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Clint Eastwood began his professional screen acting career in 1955, and he was able to land multiple small roles almost right away. In his first year of employment, Eastwood appeared in an episode of "Highway Patrol" and in the TV movie "Allen in Movieland." On the big screen, he made his debut in Jack Arnold's "Revenge of the Creature," a sequel to his 1954 classic "Creature from the Black Lagoon." Eastwood only had one scene, but he left an impression as a forgetful lab technician. That same year, the young Eastwood also appeared in "Francis in the Navy," the sixth of seven ultra-successful Francis the Talking Mule movies, as well as an uncredited Saxon warrior in the period drama "Lady Godiva of Coventry." 

Eastwood rounded out 1955 by re-teaming with Jack Arnold for the creature feature "Tarantula." A relatively well-regarded matinée monster movie, "Tarantula" is about, you guessed it, a giant tarantula...

A special 45th anniversary screening of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back will kick off the 16th TCM Classic Film Festial, in Hollywood, on Thursday, April 24, Turner Classic Movies announced on Wednesday, and the visionary architect of the Star Wars cinematic universe, George Lucas, will be in attendance.

“The Empire Strikes Back is like The Godfather Part II. Yes, technically, they’re sequels, the second movie in a series. But they are so much more. Empire not only dazzled and delighted Star Wars fans, it pushed the boundaries of moviemaking, further deepening its characters and expanding the most popular cinematic universe of all time,” said Ben Mankiewicz, TCM’s primetime anchor and the official host of the TCM Classic Film Festival. “The first Star Wars picture in 1977 ignited a new era in Hollywood and turned a generation of young people into passionate movie fans for life. Then, somehow, three years later,...

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the second film in the initial Star Wars trilogy, will open the 16th annual TCM Classic Film Festival on Thursday, April 24, and on board to present the film will be director George Lucas, Turner Classics Movies announced.

Celebrating its 45th Anniversary, the gala presentation and opening night launches a weekend fest showcasing exclusive programming themed around “Grand Illusions: Fantastic Worlds on Film.”

“The Empire Strikes Back is like The Godfather Part II,” said Ben Mankiewicz, TCM Primetime Anchor and Official Host of the TCM Classic Film Festival. “Yes, technically, they’re sequels, the second movie in a series. But they are so much more. Empire not only dazzled and delighted Star Wars fans, it pushed the boundaries of moviemaking, further deepening its characters and expanding the most popular cinematic universe of all time.”

Continued Mankiewicz, “The first Star Wars picture in 1977 ignited a new...

“Impressive. Most Impressive.”

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) has revealed Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, the second film in the Star Wars trilogy, will open the 16th annual TCM Classic Film Festival on Thursday, April 24th. Celebrating its 45th Anniversary, the gala presentation will bring visionary director George Lucas to present the film. The opening night launches an exhilarating weekend in the heart of Hollywood, showcasing exclusive programming themed around “Grand Illusions: Fantastic Worlds on Film.”

“The Empire Strikes Back is like The Godfather Part II. Yes, technically, they’re sequels, the second movie in a series. But they are so much more. Empire not only dazzled and delighted Star Wars fans, it pushed the boundaries of moviemaking, further deepening its characters and expanding the most popular cinematic universe of all time,” said Ben Mankiewicz, TCM Primetime Anchor and Official Host of the TCM Classic Film Festival. “The first Star...

The 2025 TCM Classic Film Festival is opening with a flex of galactic muscle: “The Empire Strikes Back,” celebrating its 45th anniversary, will kick off the 16th edition of the festival presented by Turner Classic Movies in Los Angeles on Thursday, April 24. And even better, The Maker himself, George Lucas, will be in attendance to introduce it.

It’ll be an opening turbolaser salvo for a whole weekend of films revolving around the theme “Grand Illusions: Fantastic Worlds on Film,” brilliantly overseen once again by longtime festival director, Genevieve McGillicuddy. Other films in that otherworldly lineup include “Spirited Away,” “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” “Mothra,” and “Earth vs. the Flying Saucers.”

The festival will run the entire weekend, centered as always at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, which offers special rates for festival attendees, with screenings at the neighboring Tcl Chinese Theatre IMAX, the Tcl Chinese 6, the Egyptian, and the El Capitan.

Michelle Pfeifer...

When actor Fred Williamson and director Jack Arnold came together to make “Black Eye” in 1974, it wasn’t an obvious match.

Williamson was the retired pro football player who, after making his feature film debut in Robert Altman’s “M*A*S*H” in 1970, had skyrocketed to blaxploitation stardom in “Hammer” and a pair of Larry Cohen knockouts, “Black Caesar” and “Hell Up in Harlem.” Arnold was a reliable Hollywood journeyman best known for directing Universal sci-fi flicks like “It Came From Outer Space,” “The Incredible Shrinking Man,” and “The Creature From the Black Lagoon” before spending the 1960s knocking around from studio to studio, genre to genre, with a financially lucrative but creatively static sojourn in episodic television.

Williamson was a rising star of the New Hollywood and Arnold a more or less discarded remnant of the old, but their collaboration yielded one of the most underrated films of its era. A...

Science fiction has always pushed the boundaries of cinema to its absolute limit, and plenty of classic black-and-white movies still have the power to entertain and enthrall viewers to this day. From technological marvels that utilized special effects that were massively ahead of their time to thought-provoking psychological stories whose narrative never lost its relevance, there are many movies, even from the black-and-white silent era, that can be enjoyed just as well by modern viewers.

Many of the best black-and-white sci-fi releases were produced during periods of great political and social upheaval and powerfully reflected the society out of which they were created. With terrifying alien creatures representing fears of the unknown or the dire consequences of technological progress, classic sci-fi films often convey themes that remain incredibly relevant to this day. While black-and-white movies may put some viewers off, sci-fi lovers would be doing themselves a disservice if they...

Welcome to the 37th installment of Page One Rewrite, where I examine genre screenplays that just couldn't make it. This week, the extremely unlikely candidate who could've been Marvel's first big-screen hero. If you're not counting Howard the Duck. Or those 1940s Captain America serials. And if you have any suggestions for the future, let me hear them. Just contact me on Twitter.

2015's Ant-Man was covered extensively in the trades years before its release, due to the Marvel film's lengthy development with writer/director Edgar Wright, who ultimately departed the project. Wright's work on the film went back as far as 2003 for Artisan Entertainment, years before the founding of Marvel Studios. Beating the odds and surviving 12 years of development, passing through a few writers, directors, and studios before finally making its way to theaters and becoming a hit, Ant-Man was a surprising Hollywood success story.

Of All the Marvel Heroes.

Stephen King has a wide taste in literature, loving novels like "Lord of the Flies" and "Watership Down" over horror literature and weird fiction, but that's not to say he doesn't pay attention to other masters of the genre. The bulk of King's novels are horror stories, and he clearly took a lot of inspiration from the pulp horror, genre magazines, and EC Comics of his childhood. Indeed, King wrote "Creepshow" in 1982, openly paying homage to the "Tales from the Crypt" and "Shock SuspenStories" issues he read as a youth in the 1950s. King wears his horror influences on his sleeve. 

As for the literature that inspired him, King recalls reading a lot as a child, and that he loved a wide variety of books. He enjoyed the fantastical stories of Ray Bradbury, the Nancy Drew mysteries of Carolyn Keene, and, yes, even horror novels like Robert Bloch's "Psycho.

If life just feels too big lately, Svengoolie has the cure — 1957’s The Incredible Shrinking Man, which will air on the Saturday, Sept. 14, 2024, installment of his MeTV series, Svengoolie Classic Horror & Sci-Fi Movie. In this film, everyman Scott (Grant Williams) sails his small boat through a mysterious fog … which turns out to be radioactive. That, plus prior exposure to a pesticide, leave Scott shrinking smaller and smaller, until his own home becomes an impossible-to-navigate jungle filled with danger. Scott fights a giant spider, nearly washes away in a small drop of water, and eventually becomes so small he can crawl through the screen grating on a basement window. But while that might sound wacky, this classic of ’50s sci-fi is more than just silly camp. Its script was written by sci-fi legend Richard Matheson, and according to the Criterion Channel, the movie “gazes with wonder and trepidation into the unknowable vastness of the cosmic void.

From mad scientists to unintended mutations, nuclear monsters were the darlings of horror in the atomic age. And it makes sense. After all, America was deep in the heart of the Cold War scare (officially starting in 1947). The idyllic facade of the 1950s, picket fences and apple pies, concealed a constant undercurrent of anxiety and fear that the world would end in a nuclear war.

So with atomic power always at the forefront of consciousness, it makes sense that the movies of the time would feature monsters born of atomic fallout. At the same time, man was taking to the stars for the first time, with space exploration opening up a whole new frontier -- and a whole new set of fears. Between aliens from the stars and mutants from our world, a new genre of atomic monsters took over. And while the Godzilla movies would go on to become by far the most famous,...

The Creature From the Black Lagoon is rising once again.

James Wan, the creator of the Saw and The Conjuring horror franchises, is developing a new take on the classic Universal monster property and is in early talks to direct the feature project.

The move comes as Wan and his collaborators presented Universal with a pitch to remake the 1954 monster classic. A writer will now be hired to write a script, working in concert with Wan.

This is the first project Wan has attached himself to as a director following his company’s production banner, Atomic Monster, merging with Blumhouse. Wan was under water for the last few years on DC superhero movie Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and has been looking to get back to his horror roots in some way.

Wan will act as a producer on Creature, while Atomic Monster’s Michael Clear and Judson Scott serve as executive producers.

Sci-fi legend Jack Arnold directed a majority of "Gilligan's Island," with plenty of prolific names like John Rich, Leslie Goodwins, and even "Superman" director Richard Donner all steering multiple episodes.

The origin of "Gilligan's Island" is a fascinating story already, with creator Sherwood Schwartz allegedly singing the theme song to a gas station attendant to see if the show sounded like something the average person would watch, but just as interesting is how groundbreaking the show was behind the camera. 

Namely, by inviting decorated actress and history-making director Ida Lupino to helm a few episodes.

Although Rod Amateau is credited as directing the pilot for the series, CBS comedy show supervisor Sol Saks was quoted as claiming in William Donati's "Ida Lupino: A Biography," that Lupino had been brought in to help shape a struggling show. "It was 'Gilligan's Island,'" Saks said. "It wasn't even on the air yet.

When the news of Roger Corman’s passing was announced, the online film community immediately responded with a flood of tributes to a legend. Many began with the multitude of careers he helped launch, the profound influence he had on independent cinema, and even the cameos he made in the films of Corman school “graduates.”

Tending to land further down his list of achievements and influences a bit is his work as a director, which is admittedly a more complicated legacy. Yes, Corman made some bad movies, no one is disputing that, but he also made some great ones. If he was only responsible for making the Poe films from 1960’s The Fall of the House of Usher to 1964’s The Tomb of Ligeia, he would be worthy of praise as a terrific filmmaker. But several more should be added to the list including A Bucket of Blood (1959) and Little Shop of Horrors...

At the beginning of Robert Wise's 1951 sci-fi classic "The Day the Earth Stood Still," a flaying saucer lands in Washington, D.C. and a stern, masked alien named Klaatu (Michael Rennie) emerges. He announces to the gathered military and curious humans that he comes in peace, and even has a gift for the people of Earth. He extracts a small, palm-sized tube and flicks it open, revealing multiple small antennae. The flicking device, however, spooks one of the nearby military men, and he fires off a shot, injuring Klaatu's hand. He falls in pain. 

Almost instantly, as if sensing Klaatu's panic, an enormous eight-foot humanoid robot emerges from the flying saucer. It is silvery and featureless, sporting a mysterious visor across its face. This is Gort. Gort steps out onto the ground, and its visor lifts, revealing a glowing power source. A laser beam emerges from Gort's head, striking all the Army's weapons.

Elisabeth Costa de Beauregard Segel’s Storyboard Media has begun talks with buyers here on the action thriller Wages Of Sin with Danny Trejo.

Paul Sloan from Green Book stars in the film alongside Trejo, whose credits include Machete and From Dusk Till Dawn, and Jeremy Luke from The Irishman.

The Los Angeles-set story centres on a man who gets framed for a crime and is targeted by a criminal fentanyl enterprise.

Victor Rios makes his directorial debut for 333 Pictures and Boatyard Productions and Stephen Cyrus Sepher wrote the screenplay.

Sepher and Nazo Bravo serve as producers while Costa...

Neon has promoted Elissa Federoff from president of distribution to chief distribution officer and Ryan Friscia from EVP, finance & business development to chief financial officer.

Federoff has been with the company since its inception in January 2017 and will continue to oversee the company’s release strategy.

The executive has steered Neon to one of its most successful periods at the box office since inception, with Sydney Sweeney starrer Immaculate earning more than $16m, 2023 Palme d’Or winner Anatomy Of A Fall taking more than $5m to become the highest-grossing specialised foreign-language release post-Covid, and Wim Wenders’ Perfect Days on more than $3.7m.

The last 70 years of science fiction, horror, and fantasy wouldn't just look remarkably different without the works of Richard Matheson, they'd be comparatively barren. Okay, this is a touch hyperbolic, but only a touch! Yes, we'd still have the transporting, thought-provoking works of maestros like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and so many others, but could you imagine living in a world sans such essential tales as "The Incredible Shrinking Man," "I Am Legend," "Hell House," and dozens upon dozens of eerily prescient (or just straight up horrifying) short stories? And these weren't just spellbinding reads. They formed the basis for many memorable movies, and, perhaps most influentially, 16 unforgettable episodes of "The Twilight Zone."

Countless writers and filmmakers have cited Matheson as crucial to their development as genre storytellers (Stephen King considers "Hell House" to be "the scariest haunted house novel ever written"), and you could argue that...

There is renewed interest at Amazon to adapt Richard Matheson's sci-fi novel "The Shrinking Man", as a tragic, modern-day dramatic feature:

Published in 1956, "The Shrinking Man" was previously adapted into two motion pictures...

...including "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957) and "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" (1981) :

"....while on holiday, 'Scott Carey' is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray shortly after he accidentally ingests insecticide. The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1/7 of an inch per day. A few weeks later, Carey can no longer deny the truth: not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was and deduces, to his dismay, that his body will continue to shrink.

"The abnormal size decrease of his body initially brings teases and taunting from local youths, then causes friction in his marriage and family life.

Action-paced, international intrigue ensues when a Swiss bank president hires an American investigator to ferret out a group of blackmailers who have been terrorizing his clients in The Swiss Conspiracy, available 20th February 2024 in a special collector’s edition on Blu-ray and DVD from Film Masters.

Scanned in 4K from original 35mm archival elements, The Swiss Conspiracy has never seen a high-quality release to date. Film Masters has enlisted colorist and restoration expert Marc Wielage to painstakingly bring back vibrant and original colors that have not been seen since this film made its original debut in 1976.

Shot entirely in and around Zurich, The Swiss Conspiracy, based on the hit novel by Michael Stanley, was directed by Jack Arnold, best known for B horror/cult movie classics such as The Incredible Shrinking Man, Tarantula, Creature from the Black Lagoon, It Came from Outer Space and The Tattered Dress. One of the...

Actor Joe Mantegna has previously recorded a commentary for the 1996 Stephen King adaptation Thinner with the film’s director Tom Holland (whose other credits include Fright Night and Child’s Play)… but that didn’t stop him from sitting down to record a new commentary for Scream Factory’s upcoming Blu-ray release of Thinner! This time, Mantegna was joined by producer Mitchell Galin – and we’ll get to hear what they had to say about Thinner when the Blu-ray is released on January 23rd. Copies are available for pre-order through the Scream Factory website and on Amazon.

Scripted by Tom Holland and Michael McDowell, Thinner is based on a novel King wrote under his Richard Bachman pen name and tells a story of supernatural terror as one man faces a countdown to the ultimate excruciating payback. A 109-year-old Romani man, hell-bent on revenge for the death of his daughter, exacts a...

Writing as Richard Bachman, Stephen King's Thinner has always stuck with me as one of his most chilling and decidedly bleak novels, so it's especially thrilling to see that Tom Holland's 1996 adaptation of Thinner is coming to Blu-ray in a new Collector's Edition from Scream Factory that's brimming with bonus features, including an interview with Holland, two new audio commentaries, and much more!

Press Release: On January 23, 2024, Scream Factory™ will unleash the horror thriller Thinner Collector’s Edition on Blu-ray. This definitive collector’s edition release includes new audio commentary with producer Mitchell Galin and actor Joe Mantegna, new audio commentary with film critic and historian Lee Gambin and novelist Aaron Dries, new interviews with director Tom Holland, and actor Lucinda Jenney, and much more! Loyal fans and collectors, Thinner Collector’s Edition Blu-ray is available for pre-order now at ShoutFactory.com.

*Special Offer: Order from ShoutFactory.com...

Catering directly to my interests, the Criterion Channel’s January lineup boasts two of my favorite things: James Gray and cats. In the former case it’s his first five features (itself a terrible reminder he only released five movies in 20 years); the latter shows felines the respect they deserve, from Kuroneko to The Long Goodbye, Tourneur’s Cat People and Mick Garris’ Sleepwalkers. Meanwhile, Ava Gardner, Bertrand Tavernier, Isabel Sandoval, Ken Russell, Juleen Compton, George Harrison’s HandMade Films, and the Sundance Film Festival get retrospectives.

Restorations of Soviet sci-fi trip Ikarie Xb 1, The Unknown, and The Music of Regret stream, as does the recent Plan 75. January’s Criterion Editions are Inside Llewyn Davis, Farewell Amor, The Incredible Shrinking Man, and (most intriguingly) the long-out-of-print The Man Who Fell to Earth, Blu-rays of which go for hundreds of dollars.

See the lineup below and learn more here.

Back By Popular Demand

The Graduate,...

The key to the success of Rod Serling's original run of "The Twilight Zone" (and its enduring popularity) was ingenuity in all aspects of production. Obviously, the writing was almost always top-notch, with episodes boasting wildly clever premises from genre masters like Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and George Clayton Johnson. Though the budgets were modest, directors employed all manner of trickery and inventive makeup effects to dazzle and/or terrify viewers. Meanwhile, the strange tales conjured by Serling's stable of scribes required fully committed performances from actors both established and new to the scene. They had to roll with the weirdness.

On certain occasions, however, Serling and his collaborators couldn't resort to special effects to transport their audience. Sometimes, they had to shell out some dough and wow 'em with the real thing. And sometimes this forced the director to scramble a good deal more than usual. Such was...

Patrick Wachsberger’s Picture Perfect Entertainment is launching international sales on Jan Kounen’s “The Incredible Shrinking Man” starring Jean Dujardin, the Oscar-winning actor of “The Artist.”

The ambitious film is a modern adaption of Richard Matheson’s science fiction novel, which was previously brought to the big screen by Universal Pictures in 1957 with Jack Arnold’s “The Shrinking Man.”

The French movie is being produced by Alain Goldman at Pitchipoi Productions and Picture Perfect, the vehicle launched by Wachsberger, the former co-chairman of Lionsgate who won a best picture Oscar for “Coda” in 2021.

Slated to start shooting in May 2024, the movie tells the story of a man who gradually shrinks to less than an inch tall after an exposure to a combination of radiation and insecticide. With medical science powerless to help him, brushes with cats, mouse traps and spiders become a matter of life and death, and he...

Sixty-six years ago, Creature from the Black Lagoon director Jack Arnold teamed up with author Richard Matheson to bring Matheson’s sci-fi novel The Shrinking Man to the screen as The Incredible Shrinking Man (watch it Here). Now Deadline reports that Picture Perfect Federation Chairman Patrick Wachsberger, who was formerly the Co-Chairman of Lionsgate, is working with La Vie En Rose producer Alain Goldman on a French remake of The Incredible Shrinking Man that is set to star Jean Dujardin, who won an Oscar for his performance in the lead role of the 2012 silent film The Artist – which also happened to be the Best Picture winner that year.

The Wachsberger-produced Coda just won Best Picture last year and La Vie En Rose earned an Oscar for star Marion Cotillard, so this remake has multiple prestigious names attached to it.

Universal Pictures released The Incredible Shrinking Man in ’57 and still holds the rights to the property,...

Exclusive: Picture Perfect Federation Chairman Patrick Wachsberger, former Co-Chairman of Lionsgate’s Motion Picture Group, stopped by our Zurich Summit studio this past weekend to discuss the progress of his Jv with Federation Entertainment, some of the exciting projects he is working on, and the recent challenge of choosing between The Taste Of Things and Anatomy Of A Fall on France’s Oscar selection committee.

Since launching in 2019, Picture Perfect Federation has added outposts in Italy, UK, Germany and Israel.

Wachsberger, who won a Best Picture Oscar for Coda two years ago, tells us he “considered retirement for about 15 minutes” after leaving Lionsgate but explains why Picture Perfect has given him a new lease on life. You can watch the video of our chat above.

Among high-profile projects coming up for the company are Coda director Sian Heder’s next film, The Impossible Us, and The Department, the English-language TV...

The 1950s are considered the “Golden Age” of science fiction cinema, and that’s not just hyperbole. By many accounts, more than 200 sci-fi movies were released during that decade. And while the film industry had sporadically produced quality sci-fi in the years before—ranging from Aelita (1924) to Metropolis (1927), to The Invisible Man (1933)—it wasn’t until the 1950s that classic after classic began to arrive like riches from a long-lost hidden treasure.

And when we say classic, we mean films that essentially created the template for all science fiction movies that followed. Just look at this list. The first half of the decade brought us The Thing from Another World, When Worlds Collide, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Godzilla, and Them!, while the second half ushered in This Island Earth, Forbidden Planet, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Blob, The Fly,...

The sci-fi/horror anthology series "The Twilight Zone" has always had the power to completely blow our minds, with classic episodes that taught fraught moral lessons, and featured twist endings that would eventually become so iconic that modern audiences are likely to watch episodes for the first time around pre-spoiled, whether they realize it or not, just due to cultural osmosis.

But there is perhaps no episode of "The Twilight Zone" quite like "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." The episode is a claustrophobic thriller about a man on an airplane suffering from intense anxiety, who looks out and sees a man on the wing of the plane. Naturally, no one believes him because when anybody else looks, the man mysteriously vanishes. Only our hapless hero, sanity fraying, knows that the plane is in danger from the mysterious entity. With nobody else willing to believe him, he has to make a terrible,...

Killer Collectibles highlights five of the most exciting new horror products announced each and every week, from toys and apparel to artwork, records, and much more.

Here are the coolest horror collectibles unveiled this week!

The Wicker Man 4K Uhd Steelbook from Best Buy

Best Buy will exclusively carry The Wicker Man on Steelbook 4K Ultra HD + Blu-ray + Digital on October 17 via Lionsgate. Richey Beckett designed the artwork. Pre-orders are live for $21.99.

In her recent 50th anniversary retrospective, Meagan Navarro called the 1973 British folk horror film “a classic horror movie whose legacy only seems to grow more potent with age.” Robin Hardy directs from a script by Anthony Shaffer (Frenzy). Edward Woodward, Britt Ekland, Diane Cilento, Ingrid Pitt, and Christopher Lee star.

The 94-minute “Final Cut” has been restored in 4K with Dolby Vision/Hdr and Lpcm mono audio. Special features include “The Wicker Man at 50” featurette; interviews with Hardy,...

Science fiction on film has been around almost as long as cinema itself. Starting in 1895 when the first public showings of motion pictures commenced in France and the United States, and as filmmakers began to realize that they could string scenes together to tell a complete, coherent story, the genres of sci-fi, horror, and fantasy were part of the equation.

Celluloid offered ambitious storytellers the chance to put images on the screen—crude at the time, but still groundbreaking—that had only been glimpsed in the pages of novels, short stories, and later, comic books and pulp magazines. And as filmmaking techniques themselves progressed, and the motion picture industry began to take shape in the early 20th century, visionaries came along with audacious ideas that moved the art form, the technology, and the genres forward well into the new millennium.

Below are 16 such visionaries; men and women who either grew...

When Martin Scorsese set to work making "Hugo," a film based on Brian Selznick's children's book "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," it immediately got tongues wagging. What on Earth was the director behind films like "Taxi Driver," "Goodfellas," and "The Departed" doing helming a whimsical kids' adventure? At the time, his youngest daughter, Francesca (who's now internet famous for the Tiktok videos she makes with her old man), was only a preteen "We always joke around, my wife saying, 'Make a film your kid can see for once,'" Scorsese told THR. He added that it wasn't the only reason he made the film, "but it did help."

The point is, sometimes filmmakers just want to make a film their kids can watch. Such was the case for Stuart Gordon back in the late 1980s. The late multi-hyphenate had burst onto the horror scene earlier that decade thanks to...

When looked at from the outside, the premises of the first two "Bill & Ted" movies are baffling. In the first film, the title characters (Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) are a pair of slacker California dudes who are more interested in their band than in studying high school history. Randomly, a visitor from the future (George Carlin) appears in a high-tech, time-traveling phone booth and announces to Bill and Ted that their band will not only become successful, but that their music will become so profound as to unite humanity and usher in a new utopia. In order to form their band, however, they will have to pass an upcoming history exam and stay in school. The Carlin character gives them the phone booth, and they travel through time, viewing history in person through their particular slacker lens. In the sequel, Bill and Ted die and traverse the afterlife...

As reported by the New York Times, on March 8, 2023, prolific B-movie filmmaker Bert I. Gordon passed away at his home in Los Angeles. He was 100 years old. 

Bert I. Gordon is a name many may not be familiar with unless they were prone to visiting drive-in theaters in the 1950s, staying up late and watching monster movies on Uhf TV in the 1980s, or were paying attention to "Mystery Science Theater 3000" in the 1990s. Gordon was the director behind such low-budget classics as 1955's "King Dinosaur," 1957's "The Amazing Colossal Man," its sequel from the next year, "War of the Colossal Beast," the 1965 outsized J.D. flick, "Village of the Giants," the 1976 H.G. Wells adaptation, "Food of the Gods," and the 1976 giant ant film "Empire of the Ants." One might note that all the films listed above involve giants of some stripe. One might also want to take note of Bert I.

Thanks to the success of Marvel’s “Ant-Man, there is renewed interest at MGM for Richard Matheson's sci-fi novel "The Shrinking Man", to reboot the property as a tragic, modern-day dramatic feature for Amazon Prime:

Published in 1956, "The Shrinking Man" was previously adapted into two motion pictures...

...including "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957) and "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" (1981) :

"....while on holiday, 'Scott Carey' is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray shortly after he accidentally ingests insecticide. The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1/7 of an inch per day. A few weeks later, Carey can no longer deny the truth: not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was and deduces, to his dismay, that his body will continue to shrink.

"The abnormal size decrease of his body initially brings...

Combing through their vast library, there is renewed interest at MGM for Richard Matheson's sci-fi novel "The Shrinking Man", with the studio's intention to reboot the material as a tragic, modern-day dramatic feature for Amazon Prime:

Published in 1956, "The Shrinking Man" was previously adapted into two motion pictures...

...including "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957) and "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" (1981) :

"....while on holiday, 'Scott Carey' is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray shortly after he accidentally ingests insecticide. The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1/7 of an inch per day. A few weeks later, Carey can no longer deny the truth: not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was and deduces, to his dismay, that his body will continue to shrink.

"The abnormal size decrease of his body initially...

Criterion gives this classic its first exposure on Region A Blu-ray! A new 4K remaster puts the story of a guy too tiny to escape from his own cellar in its very best light — Scott Carey’s combat with the spider is still a scary delight, with a newly-fixed imperfection. Criterion’s extras lean toward fan-oriented fare: Tom Weaver tops the stack with a fine commentary and we get good input from Ben Burtt, Craig Barron, Richard Christian Matheson, Joe Dante and Dana Gould — plus thoughtful liner notes by Geoffrey O’Brien. And don’t forget those excellent movie trailers narrated by a breathless Orson Welles. Robert Scott Carey should have his own statue in Los Angeles, like Rocky Balboa in Philadelphia.

The Incredible Shrinking Man

Blu-ray

The Criterion Collection 1100

1957 / B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 81 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date October 19, 2021 / 39.95

Starring: Grant Williams, Randy Stuart, April Kent, Paul Langton,...

Coming off an especially top-dollar June announcement, the Criterion Collection has unveiled a similarly striking October lineup. Who’d have thought Adam Sandler would claim more titles than Apichatpong Weerasethakul?

So does he come to Criterion with Uncut Gems; meanwhile Humphrey Bogart and Ida Lupino are featured in Raoul Walsh’s High Sierra; Ratcatcher and Onibaba get much-needed upgrade; genre classic The Incredible Shrinking Man joins; as does one of Satyajit Ray’s greatest films, Devi.

Check out the cover art for each release below and full details here.

The post Adam Sandler, Humphrey Bogart, and Satyajit Ray Coming to Criterion in October first appeared on The Film Stage.

Like its inspiration, Richard Matheson’s The Shrinking Man, Jack Arnold’s 1957 shocker expertly juggles sci-fi thrills, metaphysics, and a shrewd metaphor for suburban angst in Cold War America. The film is upheld by fine performances from Grant Williams as the humiliated husband who takes up residence in a doll house, and Randy Stuart as his equally embattled wife who has the patience of Job. The life-affirming finale walks a deft line between spirituality and humanism. Producer Albert Zugsmith was simultaneously working with Orson Welles on Touch of Evil and got him to provide 45 seconds of sonorous promo narration for the ads.

The post The Incredible Shrinking Man appeared first on Trailers From Hell.

Now that October is officially underway, we have a brand new batch of Blu-rays and DVDs coming out tomorrow that would be perfect to add to your Halloween season viewing plans in the coming weeks. Rlje Films is keeping busy this Tuesday with The Pale Door and Yummy, and Arrow Video is showing some love to The Deeper You Dig this week as well. Tales from the Hood 3 is also headed to both Blu and DVD tomorrow, and for those of you who missed the fancier version this summer, there’s a new 4K release of Jaws coming our way, too.

Other home media releases for October 6th include Curse of the Undead, They Live Inside Us, The Face at the Window, The World is Full of Secrets, and Snow White: A Tale of Terror.

Curse of the Undead

Vampiric gunfighter Drake Robey goes West and terrorizes a small town.

Ride ’em, rope ’em, bite ’em? Is this ‘Dracula Goes West,’ or ‘Fangs of the High Chapparal?’ The fading Universal-International house of horrors squeaks out a bizarre horror item that one sits through just out of curiosity… are these people serious? We respect the professionalism of Michael Pate, Kathleen Crowley and Bruce Gordon as they give their all to a dead horse of a concept. A threadbare production stages us vampiric action so tame that it’s toothless, figuratively and literally. Critical snipers suggest that the whole thing might have been some kind of in-house joke — if so, where are the laughs?

Curse of the Undead

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1959 /B&w / 1:85 widescreen / 79 min. / Street Date October 6, 2020 / available through Kino Lorber / 24.95

Starring: Eric Fleming, Michael Pate, Kathleen Crowley, John Hoyt, Bruce Gordon, Edward Binns, Jimmy Murphy, Helen Kleeb, Jay Adler, Eddie Parker, Don Sullivan.

Cinematography: Ellis W. Carter

Film...

There’s a lot of Al Adamson floating around the horrorsphere right now thanks to Severin Films’ gargantuan box set, Al Adamson: The Masterpiece Collection. While I don’t have that set (yet), after watching the fantastic documentary Blood & Flesh about him and his works, I was itching to bed down with Al. This brings us to Brain of Blood (1971), a one part Frankenstein, one part espionage, all parts goofy fun that is so entertaining I am down for whatever next comes down the Adamson pike.

Distributed by Hemisphere Pictures, the Philippines-based company that made the Blood Island films, Brain of Blood was made to seem like a continuation of the series; having not seen any of those either (I Know), I can’t vouch for the similarities. However, I can say that what they did produce is drive-in fodder of the highest order, with enough ridiculousness to spill over to another screen.

Editor’s note: Like much of the world, Madrid is currently engaged in social distancing practices and self-isolation. That includes the city’s most celebrated filmmaker, Pedro Almodovar, who been writing essays documenting his experiences and the memories that have come up as a result. This is the first installment, provided to IndieWire by the filmmaker and translated into English by Mar Diestro-Dópido.

The Long Journey to the Night

More from IndieWireSpike Lee and Pedro Almodóvar Tapped to Curate Exhibits for Academy MuseumPedro Almodóvar Reveals Post-Oscar Plans for New Short Film Starring Tilda Swinton -- Exclusive

I had refused to write till now. I didn’t want to leave written proof of the feelings that these first few days of isolation are provoking in me. Perhaps the reason is because the first thing that I’ve discovered is that the situation is not so different to my daily routine – I...

Since any New York City cinephile has a nearly suffocating wealth of theatrical options, we figured it’d be best to compile some of the more worthwhile repertory showings into one handy list. Displayed below are a few of the city’s most reliable theaters and links to screenings of their weekend offerings — films you’re not likely to see in a theater again anytime soon, and many of which are, also, on 35mm. If you have a chance to attend any of these, we’re of the mind that it’s time extremely well-spent.

Metrograph

“To Hong Kong with Love” looks at one of the world’s most luminous cities in its past and present.

The great Hal Hartley is given an extended retrospective.

A new print of New York, New York begins screening.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople screens early, while Scarface shows late.

Anthology Film Archives

Time to...

Combing through their vast library, there is renewed interest at MGM for Richard Matheson's sci-fi novel "The Shrinking Man", with the studio's intention to reboot the material as a tragic, modern-day dramatic feature:

Published in 1956, "The Shrinking Man" was previously adapted into two motion pictures...

...including "The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957) and "The Incredible Shrinking Woman" (1981) :

"....while on holiday, 'Scott Carey' is exposed to a cloud of radioactive spray shortly after he accidentally ingests insecticide. The radioactivity acts as a catalyst for the bug spray, causing his body to shrink at a rate of approximately 1/7 of an inch per day. A few weeks later, Carey can no longer deny the truth: not only is he losing weight, he is also shorter than he was and deduces, to his dismay, that his body will continue to shrink.

"The abnormal size decrease of his body initially brings teases and taunting from local youths,...

Among Universal Studios classic monster movies is Creature from the Black Lagoon. The film premiered in 1954 and starred Richard Carlson and Julie Adams in the lead roles. The creature feature tells the tale of scientists traveling to the Amazonian jungle, where they soon discover a terrifying monster. The film was directed by Oscar-nominated director Jack Arnold, who previously worked on the Science Fiction movies It Came from Outer Space and The Incredible Shrinking Man.

Related: 10 Classic Movie Monsters You Haven’t Seen In Forever (Who Need A Comeback)

The film was popular upon its release, causing Universal to give it two sequels: Revenge of the Creature and The Creature Walks Among Us. Like many of Universal’s classic monsters, the Gill-Man has become a fixture in American pop culture. Here are 10 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Creature from the Black Lagoon.

The year’s best-curated selection of cinema begins this Friday at Film at Lincoln Center: the New York Film Festival. Now in its 57th edition, the event will kick off with one of its most high-profile world premieres in years, Martin Scorsese’s 3.5-hour crime epic The Irishman. What will follow is 17 days of the finest world cinema has to offer.

Since you are surely aware of their more high-profile selections–including Bong Joon-ho’s Palme d’Or winner Parasite, Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story, and a certain jokester–in our preview we’ve sought out to highlight some films that are either flying a bit under the radar or go beyond their Main Slate selections. Check out 12 films to see, along with all reviews thus far, and return for our coverage. See the full schedule and more here.

Atlantics (Mati Diop)

Somewhere along the stretch of Senegalese coastline where...

The Venice Film Festival has announced the selections for its 76th edition, which is set to take place from August 29 to September 7. The announcement marks the week’s second major film festival lineup to confirm titles following the Toronto International Film Festival. With both official selections for Venice and Tiff now revealed, the upcoming 2019-20 awards season is quickly taking shape.

As previously announced, Venice 2019 will open with the world premiere of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s new film “The Truth.” The family drama stars Juliette Binoche, Catherine Deneuve, and Ethan Hawke. “The Truth” is Kore-eda’s first directorial effort since winning the Palme d’Or in 2018 with “Shoplifters.” This year’s festival will close with “The Burnt Orange Heresy,” the latest feature from Giuseppe Capotondi. The movie stars Claes Bang, Elizabeth Debicki, and Mick Jagger.

Venice has already announced that Argentinian director Lucrecia Martel will serve as the president of this year’s competition jury.

Movies by Martin Scorsese, Dennis Hopper, David Cronenberg, Bernardo Bertolucci, Luis Bunuel and Federico Fellini are among the lineup of the Venice Classics section at the 76th Venice Film Festival.

A new 35mm print of Scorsese’s 1977 film “New York, New York” will be screened in honor of United Artists’ centennial. The new copy, playing courtesy of MGM, will be presented by one of the film’s producers, Irwin Winkler, who will hold a masterclass following the screening.

Among the newly restored classics will be Hopper’s 1980 film “Out of the Blue”; Cronenberg’s 1996 movie “Crash”; a double bill of Bernardo Bertolucci pics – “The Grim Reaper,” the director’s feature debut, which bowed in Venice in 1962, and “The Spider’s Stratagem,” presented at Venice in 1970; Federico Fellini’s “The White Sheik,” which premiered at Venice in 1952; and Bunuel’s 1955 film “The Criminal Life of Archibaldo De La Cruz.”

The complete...

“The supreme excitement of our time! Challenging the unearthly furies of an outlaw planet!” Big-budget space opera finally came to movie screens, in Technicolor and widescreen, in this irresistible kid magnet of a sci-fi extravaganza. Viewers are split on its worth, as the screenplay caroms between mind-expanding visions and puerile dialogue. But it’s the first show to capture the thrills on those pulp sci-fi pocketbook covers, and its visual poetry plays out like an intergalactic fairy tale.

This Island Earth

Blu-ray

Scream Factory

1955 / Color / 1:85 widescreen + 1:37 Academy / 87 min. / Street Date July 9, 2019 / 29.99

Starring: Jeff Morrow, Faith Domergue, Rex Reason, Lance Fuller, Russell Johnson, Douglas Spencer, Robert Nichols.

Cinematography: Clifford Stine

Film Editor: Virgil Vogel

Special Effects: David S. Horsley, Clifford Stine, Cleo E. Baker

Original Music: Henry Mancini, Hans J. Salter, Herman Stein

Written by Franklin Coen, Edward G. O’Callaghan from a story by Raymond F. Jones

Produced...