Notícias

The Supporting Actress Smackdown will resume in March 2021. Final Season! 

Happy Smackdown to you Happy Smackdown to you

Happy Smackdown you actressexuals,

Happy Smackdown to youuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!

After StinkyLulu graciously let us continue/revive the series here seven or eight years ago (eep!) we've done 35 episodes: 1938, 1941, 1943, 1944, 1947, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1957, 1960, 1963, 1964, 1965, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1973, 1977, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985, 1987, 1989, 1991, 1994, 1995, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, and concurrently with Oscar races as they happened 2016, 2017, and 2018. 

So, where to now? 

The Remaining Years

1937- Brady  (In Old Chicago) | Leeds (Stage Door) | Shirley (Stella Dallas) | Trevor (Dead End) | Whitty (Night Must Fall)

1946 - Baxter (The Razor's Edge) | Barrymore  (The Spiral Staircase) | Gish (Duel in the Sun) | Robson (Saratoga Trunk) | Sondegaard (Anna and the King of Siam)

1951 Joan Blondell (The Blue Veil) | Dunnock (Death of a Salesman) | Grant (Detective Story) | Hunter (A Streetcar Named Desire) | Ritter (The Mating Season)

1986 - Harper (Crimes of the Heart) | Laurie (Children of a Lesser God) | Mastrantonio (The Color of Money) | Smith (A Room With a View) | Weist (Hannah and Her Sisters...

Elaine Stritch and Mia Farrow in September

Elaine Stritch, who starred in the likes of The Spiral Staircase, A Farewell To Arms and Woody Allen's September, has died at the age of 89. The redoubtable actress and wit was a big name on Broadway and also won fans for her role as Jack's mother in TV series 30 Rock.

In her later years. Stritch focused increasingly on the stage and on cabaret, but she was still making films and her final work, River Of Fundament, was released in February. She also worked in voice acting, playing the hero's grandmother in 2012's Paranorman. Last year she was the subject of a celebrated biopic, Elaine Stritch: Shoot Me, and she gave a talk at the Tribeca Film Festival about her remarkable life.

Recently Stritch had been struggling with alcohol issues and had developed diabetes, but it is not known if these contributed to her death.

Happy Halloween !

Here Lies... bits and pieces of thieves and murderers all stitched together to form the Robert DeNiro version of Frankenstein's Monster. 

Yes, we close this year's season of "Oscar Horrors" by celebrating the gruesome Oscar-nominated makeup in...(deep breath)... Columbia Tri-Star Picture's Kenneth Branagh's Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994) . So many possessives! And the film, if I remember it correctly, is possessed. Kenneth Branagh has never been a wallflower as a director and his version of Frankenstein has the exuberant gonzo abandon (i.e. shameless confidence) that also characterized his far more artistically successful reincarnation noir Dead Again (1991).

The makeup designs by Daniel Parker, Paul Engelen and Carol Hemming won Oscar's attention but the team lost to a black and white celebration of a more infamous gonzo director, Ed Wood. 

Now. You might be asking "why, Nathaniel, are we looking at shirtless (briefly) buff Kenneth Branagh and his...

By Lee Pfeiffer

The Warner Archive has released the 1975 remake of The Spiral Staircase as a burn-to-order title. The original version from 1946 has always been well-regarded and holds up well even today. Not so with this version, which was made for American television and released theatrically in Europe. The movie boasts an impressive cast and was directed by Peter Collinson, who died only a few years later at the young age of 44. Collinson's main claim to fame is the original version of The Italian Job which, over the decades, has developed a very enthusiastic cult following in England. The wit and liveliness he brought to that production is nowhere to be found in this pedantic affair. Jacqueline Bisset plays Helen Mallory, a beautiful young woman who has been rendered mute by the trauma of having witnessed her husband and young daughter killed in a house fire. She's trying to get...

More long hidden horrors are now available as part of Warner's made-to-order Archive Collection. Oh, the classic terrors that await you, dearest reader! Dig it!

Head on over to the Warner Archives and order yours today!

The Awakening

Director: Mike Newell

Cast: Charlton Heston, Susannah York, Jill Townsend, Stephanie Zimbalist

Synopsis

Mention Bram Stoker’s name, and literature and movie buffs will conjure up Count Dracula. But there was more blood in Stoker’s pen. He also wrote The Jewel of the Seven Stars, later filmed with chilling effect as The Awakening, grippingly directed by Mike Newell (Dance with a Stranger, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) and sensuously shot on Egyptian locations by veteran cinematographer Jack Cardiff. Charlton Heston stars as an Egyptologist with a passion that will trigger several mysterious deaths. He’s obsessed with a sorceress whose return has been prophesied – and whose tomb he opened...

While it skews a bit more toward mystery/thriller than pure horror, this week's installment of Motion Picture Purgatory, Fragment of Fear, deals with themes of paranoia and alternate reality so well, we figured why not share it with our readers, especially those who may never have heard of this sweet slice of 1970s cinema before.

Directed by Richard C. Sarafian (Vanishing Point) and starring David Hemmings (Blow-Up, Gladiator), Gayle Hunnicutt (The Spiral Staircase, The Legend of Hell House), and Wilfrid Hyde-White (Chamber of Horrors, The Cat and the Canary), Fragment of Fear tells the tale of a young author who is plunged into a nightmare as he tries to solve his aunt's murder. When threats of violence, mysterious notes, and deadly phone calls shatter his life, the police and his girlfriend doubt the story due to his past as a drug addict - even though his life is in danger.