On this episode of WHATEVER HAPPENED TO VIC DIAZ? (the world’s finest podcast devoted to “the Filipino Peter Lorre” Vic Diaz) we’re checking out the oddball 1971 (though filmed in 1965) B&W sorta-spy horror film BLOOD THIRST featuring a wise-cracking cop in a foreign land, a monster that looks like a diseased testicle, many legitimate – and accidental – red herrings and, of course, the legendary Vic Diaz playing a rare good guy. It’s pretty entertaining with some nice photography, and also consistently strange for its brief 75-minute run time. We also chat about diseases, FLETCH, and SO MUCH MORE! Check it out!
On this episode of BARTEL ME SOMETHING GOOD (the world’s finest Paul Bartel-themed podcast) we’re tackling Paul Bartel’s final directorial feature, the sadly abused (and semi-unavailable) bunker comedy SHELF LIFE from 1993! Born out of a stage-play by stars O-Lan Jones, Andrea Stein, and Jim Turner, Bartel turns it into a wildly visual phantasmagoria of rituals, re-enactments and hormonally confusing games, with a typically wicked sense of humor. Check it out!
On this episode of Cinema Fantastica we travel all the way to Molins de Rei, near Barcelona, Spain to attend the 1990 edition of the Molins Horror Film Festival. Or, more accurately, we’re attending the Dotze hores de Cine de Terror de Molins de Rei, a ten hour marathon of recent horror movies that was initially established way back in 1973! The 1990 edition featured a slew of interesting horror films, and our hosts have chosen two to battle against each other: the super-intelligent dog chased by a sasquatch-monkey thing Canadian horror film WATCHERS from 1988 /w Corey Haim and Michael Ironside, and the star-studded underwater mutant monster film LEVIATHAN from 1989 /w Peter Weller, Ernie Hudson, Daniel Stern and more. WHICH FILM REIGNS SUPREME? Listen and find out!
On this episode of Bartel Me Something Good we’ve reached Paul Bartel’s Criterion Collected classic EATING RAOUL featuring Mary Woronov, Robert Beltran and Paul Bartel himself as Paul Bland. A darkly comedic social satire (/w cannibalism), it remains a gem in the Bartel filmography, and we’re delighted to be joined by EATING RAOUL’s editor Alan Toomayan to discuss his work on Bartel’s films, including LUST IN THE DUST and SCENES FROM THE CLASS STRUGGLE IN BEVERLY HILLS. Alan also regales us with stories of his early work with New World Pictures, the guerilla filmmaking that went into Eating Raoul’s production, and his transition to becoming an editor of film trailers and featurettes. CHECK IT OUT!
After the worldwide success of SANTA SANGRE, Jodorowsky was inundated with offers to make horror films, but he found himself more interested in – for the first time – working with a large budget and big stars. His opportunity came in the form of producer Alexander Salkind, who approached Jodo to direct his wife script for a project called THE RAINBOW THIEF, starring Omar Sharif, Peter O’Toole and Christopher Lee. The result (nearly) ended Alejandro Jodorowsky’s directing career, with the film barely being release before being dumped onto VHS in the US four years after its completion. But is the final result truly disaster? On this episode of JODOWOWSKY we’re breaking down the complicated history and tangled legacy of THE RAINBOW THIEF and asking what the heck went wrong. We also pay tribute to the late Cristóbal Jodorowsky, and discuss Jonathan Ross’s 1990 episode of his program For One Week Only devoted to Jodorowsky. Check it out!
Alejandro Jodorowsky returns to filmmaking after a nearly ten year absence with the surreal horror of 1989’s SANTA SANGRE. Filled with wild, controversial imagery, our JodoWOWsky hosts trace its inception, the relationship between Jodorowsky and producer Claudio Argento, the involvement of four of the Jodorowsky children in the production, the taxing filmmaking process, the suggested involvement of Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston and SO MUCH MORE. We also discuss the feature length SANTA SANGRE documentary FORGET EVERYTHING YOU HAVE EVER SEEN: THE WORLD OF SANTA SANGRE from 2011, which brings much of the cast and crew together to recount some truly strange stories about the film’s inception and legacy. All this and the latest Jodorowsky news, so CHECK IT OUT!
Director David Marmor taps into this unease of moving to a new city with brilliant results in his debut feature 1BR.
In The Printed Screen, I’ll be taking an irreverent look at comic book adaptations of notable…