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I don’t know what’s crazier: The fact that “The Day the Earth Blew Up” is the first fully-animated “Looney Tunes” feature ever released in theaters, or that Warner Bros. — who first commissioned the project for HBO Max (Rip) before shopping it around to other buyers — was so determined to prevent the film from achieving its destiny.

Can a fun, slap-happy, and beautifully animated buddy comedy fronted by some of the most famous cartoon characters of all time and budgeted at 8.57% the cost of “Inside Out 2” really be that big of a risk? New distributor Ketchup Entertainment is certainly hoping to prove otherwise, and they’re doing so with the benefit of a movie that’s very much about the joy and importance of preserving the classics long after they’ve gone out of fashion.

A wise man once promised “that gum you like is going to come back in style,...

“The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie” is one of the animated delights of the year. In the franchise’s first fully 2D-animated theatrical feature, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig (both voiced by Eric Bauza) discover a secret alien plot to take over the world via mind-control and chewing gum, gumming up the works with their inimitable antics in the process.

Peter Browngardt (“Looney Tunes Cartoons”) captures the essence of the wacky odd couple with wit and warmth, channeling the outrageous style of Bob Clampett. But were it not for Ketchup Entertainment, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” would’ve been killed off by Warner Bros. Discovery for tax purposes like the live-action/animated Looney Tunes hybrid “Coyote vs. Acme.” Thankfully, “The Day the Earth Blew Up” will receive a Best Animated Feature Oscar campaign from Ketchup (with a qualifying run starting December 13) ahead of its theatrical opening February 28, 2005.

For Browngardt,...

Albert Kallis, the iconic illustrator of classic 1950’s American-Internationl exploitation science fiction and horror movie posters has died:

Under the ‘G.I. Bill’, Kallis studied at the Art Center School in Los Angeles, and became a commercial artist.

His advertising campaigns for American International Pictures helped propel the studio's success with wild posters for low-budget, exploitation cult films including “Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman”…

…“Invasion of the Saucer Men”…

…”I Was A Teenage Frankenstein”…

…”Attack of the Crab Monsters”…

…“The Brain Eaters”…

…“Not of This Earth” and a whole lot more.

Click the images to enlarge…...

One of the funniest "Futurama" characters is the newscaster Morbo (voiced by Maurice Lamarche). A green-skinned alien with an enlarged head (a design speculated to be based on the invaders from the 1957 B-movie "Invasion of the Saucer Men"), Morbo is implied to be an advance scout for an invasion of Earth — and does a terrible job hiding it.

In almost every scene he's in, he loudly proclaims his hatred for "puny Earthlings" and intent to conquer them: "All humans are vermin in the eyes of Morbo." His co-host, the cheery Linda (Tress MacNeille), always laughs off Morbo's blatant threats and hatred for humanity. The episode "The Prisoners of Benda" best encapsulates their dynamic with a five-second cold open:

Linda: "Tonight at 11"-

Morbo: "Doooom!"

So, Morbo's character is a pretty one-note joke, but it's a very funny joke. Most of this comes down to his booming voice ("Viewers trust a...

When Steven Speilberg's ultra-slick pulp film "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was released in 1981, it was a massive success. Spielberg, following the template laid out by George Lucas a few years earlier on "Star Wars," made an old-world 1930s adventure serial with modern filmmaking techniques and storytelling tropes, transforming the simple, low-budget glories of the past into the marvels of the present. In many ways, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a better sequel to "Star Wars" than "The Empire Strikes Back." I can imagine a world wherein "Star Wars," rather than direct sequels, spawned an anthology series wherein each chapter was a modern filmmaker doing their take on the pulp adventures of the past.

But that's not the way Hollywood works, as sequels are a more natural outcropping of a single success. As such, just as "Raiders" was raking in fistfuls of money, Lucas, the film's producer and story writer,...

Flying saucers and alien invasion movies were the trend in the 1950s. UFO sightings in Washington State in 1947 and the famous crash near Roswell, New Mexico in 1948 had ignited a fever for all things alien. The movies soon followed the public interest with films like The Thing from Another World (1951), The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), War of the Worlds (1953), This Island Earth (1955), Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956), Invasion of the Saucer-Men (1957), and many more of varying levels of quality. Many of these science fiction/horror hybrids were aimed toward an audience of children and teenagers and often featured young people, but few placed the viewer so deeply in the child’s perspective as the 1953 classic Invaders from Mars.

In many ways, Invaders from Mars walked so that Invasion of the Body Snatchers could run just three years later. Much of this is due to its extremely low budget and independent production.

The stars of the excellent new comedy doc Joy Ride discuss some of their favorite two handers with hosts Josh Olson and Joe Dante.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

The Graduate (1967) – Neil Labute’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Criterion Blu-ray review

Cocoon (1985)

Mission: Impossible III (2006)

Santa Claus Conquers The Martians (1964)

Police Academy 3: Back In Training (1986)

Crooklyn (1994)

Call Me Lucky (2015)

Shakes The Clown (1991)

A History Of Violence (2005)

You Only Live Twice (1967)

Artists And Models (1955) – Tfh’s global trailer search

Joy Ride (2021)

Joy Ride (2001)

Stay (2005)

Sleeping Dogs Lie (2006)

Capturing The Friedmans (2003)

Bela Lugosi Meets A Brooklyn Gorilla (1952) – Joe Dante’s trailer commentary, Charlie Largent’s review

Sleepless In Seattle (1993)

The Producers (1967) – Charlie Largent’s Blu-ray review

My Friend Irma Goes West (1950)

Delicate Delinquent (1957)

Keyholes Are For Peeping (1972)

The Brain That Wouldn’t Die (1962) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Abbott And Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948) – John Landis’s trailer commentary, Charlie...

Edward L. Cahn directed and monster-maker Paul Blaisdell built the little aliens with the great big heads for this lighthearted sci-film film released in 1957. As usual in an Aip picture, it’s teenagers to the rescue when a flying saucer sets down in the middle of lover’s lane. Steven Terrell and Gloria Castillo play the love-struck high-schoolers while Lyn Osborn and future Riddler Frank Gorshin provide the comic relief.

The post Invasion of the Saucer Men appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Pairing wine with movies! See the trailers and hear the fascinating commentary for these movies and many more at Trailers From Hell. We’re still watching movies at home and restaurants were never what they were cracked up to be, anyway.

Aliens in the movies are tricky. There are those who think they know how to spot them on sight, but they generally end up with a hole burned through them by a death ray at some point in the film. Huge heads, sinister stares, strange skin coloring – some aliens are easier to spot than a Cabernet at a steakhouse. But remember The Twilight Zone: they could look just like anybody else living on your street. Well, except for that third eye they’re hiding underneath a jaunty cap.

The teenagers of America were assaulted in 1957 by Invasion of the Saucer Men. It was released as half of a...

He's known by millions of fans as the lead guitarist for the heavy metal band Metallica, but Kirk Hammett also has a deep passion for horror and sci-fi, which is reflected in his massive collection of posters for classic and cult films from both genres. Currently on display at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, Hammett's impressive collection is also featured in a new hardcover book called It's Alive that's out now from Skira Rizzoli, and we have a look at some of the eye-popping posters included within the pages of the treasured collection.

Press Release: Uttered in several Frankenstein films since 1931, and titling Larry Cohen’s 1974 horror classic, “It’s alive!” is one of those kitschy, catchy phrases that become part of the vernacular.

It’S Alive: Classic Horror And Sci-fi Movie Posters From The Kirk Hammett Collection—in both exhibition and book form—offers an unconventional look...

Jim Knipfel Oct 17, 2018

After all these years, Al Adamson’s cult classic Dracula vs. Frankenstein still doesn’t make a damn lick of sense!

Growing up in Wisconsin in the early '70s, I would get home from school, drop my bag, park myself in front of the TV and tune in The Early Show. Every weekday between three and five-thirty, a local station aired sometimes shockingly uncut films, and it was there my cinematic education began. I don’t know who was programming The Early Show, but I would like to shake his hand. The focus was decidedly on genre films,especially horror and recent drive-in hits. Along with scattered Westerns, war movies and mysteries, there were regular week-long Toho and Hammer fests, without a single stupid musical or romantic comedy tossed in to muck things up.

It was through The Early Show that I was introduced to Roger Corman,...

Jim Knipfel Oct 17, 2018

After all these years, Al Adamson’s cult classic Dracula vs. Frankenstein still doesn’t make a damn lick of sense!

Growing up in Wisconsin in the early '70s, I would get home from school, drop my bag, park myself in front of the TV and tune in The Early Show. Every weekday between three and five-thirty, a local station aired sometimes shockingly uncut films, and it was there my cinematic education began. I don’t know who was programming The Early Show, but I would like to shake his hand. The focus was decidedly on genre films,especially horror and recent drive-in hits. Along with scattered Westerns, war movies and mysteries, there were regular week-long Toho and Hammer fests, without a single stupid musical or romantic comedy tossed in to muck things up.

It was through The Early Show that I was introduced to Roger Corman,...

There are few film characters who are so closely identified with a single actor as Indiana Jones is with Harrison Ford. It’s hard to imagine someone else wearing the fedora. Could anyone else play the role as well as Ford? We’ll probably never know, because the part is unlikely to ever be recast. Here are 5 reasons why no one else will pick up the whip other than Ford.

Although there were rumors a few years ago about recasting the role of Dr. Henry “Indiana” Jones with a new, younger actor like Chris Pratt or Bradley Cooper, the odds are that we will not see anyone else playing this character (at least, not for a long, long time.) Here are the reasons why…

They Tried To Recast Indy On the TV Series and It Didn’t Work: In the 1992-93 television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, three different actors played Jones.

Next week at Tfh features a trio of trippy films gathered together under the banner "Just Say No". They include Requiem for a Dream, The Trip, and the subject of today's Saturday Matinee, Confessions of an Opium Eater.

Producer Albert Zugsmith was a consummate exploitationist, launching his career in 1952 with the berserk red-scare screed, Invasion USA starring Gerald Mohr and Dan O’Herlihy. He would spend the next twenty years rattling off a memorably lurid series of titles stoked by the hottest of hot-button topics, including teenage sex (High School Confidential), collegiate sex (Sex Kittens go to College) and interracial sex (Night of the Quarter Moon). There’s a pattern here if you look real close.

An amiable self-made millionaire who seemed to thrive on the low-down pleasures found on the other side of the tracks, Zugsmith’s first directorial efforts (College Confidential, The Private Lives of Adam and Eve...

Rick Baker is being honored with a well-deserved Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame today, and the multiple Oscar-winning special makeup effects artist talks to ETonline about his first big break, how An American Werewolf in London would look onscreen today, the inspirations for his wild Men in Black 3 creatures and more.

Video: Will Smith Keeps Swingin' at 'MiB'

"I was part of the first generation of kids that grew up in front of the TV -- I was really attracted to the horror films that they'd show on Friday or Saturday nights," the 61-year-old Baker tells us. "I was so fascinated by those monsters. … I just thought, 'That's what I want to do when I grow up.' I was like 10 years old, and I just set my mind to it. And I started teaching myself how to do it. There weren't schools then, and there was very little information then, but...

Since the earliest days of American cinema there has been a shadowy counterpart to the commercial mainstream: exploitation movies — pictures whose appeal lies in their sensational treatment and leering promotion of often lurid and prurient material. Pre-1960, when mainstream Hollywood worked within severe restrictions on content, exploitation movies offered audiences titillating glimpses of the deliciously taboo, usually under the guise of being some sort of instructional cautionary against the very subject matter being exploited i.e. sex in “hygiene” movies like The Road to Ruin (1934), drugs in anti-drug movies like Tell Your Children (1936, re-released in the 1960s/70s as camp classic Reefer Madness), and gambling in the anti-vice Gambling with Souls (1936).

By the 1950s, as the studios entered their long post-war decline, downscale producers launched a new vein of exploitation moviemaking, churning out low-budget thrillers (mostly sci fi and horror) aimed squarely at the burgeoning youth audience. Again, the movies were cheap,...

Welcome to No Fact Zone’s weekly roundup of cultural references on The Colbert Report. From Darcy to Danger Mouse, String Theory to Shakespeare, we’ve got the keys to this week’s obscure, oddball, and occasionally obscene cultural shout-outs (hey!)

Sveiki Zoners! Wow, what a somber and precarious situation to follow up. I was pleased with how Stephen and the writers handled it. The rest of the week was great, and stayed on point with the events that continued to unfold. Also, as someone married to a man with Lithuanian heritage (not recent, though), the bit on the Lithuanian national perfume was, by far, my favorite clip of the entire week. I never thought Stephen would give me such fodder for family gatherings. What were your favorites this week?

Monday:

Difference Makers: Galactic Edition – Pt 2

During the segment, we are shown two movie posters. One is The Day the Earth Stood Still...

As the Strause Brothers’ Skyline prepares to take over cinemas, we take a look back at the 50s era of classic alien invasion films…

Looking back over the history of science fiction cinema, it's fascinating to note just how long it took aliens to invade the big screen. Hg Wells' The War Of The Worlds popularised the alien invasion subgenre in 1897, but it would be more than 50 years before an adaptation made it to the big screen.

Before the 1950s, sci-fi cinema was dominated by mad scientists and monsters on the rampage, from James Whale's 1931 classic Frankenstein to Ernest B. Schoedsack's brilliantly odd Dr. Cyclops (1940), in which a mad professor shrinks a group of explorers using radiation.

It took the post-war paranoia of the Cold War to usher in a golden age of sci-fi, and with it, a rash of alien invasion movies. These invasions came in many forms,...