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John Boorman’s feature film debut sends the pop band on a zany adventure that serves as a potent time capsule of 1960s celebrity PR

A year after Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night, and a year before the Monkees were grown in TV’s pop culture lab, director John Boorman made his feature debut with this very English madcap pop lark from 1965, scripted by Peter Nichols and starring the Dave Clark Five as themselves. Or almost. They’re not supposed to be musicians, but rather stunt-men who live together in a wacky shared flat (evidently a converted church organ loft) that is dominated by gigantic posters of the sort generally collected by wealthy pop-art enthusiasts.

Dave Clark plays handsome Steve, first among equals in the gang, and they’re filming a TV commercial for the meat-marketing board starring It -girl and supermodel Dinah (Barbara Ferris). She’s so...

By the early ‘70s, Hammer films was wheezing and sputtering just to stay alive. Their attempts to stay current with the changing tides of horror were often misbegotten and misdirected (Dracula A.D. 1972, anyone?) as the plots continued to recycle shopworn ideas when audiences were ready for more modern concerns, such as hulking maniacs with chainsaws. In essence, time was passing Hammer by, and they were willing to try anything. Hence we arrive at The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires (1974), a delightful elixir of Dracula and…Kung Fu. This was the last gasp for Hammer’s beloved franchise, and it’s a very worthy burial.

Aka 7 Brothers Versus Dracula, 7 Brothers and a Sister Meet Dracula, 7 Golden Vampires, and Enter The Dracula (no, but who screwed up that marketing?), Legend was a co-production between Hammer and Shaw Brothers, the immortal Chinese martial arts film studio that would crank out 10, sometimes 15 films a year of kinetic,...

Michael Caine young. Michael Caine movies: From Irwin Allen bombs to Woody Allen classic It's hard to believe that Michael Caine has been around making movies for nearly six decades. No wonder he's had time to appear – in roles big and small and tiny – in more than 120 films, ranging from unwatchable stuff like the Sylvester Stallone soccer flick Victory and Michael Ritchie's adventure flick The Island to Brian G. Hutton's X, Y and Zee, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Sleuth (a duel of wits and acting styles with Laurence Olivier), and Alfonso Cuarón's Children of Men. (See TCM's Michael Caine movie schedule further below.) Throughout his long, long career, Caine has played heroes and villains and everything in between. Sometimes, in his worst vehicles, he has floundered along with everybody else. At other times, he was the best element in otherwise disappointing fare, e.g., Philip Kaufman's Quills.

Reader and contributor Gemma St. Clair returns this weekend with a new list of horror trivia:

1. The Phantom of the Opera: There are multiple versions of this film, including the original silent 1925 release (107 minutes long) and the 1929 re-release (98 minutes long). There was a third version with talking scenes, but it is now considered lost.

2. Cat’s Eye: Stephen King wrote the part for Drew Barrymore in Cat’s Eye because he was so impressed with her in Firestarter.

3. Freaks: This film was banned in the UK for nearly 30 years after its release.

4. Willard (2003): A picture of Willard’s Father in the film is actually Bruce Davidson who played Willard in the 1971 original.

5. House of the Dead: The Sega logo can be seen in the background of the rave.

6. Alone in the Dark (1982): The house that was used for Dr. Potter’s home actually belonged to a psychiatrist.

Appropriately titled for the Eleventh Doctor in the form of Matt Smith, who explodes onto our screens! The scene opens with him clinging onto the Tardis, flying over London and him narrowly missing Big Ben. A girl speaks to Santa and talks about the crack in her wall, she can hear voices from it. She asks him to "send someone to fix it." Cue the Doctor and the Tardis; well he crash lands on the shed. "Can I have an apple?" Are his first words, he's never had cravings before. He's still "cooking" so he doesn't know who he is yet, but he still calls himself the Doctor. He hates apples now and asks for other food, "new mouth, new rules." he opts for fish fingers and custard. her name is Amelia Pond (Caitlin Blackwood) and he calls it "a name in a fairytale." She's not afraid of anything. He...