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Making a movie is hard — not just the metaphorical work of writing a script and performing a character, but literally building the world of the film. And what with the rising costs of CGI, big name movie stars and blackmailers these days, studios trim the budget wherever they can. That often means reusing chunks of other movies, even if they’re instantly recognizable. Like…

5 The Golden Idol From ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’

The “Chachapoyan Fertility Idol” is at the center of one of the most iconic action sequences of all time, so you’d think filmmakers would know it’s a little distracting to see it pop up somewhere Indy could never reach. It’s a fun allusion to Harrison Ford in Solo: A Star Wars Story and Andor, but it’s shown up everywhere from The Majestic to Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams. It’s...

This weekend is The International Edgar Allan Poe Festival & Awards, commemorating the 175th anniversary of Poe's death in Baltimore. Taking place from October 4th - 6th, the event also celebrates a big milestone: the 60th anniversary of Roger Corman and Vincent Price's The Masque of the Red Death.

The event includes a panel of special guests to talk about the film and its legacy, including Victoria Price, whom I had the pleasure of speaking with to talk about the importance of the film, Vincent Price's lasting impact, and her Halloween celebrations.

The festival will have a 60th anniversary screening of Roger Corman and Vincent Price's The Masque of Red Death, which is a personal favorite of mine.

Victoria Price: Me too! Roger was one of those people I thought was going to live forever, so it's strange to not have him here.

He left such an impression on the people he interacted with.

During the Golden Age of Hollywood, which bloomed in the late 1920s and dwindled in the late 1960s, film production and distribution were under the control of the studio system, and everyone, actors, filmmakers, and writers alike, was under strict contract. It is true that movie stars enjoyed worldwide recognition and partook in exclusive, prestigious events, but this glamorous façade came with a high emotional price and was often a front for terrible personal tragedies.

Marilyn Monroe spent her childhood in orphanages and foster homes, was groped and abused throughout her career, and died in circumstances still debated today. Judy Garland was forcibly put on a pill regiment at an early age and her marathonic schedule was ruthlessly controlled by her mother. Rita Hayworth was abused by her father, suffered mental cruelty from her fundamentalist husband, and succumbed to Alzheimer’s.

And then there was Gene Tierney. With her chiseled cheekbones,...

One can make a case that the genesis of horror onscreen was borne out of the Gothic literary movement in the 19th century. Crumbling castles; ghostly cries across the moors at night; fog so thick it can swallow the moonlight… and your will to live. These are all staples of some of the greatest works of Gothic horror on the page, and many of the greatest horror movies of the first half of the 20th century pulled directly from such iconography.

While Gothic horror has become rarer in recent times, as you can see from the below list, it yet beats like the telltale heart in the wall. Given the right direction, it can even thrive and escape from its cloistered hiding places. Hence we here have composed a list of not all the best Gothic horror movies, but enough to get you started in exploring the most alluring of shadows.

Production

BBC Studios Germany has secured its first commission since launching in the territory this year — a local adaptation of British sitcom “Miranda” — and is co-producing the eight-part series for Zdf Neo with Studio Zentral.

“Miranda,” a BBC production written by and starring Miranda Hart, will be adapted for a German audience with the working title “Ruby” and will be directed by Natascha Beller. The screenplay is being adapted by Giulia Becker (“Kroymann”) and Anika Soisson (“Findher”) and Anna Böger (“Tatort”) plays the lead role of Ruby. Filming is currently taking place in Cologne.

The show sees Ruby facing the challenges of everyday life in a slightly clumsy way. The cast also includes Irene Rindje and Camill Jammal.

“Miranda” was previously adapted for the U.S. as “Call me Kat,” starring Mayim Bialik (“The Big Bang Theory”), by Fox Television, where it has been renewed for a second season.

BBC...

Writer, producer, director Lee Daniels discusses some of his favorite films with Josh & Joe.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Infested (2002)

Shadowboxer (2005)

The United States Vs. Billie Holiday (2021)

A Star Is Born (1937)

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (2013)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)

Lady Sings The Blues (1972)

Island In The Sun (1957)

Carmen Jones (1954)

Claudine (1974)

Mandingo (1975)

Drum (1976)

Caligula (1979)

Gloria (1980)

The Exorcist (1973)

Abby (1974)

Blacula (1972)

Scream Blacula Scream (1973)

Cabaret (1972)

Lenny (1974)

Sounder (1972)

All That Jazz (1979)

I Am A Camera (1955)

Travels With My Aunt (1972)

The Emigrants (1971)

Star 80 (1983)

Harold And Maude (1971)

The Godfather (1972)

The Godfather Part II (1974)

Pickup On South Street (1953)

In The Mood For Love (2000)

Leave Her To Heaven (1945)

Laura (1944)

Dragonwyck (1946)

The Baron of Arizona (1950)

His Kind of Woman (1951)

Explorers (1985)

Innerspace (1987)

Jack Reacher (2012)

Them (1954)

Revenge of the Creature (1955)

Tarantula! (1955)

Coogan’s Bluff (1968)

Going In Style (1979)

Going In Style (2017)

Judas And The Black Messiah (2021)

Stroszek (1977)

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Land of Silence and Darkness (1971)

Cave Of Forgotten Dreams...

This episode includes Hollywood spoilers. You can find our easter egg guide for the first episode here.

Ah, the episode of Hollywood introduces us to Anna May Wong and the 1940s studio caste system. There’s a lot to unpack in this hour, which may give you nightmares about how a studio cafeteria is apparently not that different from a high school… except, you know, with racism.

Hollywood Episode 2

-When Ernie bails Jack out of prison, Jack laments he cannot have a record. “Yeah you can,” Ernie answers, “Ever heard of Frank Sinatra?” Ol’ Blue Eyes was arrested in 1938 in New Jersey after being charged by an ex-girlfriend with “adultery and seduction.” That is to say, he could be and was charged back then with promising marriage and then ghosting her the morning after.

-We then hear Johnny Mercer and Paul Eston’s rendition of “Button Up Your Overcoat.”

-Avis...

Back in 1950, famed Hollywood director Joseph L. Mankiewicz released the soon-to-be-classic tale of stardom and backstabbing, All About Eve. The film won a whopping six Academy Awards and garnered another 17 wins and 18 nominations. All About Eve stars Bette Davis in one of her most well-known roles in a filmography of huge films, as Margo Channing, a superstar of the stage. Anne Baxter is excellent as Eve Harrington, the sociopathic, conniving starlet who manages to steal both roles and men. Marilyn Monroe has a small role as an actress in All About Eve, as well. Rounding out the...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

David Crow Jul 11, 2019

Gary Oldman will play Herman Mankiewicz for David Fincher in Mank. It will cover the making of Citizen Kane and The Wizard of Oz.

David Fincher and Gary Oldman finally working together feels like it’s destined to be movie history, but the fact that it’s occurring for a Herman Mankiewicz biopic is doubly on-the-nose. The film, which will reveal how a newspaper man became the screenwriter of what many consider to be the finest film ever produced, 1941’s Citizen Kane, is set-up for Fincher at Netflix, indicative of an ever growing relationship between the streaming service and Oscar nominated auteur. It also promises to be a personal film for the director as his own father, Jack Fincher, wrote the screenplay.

The film, which is currently titled Mank, is one Fincher has wanted to make since 1997—so after Se7en and The Game but before Fight Club...

Jane Russell heats up an Arizona mining town but she’s just trying to help her new husband with his ethnic identity issues, Jeff Chandler. Superb color cinematography (forget the B&W photos here) and beautiful desert locations help, but the real appeal is seeing Russell and gorgeous co-star Mara Corday in all their glory.

Foxfire

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1955 / Color / 2:00 widescreen / 92 min. / Street Date , 2019 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Jane Russell, Jeff Chandler, Dan Duryea, Mara Corday, Barton MacLane, Frieda Inescort, Celia Lovsky, Eddy Waller, Robert F. Simon, Charlotte Wynters, Robert Bice, Arthur Space, Beulah Archuletta, Dabbs Greer, Grace Lenard, Vici Raaf.

Cinematography: William Daniels

Film Editor: Ted. J. Kent

Original Music: Frank Skinner

Written by Ketti Frings, from the novel by Anya Seton

Produced by Aaron Rosenberg

Directed by Joseph Pevney

A medium-wattage relationship soap, Foxfire is an Eisenhower-era blueprint for consensus attitudes about race and class...

Before Vincent Price haunted houses, he chalked up plenty of experience as a Broadway star and a versatile character actor. This superb Joseph L. Mankiewicz gothic romance assigns him major leading man duty as a ‘dark and troubled’ soul — the kind that intimidates cowering leading ladies. With typical good humor, Price called it the first of his ‘dead wife’ movies!

Dragonwyck

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1946 / B&W / 1:37 Academy / 103 min. / Street Date , 2018 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Gene Tierney, Walter Huston, Vincent Price, Glenn Langan, Anne Revere, Spring Byington, Connie Marshall, Harry Morgan, Vivienne Osborne, Jessica Tandy, Trudy Marshall, Reinhold Schünzel, Grady Sutton.

Cinematography: Arthur C. Miller

Film Editor: Dorothy Spencer

Original Music: Alfred Newman

From the novel by Anya Seton

Produced by Ernst Lubitsch, Darryl F. Zanuck

Written for the screen and Directed by Joseph H. Mankiewicz

You’d have to say that Vincent Price’s film...

Today is Vincent Price’s 104th Birthday! Price was born here in St. Louis on this date in 1911 and is the most iconic movie star to hail from our city. Price, who died October 25th 1993, was also a gourmand, author, stage actor, speaker, world-class art collector, raconteur, and all-around Renaissance man. Vincent Price was simply one of the most remarkable people of the 20th Century. Four years ago we had the opportunity to celebrate his 100th birthday and St. Louis was the place to do it. I teamed up with Cinema St. Louis to present Vincentennial, The Vincent Price 100th Birthday Celebration, an event that lasted through much of the Spring of 2011. The following year Vincentennial won two coveted Rondo Awards, one for “Best Fan Event” and a second for myself as “Monster Kid of the Year” for directing the event. The Rondo Awards are prestigious Fan Awards given out...

Just as babies must crawl before they walk, the proper education for cinephiles must begin with canonical classics like the Bette Davis-starring “All About Eve.” This year marks that film's 65th anniversary, and what better way to celebrate than with a French TV special on the film’s director Joseph L. Mankiewicz? Running 103 minutes and released in 1983, the special covers Makiewicz’s entire filmography, spanning 1946’s “Dragonwyck” to 1973’s “Sleuth.” It’s rare to get a director to expound on the entirety of their career at this length, so take this opportunity to watch a master talk about his craft. And with Mankiewicz responsible for classic films such as "Guys And Dolls," "Suddenly, Last Summer" and more infamously worked on the fiasco "Cleopatra," this is definitely a must watch. Thanks to the time-traveling powers of the internet, you can now see the French TV documentary “All About Makiewicz” below.

Deborah Raffin: movie and TV actress, Dove audio-book entrepreneur has died Deborah Raffin, film and television actress, and Dove Books on Tape co-founder, died yesterday, Nov. 22, of leukemia at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles. Raffin was 59. (Photo: Deborah Raffin ca. 1975.) Born in Los Angeles on March 13, 1953, Raffin was the daughter of mid-’40s 20th Century Fox contract player Trudy Marshall (Dragonwyck, Sentimental Journey) and meat broker and restaurateur Philip Raffin. Deborah Raffin movies Deborah Raffin was featured [...]...

Vincentennial, the Vincent Price 100th Birthday Celebration, which took place here in St. Louis last Spring and was covered in depth at We Are Movie Geeks, has been nominated for a Rondo Award for “Best Fan Event”. Now in their tenth year, The Rondo Awards are prestigious Fan Awards given out annually for the year’s best horror-related stuff–movies, magazines,articles, toys, etc. The Rondos are completely fan-based; nominees are selected by horror film fans and focus specifically on the horror genre. The awards are debated at The Classic Horror Film Board and presented at the Wonderfest Hobby Expo in May in Louisville, Ky. The awards are named for Rondo Hatton, the 1940′s-era character actor whose glandular disease resulted in a misshapen face and brutish appearance (an article I wrote for Wamg about Mr. Hatton can be found Here)

The Rondos have 31 categories covering all aspects of film and the horror genre in general,...

An almost spectral-looking 2011 portrait by artist Rich Bernal of Vincent Price as he appeared in The Raven. Commissioned for the St. Louis Vincentennial.

2011 is the birthday centennial for Vincent Price, and the anniversary was celebrated by various magazines, blogs, film screenings and other events that honored the late actor. It was most memorably observed in Price’s hometown of St. Louis, where the Vincentennial was marked by a series of events organized primarily by Price fan Tom Stockman. Local newspaper reporter Raymond Castile and I attended many of the screenings, interviews, museum and gallery events in the more-than-month-long observance of the multifaceted man many think of as the “King of Horror.”

Raymond talked with a number of fans from around the world about their love of Price (including myself), and their encounters with him in life or on the screen. I later talked with a number of Vincent Price’s...

Laura and Dragonwyck will play as a double feature at the Vincentennial Vincent Price Film Festival at 7:00pm tonight (Monday, May 23rd) at Brown Hall on the campus of Washington University. Admission is free.

“I shall never forget the weekend Laura died”, is the first line, intoned by a somber Clifton Webb, of Laura (1944), a glossy and gripping story of murder among the elite. Vincent Price often said that his favorite of the films in which he appeared was director Otto Preminger’s 1944 film noir, and most movie buffs who don’t like horror are quick to agree. As noirs go, it’s less a dark and dirty crime drama than most, more reliant on character and script, but it really is a classic and Price’s oily supporting performance is nothing short of sublime. The film pits gruff police detective, Mark McPhereson (Dana Andrews) against smug and cultured columnist,...

All this month, St. Louis will be hosting the 100th birthday celebration of genre legend Vincent Price, Vincentennial! There are some great flicks showing during the film festival which begins this Thursday, May 19th. The majority of the screenings feature 35mm prints of the film along with pre-film or post film discussions with historians, professors, and film experts. In conjunction with Cinema St. Louis,Vincentennial will also feature special guests including Roger Corman, Victoria Price, Tim Lucas and more! Read beyond the break for the complete schedule.

Born in St. Louis on May 27, 1911, actor and all around “renaissance man” Vincent Price is a legend among Hollywood actors and among residents here in St. Louis. The actor retained a special fondness for his hometown over the years, even after his eventual success in show-business. Though the actor did a variety of films over his 55 year long career, it is his series of films,...

The Vincentennial Vincent Price Film Festival starts this Thursday, May 19th . This is a great opportunity for movie fans to see these wonderful Vincent Price films on the big screen. Most of the films are free, but the ones at the Hi-Pointe will be ticketed.

Here.s the complete lineup:

Thursday May 19:

7:30pm- The Fly (1958) to be presented at Missouri History Museum.S

MacDermott Grand Hall. With activities, a cash bar, and a special bonus at the door for Vincent Price look-a-likes. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. for an 8:30 p.m. screening of The Fly. Admission is free.

The Vincentennial Vincent Price Film Festival then moves to the The Hi-Pointe Theater for the next three days.

Friday May 20:

7:00pm . The Last Man On Earth (1964) will be presented in a stunning 35mm print to be preceded by Tim Burton.s 6-minute stop-motion animation short Vincent.

The Schedule for the Vincentennial Vincent Price Film Festival in St. Louis has been announced. May 27th is the 100th birthday of the most iconic actor to hail from St. Louis so Cinema St. Louis will be throwing a film festival in his honor to celebrate. Here’s the lineup:

Thursday May 19:

7:30pm- The Fly (1958) to be presented at Missouri History Museum’S

MacDermott Grand Hall. With activities, a cash bar, and a special bonus at the door for Vincent Price look-a-likes. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. for an 8:30 p.m. screening of The Fly. Admission is free.

The Vincentennial Vincent Price Film Festival then moves to the The Hi-Pointe Theater for the next three days.

Friday May 20:

7:00pm – The Last Man On Earth (1964) will be presented in a stunning 35mm print to be preceded by Tim Burton’s 6-minute stop-motion animation short Vincent.

Michael Redgrave in the "The Ventriloquist's Dummy" segment in Dead of Night (top); Gene Tierney in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Dragonwyck (middle); Joan Fontaine, Judith Anderson in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (bottom) Turner Classic Movies' horror/mystery/suspense Halloween marathon kicks off this evening with a showing of the 1945 British classic Dead of Night, which, 65 years later, remains one of the best efforts in the psychological-horror genre. Directed by Alberto Cavalcanti ("Christmas Party" and "The Ventriloquist's Dummy"), Charles Crichton ("Golfing Story"), Basil Dearden ("Hearse Driver" and "Linking Narrative"), and Robert Hamer ("The Haunted Mirror"), Dead of Night stars a number of top players of British film and stage, among them Mervyn Johns, Roland Culver, Basil Radford, Sally Ann Howes, and, best of all, Michael Redgrave as an unbalanced ventriloquist. Also this evening, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, a sumptuous David O. Selznick production starring a flawless Joan Fontaine as "I" de...

Gene Tierney in Joseph L. Mankiewicz‘s Dragonwyck (top); Gene Tierney, Cornel Wilde in John M. Stahl‘s Leave Her to Heaven (bottom) In my view, Gene Tierney was not only one of the most beautiful but also one of the most underrated actresses of the studio era. Her eyes sparkled, her teeth sparkled, her complexion sparkled — even her cheekbones sparkled. And in the right role, under the right guidance, they could all sparkle at the appropriate dramatic moment. How many actors have been able to accomplish that feat? I mean, for Robert Pattinson to sparkle in the Twilight movies they needed special effects. Gene Tierney needed no such thing. All she had to do was to step in front of a camera. That was it. Shining brilliance. Gene Tierney has her Turner Classic Movies Day on Saturday, Aug. 14, with thirteen Tierney vehicles presented as part of TCM’s "Summer...