black Lagoon, Rob Zombie is interested in taking it on.

During an interview with HDNet that was uncovered by JoBlo, the director expressed his interest in the film saying:

"One thing I always thought was possible was to remake the Creature from the Black Lagoon. Because the creature itself, in that phenomenal suit they constructed, could be exactly the same. So I think Creature from the Black Lagoon could be a cool one.

Blown up to Road Show spectacular dimensions, a fairly modest idea for a comedy western became something of a career Waterloo for director John Sturges. But it’s still a favorite of fans thrilled by fancy 70mm-style presentations. A huge cast led by Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton and Pamela Tiffin leads the charge on a whisky-soaked madcap chase. It’s all in a fine spirit of fun. . . so where are the big laughs?

The Hallelujah Trail

Blu-ray

Olive Films

1965 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 155 min. / Street Date February 27, 2018 / available through the Olive Films website / 24.95

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Lee Remick, Jim Hutton, Pamela Tiffin, Donald Pleasence, Brian Keith, Martin Landau, John Anderson, Tom Stern, Robert J. Wilke, Dub Taylor, Whit Bissell, Helen Kleeb, Val Avery, Hope Summers, John Dehner.

Cinematography: Robert Surtees

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Original Music: Elmer Bernstein

Written by John Gay from the novel by William Gulick

Executive...

Style can be the star in Classic Noir, making a less prestigious film more entertaining than one with bigger names. Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor and Marsha Hunt spin an excellent crime-love-murder triangle, for a road picture that’s one of the best Noirs not made by a big studio. Director Anthony Mann and cinematographer John Alton dial up the intensity for an experience as rich as the best pulp crime fiction.

Raw Deal

Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1948 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 79 min. / Special Edition / Street Date January 16, 2018 / 39.99

Starring: Dennis O’Keefe, Claire Trevor, Marsha Hunt, John Ireland, Raymond Burr, Curt Conway, Chili Williams, Regis Toomey, Whit Bissell, Cliff Clark, Greg Barton, Tom Fadden, Ilka Grüning, Ray Teal.

Cinematography: John Alton

Film Editor: Alfred DeGaetano

Original Music: Paul Sawtell

Written by Leopold Atlas, John C. Higgens, from a story by Arnold B. Armstrong & Audrey Ashley

Produced by Edward Small

Directed by Anthony Mann...

What? Doctors aren’t perfect? And some practicing doctors are incompetent? Stanley Kramer’s All-Star medical soap opera takes two unlikely students (Robert Mitchum and Frank Sinatra) through med school and confronts them with a number of pat dramatic complications. But the movie belongs to top-billed Olivia de Havilland, who lends a touch of class to the entire iffy enterprise.

Not as a Stranger

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1955 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 135 min. / Street Date January 9, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Olivia de Havilland, Robert Mitchum, Frank Sinatra, Gloria Grahame, Broderick Crawford, Charles Bickford, Myron McCormick, Lon Chaney Jr., Jesse White, Harry Morgan, Lee Marvin, Virginia Christine, Whit Bissell, Jack Raine, Mae Clarke, John Dierkes, King Donovan, Franklyn Farnum, Paul Guilfoile, Nancy Kulp, Harry Lauter, Juanita Moore, Jerry Paris, Stafford Repp, Carl Switzer, Will Wright.

Cinematography: Franz Planer

Film Editor: Fred Knutson

Original Music: George Antheil

Written by Edna and Edward Anhalt,...

Do you think older crime thrillers weren’t violent enough? This shocker from 1948 shook up America with its true story of a vicious killer who has a murderous solution to every problem, and uses special talents to evade police detection. Richard Basehart made his acting breakthrough as Roy Martin, a barely disguised version of the real life ‘Machine Gun Walker.

He Walked by Night

Blu-ray

ClassicFlix

1948 / B&W /1:37 flat full frame / 79 min. / Street Date November 7, 2017 / 39.99

Starring: Richard Basehart, Scott Brady, Roy Roberts, Whit Bissell, James Cardwell, Jack Webb, Dorothy Adams, Ann Doran, Byron Foulger, Reed Hadley (narrator), Thomas Browne Henry, Tommy Kelly, John McGuire, Kenneth Tobey.

Cinematography: John Alton

Art Direction: Edward Ilou

Film Editor: Alfred De Gaetano

Original Music: Leonid Raab

Written by John C. Higgins and Crane Wilbur

Produced by Bryan Foy, Robert T. Kane

Directed by Alfred L. Werker

Talk about a movie with a dynamite...

Revenge films have been around for a very long time; one can look to The Virgin Spring (1960), Straw Dogs (1971), or Death Wish (1974) for their rise from serious drama to movies of a more exploitive nature. Psychic Killer (1975) adds a unique twist to the tale by having astral projection as a means to the violent ends. Quirky and laden with creative deaths, it very much embraces its weirdness, providing a fun carpet ride for the whole family (at least according to its mind-boggling PG rating).

Released stateside in December by Avco Embassy Pictures, Psychic Killer, aka The Kirlian Force, only cost $250,000 and came and went like a phantom in the night. Critics paid it no mind either, and it was relegated to video store shelves and gas station rentals. On the surface, that’s understandable; a B cast with a former actor turned fairly unproven B director (Ray Danton – Deathmaster), and...

A military coup in the U.S.? General Burt Lancaster’s scheme would be flawless if not for true blue Marine Kirk Douglas, who snitches to the White House. Now Burt’s whole expensive clandestine army might go to waste – Sad! John Frankenheimer and Rod Serling are behind this nifty paranoid conspiracy thriller.

Seven Days in May

Blu-ray

Warner Archive Collection

1964 / B&W / 1:85 widescreen / 118 min. / Street Date May 8, 2017 / available through the WBshop / 21.99

Starring: Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner, Edmond O’Brien, Martin Balsam, Andrew Duggan, John Houseman, Hugh Marlowe, Whit Bissell, George Macready, Richard Anderson, Malcolm Atterbury, William Challee, Colette Jackson, John Larkin, Kent McCord, Tyler McVey, Jack Mullaney, Fredd Wayne, Ferris Webster.

Cinematography: Ellsworth Fredericks

Film Editor: Ferris Webster

Original Music: Jerry Goldsmith

Written by Rod Serling from the book by Fletcher Knebel, Charles W. Bailey II

Produced by Edward Lewis

Directed by John Frankenheimer...

Jim Knipfel Mar 8, 2019

The Creature From the Black Lagoon kicked off one of the most successful trilogies in early horror movie history.

The poor Gill Man never had a chance. Arriving six years after the golden age of Universal Horror was capped with Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, 1954’s The Creature from the Black Lagoon was never able to clumsily shuffle his way into the expanded universe shared by Dracula, The Wolf Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, and, if briefly, The Invisible Man.

Of course, given the three-film franchise’s contemporary time frame and American setting, it would’ve been a stretch anyway to find some reason to have him mix it up with the Wolf Man. In that way, the Gill Man was like the Mummy, forced to carry his series alone. Even if this aquatic fish face would go on to become the most iconic and influential cinematic monster of the 1950s,...

“Most curious creature, Captain. Its trilling seems to have a tranquilizing effect on the human nervous system.”

The Star Trek episodes The Trouble with Tribbles and Trials and Tribble-ations both screen at Schalfly Bottleworks in Maplewood Wednesday May 6th beginning at 8pm

You never know what’s brewing at Webster University’s Strange Brew cult film series. It’s always the first Wednesday evening of every month, and they always come up with some cult classic to show while enjoying some good food and great suds. The fun happens at Schlafly Bottleworks Restaurant and Bar in Maplewood (7260 Southwest Ave.- at Manchester – Maplewood, Mo 63143).

It’s a tribute to the late Leonard Nimoy at this month’s Strange Brew Film Series. One of the most popular and deservedly so episodes of Star Trek prime is The Trouble with Tribbles (Season 2, Episode 15 – but you knew that!). A rather self-important diplomat played...

Cary Grant films on TCM: Gender-bending 'I Was a Male War Bride' (photo: Cary Grant not gay at all in 'I Was a Male War Bride') More Cary Grant films will be shown tonight, as Turner Classic Movies continues with its Star of the Month presentations. On TCM right now is the World War II action-drama Destination Tokyo (1943), in which Grant finds himself aboard a U.S. submarine, alongside John Garfield, Dane Clark, Robert Hutton, and Tom Tully, among others. The directorial debut of screenwriter Delmer Daves (The Petrified Forest, Love Affair) -- who, in the following decade, would direct a series of classy Westerns, e.g., 3:10 to Yuma, The Hanging Tree -- Destination Tokyo is pure flag-waving propaganda, plodding its way through the dangerous waters of Hollywood war-movie stereotypes and speechifying banalities. The film's key point of interest, in fact, is Grant himself -- not because he's any good,...

Ann Blyth movies: TCM schedule on August 16, 2013 (photo: ‘Our Very Own’ stars Ann Blyth and Farley Granger) See previous post: "Ann Blyth Today: Light Singing and Heavy Drama on TCM." 3:00 Am One Minute To Zero (1952). Director: Tay Garnett. Cast: Robert Mitchum, Ann Blyth, William Talman. Bw-106 mins. 5:00 Am All The Brothers Were Valiant (1953). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Robert Taylor, Stewart Granger, Ann Blyth. C-95 mins. 6:45 Am The King’S Thief (1955). Director: Robert Z. Leonard. Cast: Ann Blyth, Edmund Purdom, David Niven. C-79 mins. Letterbox Format. 8:15 Am Rose Marie (1954). Director: Mervyn LeRoy. Cast: Ann Blyth, Howard Keel, Fernando Lamas. C-104 mins. Letterbox Format. 10:00 Am The Great Caruso (1951). Director: Richard Thorpe. Cast: Mario Lanza, Ann Blyth, Dorothy Kirsten, Jarmila Novotna, Richard Hageman, Carl Benton Reid, Eduard Franz, Ludwig Donath, Alan Napier, Pál Jávor, Carl Milletaire, Shepard Menken, Vincent Renno, Nestor Paiva, Peter Price, Mario Siletti, Angela Clarke,...

Humphrey Bogart movies: ‘The Maltese Falcon,’ ‘High Sierra’ (Image: Most famous Humphrey Bogart quote: ‘The stuff that dreams are made of’ from ‘The Maltese Falcon’) (See previous post: “Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall Movies.”) Besides 1948, 1941 was another great year for Humphrey Bogart — one also featuring a movie with the word “Sierra” in the title. Indeed, that was when Bogart became a major star thanks to Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra and John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon. In the former, Bogart plays an ex-con who falls in love with top-billed Ida Lupino — though both are outacted by ingénue-with-a-heart-of-tin Joan Leslie. In the latter, Bogart plays Dashiel Hammett’s private detective Sam Spade, trying to discover the fate of the titular object; along the way, he is outacted by just about every other cast member, from Mary Astor’s is-she-for-real dame-in-distress to Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nominee Sydney Greenstreet. John Huston...

Paul Henreid: Hollow Triumph aka The Scar tonight Turner Classic Movies’ Paul Henreid film series continues this Tuesday evening, July 16, 2013. Of tonight’s movies, the most interesting offering is Hollow Triumph / The Scar, a 1948 B thriller adapted by Daniel Fuchs (Panic in the Streets, Love Me or Leave Me) from Murray Forbes’ novel, and in which the gentlemanly Henreid was cast against type: a crook who, in an attempt to escape from other (and more dangerous) crooks, impersonates a psychiatrist with a scar on his chin. Joan Bennett, mostly wasted in a non-role, is Henreid’s leading lady. (See also: “One Paul Henreid, Two Cigarettes, Four Bette Davis-es.”) The thriller’s director is Hungarian import Steve Sekely, whose Hollywood career consisted chiefly of minor B fare. In fact, though hardly a great effort, Hollow Triumph was probably the apex of Sekely’s cinematic output in terms of prestige...

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By Harvey F. Chartrand

Peter Gunn: The Complete Series is now available for the first time ever as a 12-dvd box set from Timeless Media Group… all 114 episodes, with a running time of over 58 hours.

Peter Gunn – created and produced by Blake Edwards – ran for three seasons – from 1958 to 1961. This classic detective show was a delightful blend of film noir and fifties cool, featuring a modern jazz score by Henry Mancini (a bonus CD of the soundtrack is included in the set), outbreaks of the old ultra-violence, a gallery of eccentric and sleazy characters (usually informants, gangsters and Beat Generation bohemians), and great acting by series leads Craig Stevens (as Gunn), Lola Albright (as his squeeze, sultry nightclub singer Edie Hart) and Herschel Bernardi (as Gunn’s friend and competitor Lieutenant Jacoby, who seems to work all by himself 24 hours a day...

The “adult” Western – as it would come to be called – was a long time coming. A Hollywood staple since the days of The Great Train Robbery (1903), the Western offered spectacle and action set against the uniquely American milieu of the Old West – a historical period which, at the dawn of the motion picture industry, was still fresh in the nation’s memory. What the genre rarely offered was dramatic substance.

Early Westerns often adopted the same traditions of the popular Wild West literature and dime novels of the 19th and early 20th centuries producing, as a consequence, highly romantic, almost purely mythic portraits the Old West. Through the early decades of the motion picture industry, the genre went through several creative cycles, alternately tilting from fanciful to realistic and back again. By the early sound era, and despite such serious efforts as The Big Trail (1930) and The Virginian (1929), Hollywood Westerns were,...

I Was a Teenage Thanksgiving Turkey! week concludes at Trailers from Hell with director and Tfh creator Joe Dante introducing "I Was a Teenage Frankenstein," the hurried follow-up to the American International Pictures sleeper hit "I Was a Teenage Werewolf." "Speak! You have a civil tongue in your head. I know, because I sewed it back myself!" says Prof. Frankenstein, played by popular character actor Whit Bissell in one of his rare leading roles. This hurried followup to Aip's sleeper hit I Was a Teenage Werewolf hardly scales the same low budget heights but it's fun anyway. Several plot points are cribbed from Hammer's Curse of Frankenstein.

Creature from the Black Lagoon

Directed by Jack Arnold

Written by Harry Essex and Arthur A. Ross

U.S.A. 1954

The Universal monsters that so many people recognize and accept as iconic and saw the light of day on the cinema screen were products of the 1930s, the two most popular being of course Frankenstein and Dracula, each released as early as 1931. By the 1950s, the studio’s output with regards to ‘classic’ creatures had dwindled considerably, even though science-fiction flicks were tremendously popular by then, with plenty of adventures concerning the invasion of outer-space attackers descending upon our planet. There was one particular outing that would, in fact, have a lasting impact on the collective minds of monster movie fans, that being Creature from the Black Lagoon. Part of the film’s popularity had to do with its presentation in 3D. Yes, studios were testing that technology out even...

Randy gets downright lycanthropic.

When I was in college – way back when – the student center had a room where a different video each week was piped in and played continuously. I would plop down between classes – when we weren’t drinking something horrible at the school newspaper office – and catch fifteen minutes or so of whatever they were showing. By the end of the week I had probably seen the whole feature – in bits and pieces out of sequence. I saw “Lemmings” that way, and “Groove Tube.”

I also saw the 1957 horror classic I Was A Teenage Werewolf that way, and it was a delightful week. It may have been the movie, or it may have been the horrible stuff we were drinking at the newspaper. After so much time, I’ll charitably attribute it to the film.

The movie stars Michael Landon, before his “Bonanza” days and waaaay before...

The great supporting cast alone (Sam Levene, Jeff Corey,Jay C. Flippen, Sir Lancelot and the first of many pairings of John Hoyt and Whit Bissell) would make Jules Dassin's prison pic a keeper, but as written by Richard Brooks it's a tough, incisive and influential genre piece. Hume Cronyn's career highlight as the sadistic Warden Munsey, who plays Wagner records loudly to hide the sound of beatings. (Picture quality on this trailer is not up to our usual standard.)...

Last week, Art Gilmore, the voice of many of the movie trailers from the 1950's and 1960's died at age 98. His voice has been heard on more than 2,700 trailers. We have rounded up a compilation of 37 trailers featuring Gilmore's famous voice over, embedded after the jump. “Radar Men from the Moon” (1952) Republic serial trailer. “Invaders from Mars” (1953) D: Wm. Cameron Menzies. Paranoid. “Cinecolor”. “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (1954) in “3-D”. “War of the Worlds” (1953) George Pal “The Conquest of Space” (1955) George Pal “The Blob” (1958) Steve McQueen. “I Married a Monster from Outer Space” (1958) “I Was a Teenage Frankenstein” (1957) Whit Bissel. “The Amazing Colossal Man” (1957) “Rodan” (1957) Japanese follow-up to “Godzilla”. “Werewolf in a Girl’s Dormitory” (1961) “Robinson Crusoe on Mars” (1964) “Dumbo” (1941) “Gilda” (1946) Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946) Jimmy Stewart D: Frank Capra “She Wore a Yellow Ribbon” (1948) John Wayne D: John Ford “Mighty ...