Dead Pictures

Wisconsin lunatic Ed Gein (1906-1984) remains horror cinema's gift that keeps on giving.  The Plainfield Ghoul's grotesque legacy can be traced through such pictures as Alfred Hitchcock's ...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-end-of-all-flesh-deranged.html

MGM's LIONPOWER (1967) is the type of promotional reel the big studios don't make any more (to my knowledge, at least), and it's a crying shame.  The twenty-seven minute short was originally in...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-five-seasons-of-mgm-lionpower.html

Ah, the neverending delights of YouTube.  For many years, ever since I read about the film in Denis Gifford's A Pictorial History of Horror Movies (one of the seminal books of my boyhood), I've...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-sixth-and-seven-eighths-wonder-of.html

The Silver Screen lost one of its greatest magicians yesterday with the death of animator Ray Harryhausen.  He was the master of stop motion visual effects.  When I was a lad, I pestered my...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2013/05/hail-and-farewell-ray-harryhausen.html

Halloween, 1977.  A blonde-haired man in a suit walks through an airport corridor.  He is alone, and for almost the entire length of this particular shot, there are no other people in the f...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-loneliness-of-long-distance.html

David Bowie has emerged from his long musical exile with a haunting new single, "Where Are We Now?", which the artist unleashed on an unsuspecting world today on the occasion of his sixty-sixth ...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-return-of-thin-white-duke-where-are.html

I don't visit cinemas in my curmudgeonly middle age as much as I did in my curmudgeonly youth, but a new James Bond film will always find me, at least as long as I remain ambulatory, in a the...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2012/11/much-is-taken-much-abides-skyfall.html

The Nineteen Seventies were a fairly productive decade for spiders crawling across cinema screens.  Our eight-legged  friends emerged both normal and giant-sized from black holes that someh...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2012/10/pucker-up-kiss-of-tarantula.html

Jeffrey Hayden's THE VINTAGE (1957) is the type of picture where the American and Italian players make no effort whatsoever at passing themselves off as convincing Italian, French, and Spanis...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2012/10/sour-grapes-vintage.html

     I was deeply saddened to learn this morning of the death yesterday of Gore Vidal at age 86.  He was the great rebel angel of American literature.  At some point down the road, I w...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2012/08/hail-and-farewell-gore-vidal-american.html

Vittorio De Sica's A Place for Lovers ("Amanti," 1968) is perhaps best remembered today, if at all, for its inclusion in Harry Medved and Randy Lowell's snarkily amusing 1978 guide to The Fif...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2012/04/experiment-in-tedium-place-for-lovers.html

Citizens for Decent Literature, Inc.'s 1965 Perversion for Profit is Christian anti-pornography propaganda of the most exploitative and entertaining kind. Narrated by "outstanding reporter" and ...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2012/03/moral-decay-that-concerns-so-many.html

"The locus of pastoral," scholar Edward L. Ruhe observed, "is at the margin of civilization." Bernard Hirschenson's Florida-lensed Pick-Up (1975) may not be precisely situated at that liberat...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2012/02/swamp-romp-pick-up.html

It's hard to believe, but rock chameleon David Bowie turns sixty-five today. In honor of the occasion, here's a clip of his September 5, 1980 live performances of "Life on Mars?" and "Ashes to A...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2012/01/happy-birthday-david-bowie-on-tonight.html

It was a year ago yesterday that musician Mick Karn (1958-2011) lost his battle with cancer. In memory of this remarkable artist, here's a live rendition of his old band Japan's classic instrume...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2012/01/in-memory-of-mick-karn-canton.html

I can't sleep--I got my eyes wide open I can feel the radiation Vertical lines on video It's three a.m., there's no distractions Can't sleep 'cause all the stars are on now Should I move to c...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/12/all-night-television-pictures-in-my.html

Lew Landers' cinematic swan song Terrified (1963) is yet another low-budget shocker that has taken up apparently permanent residence in my damaged brain. The picture's opening cemetery sequen...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/10/eyes-have-it-terrified.html

"If I'd only known how much you were going to love movies," Grandmother Pagan assured me many times, "I'd have saved all that stuff at the Patovi." This was a downtown cinema where she worked...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/09/another-mans-treasure-graven-images.html

Kenneth Anger's Inaguration Of The Pleasure Dome (1954) The '78 Eldorado Version from Mondo Justin on Vimeo . Kenneth Anger's 1978 reconstruction of his 1954 masterpiece Inauguration of the Ple...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/07/electric-light-anger-return-to-pleasure.html

George Pal's rocket ride as a producer of science fiction epics encountered severe commercial turbulence with 1955's Conquest of Space. The picture, inspired by the bestselling non-fiction bo...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/07/heretics-on-mars-conquest-of-space.html

William Witney and John English's fifteen-chapter Republic serial Jungle Girl (1941) is the type of politically incorrect entertainment Hollywood studios don't make any more, if they know wha...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/06/pleasures-of-nyoka-jungle-girl.html

Jean Rollin's death in December 2010 at the age of 72 brought down the final curtain on a remarkable, and remarkably unconventional, career in cinema. The French fantasist, who himself consid...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/03/requiem-for-rollinade-virgins-vampires.html

Hajime Sato's Terror Beneath the Sea (1966), originally titled Kaitei Daisenso, was never released theatrically in the U.S., debuting instead on television five years later, but I don't remem...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/02/war-dogs-of-deep-terror-beneath-sea.html

The silver screen lost one of its titans yesterday with the passing at age 77 of composer John Barry. Barry, who appropriately enough served as a teenage projectionist in his father's cinema,...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/01/hail-and-farewell-rip-john-barry-1933.html

Science fiction cinema, much like its literary counterpart, has seldom lacked for outrageousness; indeed, it's its strength. The genre is, as one of its genuine titans, J.G. Ballard, observed...

http://deadpictures.blogspot.com/2011/01/distaff-dystopia-cat-women-of-moon.html