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Warning: includes discussion of potentially upsettng subject material. Reader discretion is advised.

The Far Side has a reputation for controversy, as a result of creator Gary Larson's penchant for making light of dark subject matter, making flippant jokes about gravely serious issues, and overall, for being willing to shock his readers, as much as make them laugh. Naturally, as a result, many of Larson's most memorable jokes are also The Far Side's most divisive entries.

Larson's tendency to embrace the macabre was certainly at the root of his most infamous, outrage-inducing panels, yet it is worth noting that the "controversy" around certain Far Side comics was more often a result of readers misinterpreting the joke, or at least "taking it the wrong way."

That said, Gary Larson did court controversy to the extent that he didn't shy away from sensitive topics; rather, he confronted them through humor, even...

James Wan’s Saw turns 20 this year and is back in cinemas. A look at one of the most influential horror films of all time:

There’s a comparitively small group of horror films that have, one way or another, changed the genre. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Night Of The Living Dead, The Blair Witch Project and Psycho have all left their mark, but more recent films aren’t always considered to be as impactful as the genre’s older offerings.

Yet, today’s horror landscape would look very different without James Wan’s Saw, which debuted in cinemas in October 2004 and recently returned to UK cinemas to mark its 20th anniversary. Saw kickstarted the so-called torture porn subgenre of horror along with Eli Roth’s Hostel, but it also brought in a whole new approach to the genre. What if the killer wasn’t just sadistic, but also...

Saw is returning to cinemas to celebrate its 20th anniversary in October, in a 4K restoration. More here.

When Leigh Whannell and James Wan made a short film about a woman who wakes up tied to a chair with a reverse bear trap on her head in 2003, all to help them pitch their feature film script to studios, they couldn’t possibly have imagined it would lead to one of the most popular and successful horror franchises of the 21st century.

Though it later became a byword for meaningless violence and gore with the increasingly grisly trap sequences – for this writer, Saw 3 is the most graphic film is the series, The Rack is particularly vile – by comparison, the original Saw is remarkable for how restrained it is in its violence. Most of the film consists of a two hander in what must by now be the most famous bathroom in horror history.

Gruesome death scenes in movies, both horror and non-horror, can leave a lasting impact on viewers and make them unforgettable. The Saw franchise's "The Rack" trap from Saw 3 is particularly sickening, as it slowly twists the hapless Timothy's limbs to the point of popping. The climax of Hereditary features Toni Colette's character sawing her own head off with piano wire, a disturbingly unforgettable death scene.

The death of movie characters has become an accepted reality of storytelling, but some few films blur the line between artistic vision and overly-gratuitious violence. It's very easy to argue for freedom of expression through a cinematic medium, arguing for the execution of an artistic vision on behalf of creatives no matter how profane it may be. It's quite another experience to actually stomach some of the most nauseating vile deaths that movies have to offer, burning horrific images into memory that aren't sure to fade any time soon.

Center: Saw. Clockwise from top left: Saw 3D, Saw V, Saw V, Saw VI, Jigsaw, Saw VI (All images from YouTube)

Although the Saw film franchise has had a few big name stars attached to itself over the years, including Chris Rock, Cary Elwes, and franchise regular Tobin Bell—who...

Nope, it’s not on disc but it’s getting written up here because so few people know it and it’s been difficult to see my entire adult life. The fourth Gardner/Levy United Artists horror/sci-fi picture of ’57-’58 is another trip into a jungle’s Heart of Darkness, where awaits a deadly satellite fallen from orbit. Have we missed something Spectacular? Fantastic? Incredible? This seventy minutes of cheap program filler is nobody’s favorite, but CineSavant embraces Sci-Fi orphans of every description. Stars Arthur Franz and Kathleen Crowley can’t have been pleased by the result.

The Flame Barrier

Blu-ray

Savant Revival Screening Review

1958 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 71 min. / Not On Home Video

Starring: Arthur Franz, Kathleen Crowley, Robert Brown, Vincent Padula, Rodd Redwing, Kaz Oran, Pilar Del Rey.

Cinematography: Jack MacKenzie

Film Editor: Jerry Young

Makeup: Dick Smith

Original Music: Gerald Fried

Written by Pat Fielder,...

Very sad news is coming in as beloved actress and comedian Cloris Leachman has passed away. Per TMZ, Leachman's son has confirmed that the Emmy-winning actress died of natural causes at her home in Encinitas, California, on Tuesday night with her daughter, Dinah, by her side. She was 94 years old.

"She had the best life beginning to end that you could wish for someone," Leachman's son said, adding that she was at peace and "she left everyone with a lot of love."

Juliet Green, Leachman's manager, also addressed the news in a statement to People. She writes, "It's been my privilege to work with Cloris Leachman, one of the most fearless actresses of our time. There was no one like Cloris. With a single look she had the ability to break your heart or make you laugh till the tears ran down your face. You never knew what Cloris was...

CineSavant reaches back one year to pick up a notable low-key horror from the team of Levy-Gardner-Laven and good old United Artists. They have a respected actor, a workable concept and a horror screenplay from an unusual source for the 1950s . . . a (gasp) woman. More civilized monster movies just aren’t out there, although this one could have used a more creative title.

The Vampire

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1957 / B&W / 1:78 widescreen / 75 min. / Street Date April 11, 2017 / 27.99

Starring: John Beal, Coleen Gray, Kenneth Tobey, Lydia Reed, Dabbs Greer, Herb Vigran, Paul Brinegar, Ann Staunton, James Griffith.

Cinematography: Jack MacKenzie

Film Editor: John Faure

Original Music: Gerald Fried

Written and story by Pat Fielder

Produced by Arthur Gardner, Arnold Laven, Jules V. Levy

Directed by Paul Landres

I long ago gave up keeping track of all the aberrant vampire movies that were produced after horror became a direct-to-video staple and finally a streaming staple.

Displaying a transparency that few filmmakers of his fame and / or caliber would even bother with, Steven Soderbergh has, for a couple of years, been keen on releasing lists of what he watched and read during the previous twelve months. If you’re at all interested in this sort of thing — and why not? what else are you even doing with your day? — the 2015 selection should be of strong interest, this being a time when he was fully enmeshed in the world of creating television.

He’s clearly observing the medium with a close eye, be it what’s on air or what his friends (specifically David Fincher and his stillborn projects) show him, and how that might relate to his apparent love of 48 Hours Mystery or approach to a comparatively light slate of cinematic assignments — specifically: it seems odd that the last time he watched Magic Mike Xxl, a...

People.com is reporting that actor Rod Taylor died Wednesday at the age of 84 of natural causes.

His daughter Felicia Taylor, a former CNN correspondent, confirmed the news Thursday.

“My dad loved his work. Being an actor was his passion – calling it an honorable art and something he couldn’t live without,” she said in a statement.

“He once said, ‘I am a poor student sitting at the feet of giants, yearning for their wisdom and begging for lessons that might one day make me a complete artist,” she continued, “ ‘so that if all goes well, I may one day sit beside them.”

Born on Jan 11, 1930 in Sydney, Australia, Rod Taylor is best remembered for his starring roles in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (1963) and George Pal’s The Time Machine (1960). He also provided the voice of Pongo in Disney’s 101 Dalmatians (1961). Taylor also starred in TV’s “The Twilight Zone...

Okay, yes, "The Expendables," ended up being better as an "idea" than a reality. Sylvester Stallone gathered a bunch of over-the-hill action stars (including his "Rocky IV" opponent, Dolph Lundgren, and his "Get Carter" pal, Mickey Rourke) for a bloody shoot-'em-up designed to show all the young whippersnappers out there that the old men still got it. The resulting film had its moments but was ultimately too confusing, too haphazard and too, well, expendable.

But what are sequels for if not a chance to make things all better (don't answer that)? Stallone has gathered an even more impressive cast for "The Expendables 2" -- Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme will be contributing to the mayhem this time around, and Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, both of whom only had cameo appearances in the original film, will have much larger roles in the new adventure. And, of course, all of the old gang is back,...

Last week I did a piece on how early syndication of movies to TV provided a culturally unifying base for Baby Boomers. Most of us, however, probably think of syndication as being less about movies and more about recycling old TV shows. And, in time, so it became.

TV writer/producer/director Bill Persky remembers syndication being a movie-driven business in the medium’s early years since “…there weren’t that many series to syndicate…” By the 60s, however, TV production companies had amassed enough defunct TV shows to turn syndication into an increasingly profitable series-recycling business feeding a bottomless market. Independent stations filled their days with a patchwork quilt of old TV shows, old movies, local news and sports, and even network affiliates had hours to fill between blocks of network programming.

The recycling of old TV shows had the same impact on Boomers recycling old movies did; it...

"Anne Francis, who costarred in the 1950s science-fiction classic Forbidden Planet and later played the title role in Honey West, the mid-1960s TV series about a sexy female private detective with a pet ocelot, died Sunday. She was 80." Dennis McLellan in the Los Angeles Times: "A shapely blond with a signature beauty mark next to her lower lip, Francis was a former child model and radio actress when she first came to notice on the big screen in the early 1950s. She had leading or supporting roles in more than 30 movies, including Bad Day at Black Rock, Battle Cry, Blackboard Jungle, The Hired Gun, Don't Go Near the Water, Brainstorm, Funny Girl and Hook, Line and Sinker."

She "was active until just a few years ago, still doing TV guest shots into her 70s," notes the Orlando Sentinel's Roger Moore.

The Guardian's Ronald Bergan calls her performance in Blackboard Jungle "strong,...

Anne Francis, who has died of complications of pancreatic cancer aged 80, is now best remembered mainly due to the lyrics "Anne Francis stars in Forbidden Planet \ Oh-oh at the late night, double-feature, picture show", which were sung over the opening credits of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), and for the cult science-fiction movie to which they refer, Forbidden Planet (1956). The only woman in the cast of Forbidden Planet, Francis had a sprightly charm and a wide-eyed child-like innocence as Altaira, the space-age Miranda in the transposition of Shakespeare's The Tempest to a distant planet.

The mini-skirted teenaged daughter of the exiled Dr Morbius (Walter Pidgeon) has never seen any man except her father until a group of Us astronauts, led by Commander John J Adams (Leslie Nielsen), arrive. While never exactly exclaiming "O brave new world that has such people in it!

Los Angeles — Actress Anne Francis, who was the love interest in the 1950s science-fiction classic "Forbidden Planet" and later was sexy private eye in "Honey West" on TV, has died at age 80.

Francis died Sunday at a Santa Barbara nursing home, said Bill Guntle, a funeral director McDermott-Crockett & Associates Mortuary in Santa Barbara.

Francis, who had surgery and chemotherapy after being diagnosed with lung cancer in 2007, died of complications of pancreatic cancer, her daughter, Jane Uemura, told the Los Angeles Times.

Francis, a stunningly beautiful blonde with a prominent beauty mark, appeared opposite such stars as Spencer Tracy, Paul Newman, Robert Taylor and Glenn Ford in some of the most popular films of the 1950s. But "Forbidden Planet" and "Honey West" made her reputation.

"Forbidden Planet" was hailed in Leonard Maltin's "2006 Movie Guide" as "one of the most ambitious and intelligent films of its genre."

A science-fiction retelling of Shakespeare's "The Tempest,...

Producer-director behind a raft of 20th-century TV classics

It is no exaggeration to declare that the name of the film and television producer-director Arnold Laven, who has died aged 87, has been seen by millions of people all over the world, even if it might not have registered. Think of all those viewers of the TV series The Rifleman (1959-63) and The Big Valley (1965-69), made by Laven's company, Levy-Gardner-Laven Productions, many episodes of which he directed.

Laven was also credited as director on scores of episodes of such archetypal 1970s series as Marcus Welby MD, Gunsmoke, Mannix, Ironside, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Rockford Files and Fantasy Island. In the 1980s he directed, among others, several episodes of Hill Street Blues and The A-Team. In addition, Laven directed 11 feature films from 1952 to 1969, some for companies other than his own.

In the late 1930s, the Chicago-born Laven moved with his family to Los Angeles,...

Paul Newman, who combined Method training with matinee idol looks to become the personification of the cool '60s rebel in such iconic roles as the reckless Hud, the defiant Cool Hand Luke and the hotshot Butch Cassidy, died Friday. Surrounded by friends and family, including his wife, Joanne Woodward, the actor and philanthropist passed away at his farmhouse home near Wesport, Conn., after a long battle with cancer. He was 83.

In a film career that spanned nearly six decades, Newman received seven Oscar nominations before he was finally presented with an Honorary Oscar in 1986 "in recognition of his many and memorable and compelling screen performances and for his personal integrity and dedication to his craft."

But then he pulled out a trump card of his own, winning the best actor Academy Award the following year for "The Color of Money," in which he reprised the role of pool shark Fast Eddie Felsen,...