I’m your boyfriend now, Nancy.

Pleasant dreams!

It's Sunday, mein mouth-breathing mavens of the monsterous! Time for a visit to the HorrorHouse™! Today's selection, for the pedantic 200 of you out there, isn't strictly a horror film but a sub-genre, a member in a cross-section in your Horror ∩ Science-Fiction Venn diagram: the monster movie. And what an example of the monster movie it is! Featuring the always-breathtaking work of animation legend, Ray Harryhausen, 1957's 20 Million Miles to Earth!

Suspension-of-disbelief helmets strapped on tight? The movie, one of the extremely few horror or science-fiction films based in Italy ("it's sempre New York or Tokyo!"), tells of an alien egg brought back to Earth by the first explorers to Venus. This egg hatches and gives birth to a little monster that in no time at all—spoiler!—becomes a big monster and wrecks havoc in Rome. Aww… did I give something away?

Obviously important to cinema history (MovieSnob never sleeps) is Harryhausen's beautiful stop-motion work, the classic scenes at the Colosseum especially be to noted. One thing TIL that Harryhausen shot in Rome because he wanted to vacation there! Hey, films have been shot for more self-serving reasons.

YouTube Link to the movie…

• https://youtube.com/watch?v=6Fm0LLsB9FM

Google-free links…

• https://yewtu.be/watch?v=6Fm0LLsB9FM
• https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=6Fm0LLsB9FM
• https://iv.melmac.space/watch?v=6Fm0LLsB9FM

So, sorry for the slight deviation in programming…no, no I'm not and you all like deviations anyway! See you next week, my knuckledragging nightcrawlers, here at Mongoose’s Drive-In HorrorHouse™! And remember…Parma spelled backwards is AMRAP!

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/6431618

We'd like to ease your mind regarding the recent visitations (abduction is such a dirty word). They're not experiments... they're invitations. That is, if you've got the brass be bearable for extended space travel...

MovieSnob Seal of Approval! 🏆 👍

Over the top of over the top! Flying saucers from outer space…check! Absurd, drug-fueled cartoon characters…check! Thai zombies with exploding heads…check! Loud, fast, distorted rock 'n roll…CHECK! ALL SYSTEMS GO!

We're talking about the lo-fi, lo-budget Wild Zero, the 1999 punk rock Night of The Living Dead starring power trio Guitar Wolf. This Japanese cult film pays homage to all things rock 'n roll filtered through western Pacific sensibilities. Framed within the buzzsaw roars of Guitar Wolf's "jet rock 'n' roll", you're gonna get cars, motorbikes and microphones that spit fire like the 1966 Batmobile! Of course there's the Yakuza and gallons of fake blood! There's even military-grade weaponry that wouldn't seem out of place in Michigan's upper penninsula! Oh, and the soul searching…

It's a bunch of stupid fun for the whole family…if your surname is Addams or Manson! See it!

Love knows no nationalities, genders or borders! Rock and roll!

Saw the 2021 documentary about the life of actor Paul Newman the other day, Pierre-François Gaudry's Paul Newman, derrière les yeux bleus (Paul Newman, Behind Blue Eyes). It's hard not to make a film about Newman's life without sanctifying the man, although he really did come close with all of his humanitarian work aside from all of the iconic roles he'd played in his career. But I'm not here to list his filmography nor his philantrophic endeavors today. Possibly another time.

Something Newman said, it had to be around 1977-1980 (it's unclear from the film exactly when), stuck with me as it's as timely today as it was 40-odd years ago—maybe more so.

It's very hard to take a lot of pride in your craft if the three biggest stars in America are two robots and a shark.

...~~Today~~ Yesterday.

Sue me.

Reminder: the linked article is USA-centric, meaning those of us in the rest of the world may not have the same streaming services available and/or release dates may be different.

Do you all know how much your King Mongoose loves you? I care for all of you defective darlings so much that I sat through this stinker of a film just to tell you, no, warn you to stay away, far away!

The dog of a movie in question is 1958's The Screaming Skull. You know a movie has to suck (and I don't mean blood) if it has to start out offering free funeral services to those who may die of fright in the audience. Oh, please! You could show this to your cardiopathic granny or your nine-year-old niece or nephew and the only fear generated would be that of your guests kicking your shins for showing them this tedious film! Its only real saving grace is that it's just over an hour (01:08:00), "free burial services" sequence included. I can't help question if it had been filmed hoping to be included in one of the anthology shows popular at the time such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents but ultimately rejected. Clumsily edited, dread factor zero, bare minimum production values, mediocre acting, trite script with the "clues" being dribbled as if from an eyedropper.

There's the haunted portrait of the departed wife created by someone from a beginner art class, painted not on canvas but posterboard!—there is a scene where the cursed painting is to be burned on a pyre and it curves under its own weight! There's a screaming skull, yes, but there are actually two—one is a stand-in, I suppose?—and you can see the difference! There's a shot of the titular skull on the staircase and you can see the stick that makes it "leap" from the step! One laughably "ominous" shot of perched birds flying away from their branch…not because of some ghostly force but because someone threw a rock at them clearly visible in the shot!

Run, my children, run away! Watch whatever else is "suggested for you" or next on the playlist! Or better yet, put down your cellphones, go outside and get some fresh air…and maybe some Halloween candy too, while you're at it!

...Or maybe this crowd has heard of legendary Dede Allen (RIP).

Alternate Google-free links:

• https://iv.melmac.space/watch?v=vdXUjtE-ltA
• https://yt.artemislena.eu/watch?v=vdXUjtE-ltA

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.film/post/1636501

🔗🐒 Hi! I'm the MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! 🔗🐒 Enjoy these Google-free links!

Link 1: A Study of Black and White Filmmaking

Link 2: Film Noir: The Case for Black and White

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Have you ever heard somebody say "I can't watch black and white movies?" I have a problem with this. Not because some of the most important movies are in black and white but because black and white can do just as much—if not more—than color.

Thanks, MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! Have a banana! And thanks to YouTube Channel Now You See It for both these videos succinctly and smartly analyzing the use and history of black and white in cinema.

Regarding the above opening quote (from the linked Film Noir video), an excellent recent example of this, forgive me if I'm repeating myself, is Robert Egger's 2019 The Lighthouse.

MovieSnob Ad Warning: as some YT vids are want to do, the first link contains promotional content (translated: advertising) fortunately at the end of the video (roughly at 00:13:14). Act accordingly.

Cross-posting here because, frankly, this was going to be a [email protected] one-link post pointing only to the second link. As you know how going down rabbitholes can be (or eating just one potato chip), it turned into a [email protected] post. Call yer lawyer. Better yet, watch Link #2 first then, if you like, watch the second more-subject-encompassing Link #1.

🔗🐒 Hi! I'm the MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! 🔗🐒 Enjoy these Google-free links!

Link 1: A Study of Black and White Filmmaking

Link 2: Film Noir: The Case for Black and White

Have you ever heard somebody say "I can't watch black and white movies?" I have a problem with this. Not because some of the most important movies are in black and white but because black and white can do just as much—if not more—than color.

Thanks, MovieSnob LinkMonkey™! Have a banana! And thanks to YouTube Channel Now You See It for both these videos succinctly and smartly analyzing the use and history of black and white in cinema.

Regarding the above opening quote (from the linked Film Noir video), an excellent recent example of this, forgive me if I'm repeating myself, is Robert Egger's 2019 The Lighthouse.

MovieSnob Ad Warning: as some YT vids are want to do, the first link contains promotional content (translated: advertising) fortunately at the end of the video (roughly at 00:13:14). Act accordingly.

How many buttons does this movie push? The cult of personality. Stalking. Delusional disorder. Prisoner of fame. Local boy makes good. If Travis Bickle had stand-up aspirations. Today in 2023, even though Todd Phillips has already 'fessed up to it, it's hard not to notice the resemblance in Todd Phillips' Joker (2019), especially with De Niro standing in for Jerry Lewis and…himself as the neurotic ~~Bickle~~ Pupkin. Was Scorsese just decades ahead of his time, like with New York, New York? Yes and no.

Although Scorsese himself admits an inspiration from Porter's Life of an American Fireman (1903)^1, in my research neither our director nor any film critics mention the resemblance to Steno's post WWII comedy Un americano a Roma (1954) starring Italian national treasure Alberto Sordi (RIP). Like Scorsese's Pupkin, Steno's Nando Mericoni also has an unrealistic obsession: to be American. Just as delusional as Pupkin, Nando's particular obsession with all things American brings him to the point of speaking English-sounding gibberish: his actual command of the language is almost nonexistent so he babbles to his friends and family in what sounds like American to their ears. He does so at any opportuniy, even when detained in a German prisoner camp during wartime!

Comedian Jerry Lewis plays comedian and Johnny Carson-like late night talk show host Jerry Langford: the duality (irony?) here is that when Langford is off stage Lewis' performance is delivered as serious as the proverbial heart attack. He is a man cornered, seething with a rage, and Lewis shows his dramatic skills brilliantly. Sandra ~~Bernhardt~~ Bernhard as crazed heiress and Langford's other stalker shines hilariously during her scene with her masking-taped hostage. Robert De Niro is just like other NYC natives The Ramones: even when The Ramones covered Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World, it was still inescapably The Ramones. This is a role like not quite like other in his repertoire and De Niro tries—and mostly succeeds—as obsessed nebbish Pupkin. But it's still De Niro, a tough and menacing presence and that's hard to reconcile with the Pupkin character.

It's got laughs. Cringey laughs. As is, you'll find yourself laughing at the most uncomfortable things in this film. It could have had more laughs if Scorsese had decided to play it as a straight-up comedy. This is most likely why The King of Comedy flopped at the box office. The tide had turned: the era of The Blockbuster was in full swing and people wanted easier entertainment than the New Hollywood was giving them. Friedkin had spent (and lost) millions with his epic Sorcerer (for another post), Cimino was about to bankrupt United Artists with Heaven's Gate and the New Hollywood was in the process of being shown the door. If Scorsese had gone more Taxi Driver on the treatment and played it straight-up drama, then The King of Comedy might have won Best Picture at the 1983 Academy Awards instead of Joker at the 2020 Oscars®…?

As for the open ending…I've made my own conclusion. You?

Bonus link: Porter's The Life of an American Fireman. See if you can find the inspiration.