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In 1975, George Kennedy starred in an unusual revenge thriller in which AI was used to catch the bad guys. A look back at The ‘Human’ Factor:

Revenge films and vigilantes were all over the place in the 1970s, whether it was Charles Bronson’s Paul Kersey gunning down crooks in Death Wish (1974) or Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle going on a rampage in Taxi Driver (1976). One of the more unusual thrillers of its type from the era, though, was The ‘Human’ Factor from 1975. For one thing, there’s its high-tech premise, in which George Kennedy’s protagonist uses cutting-edge technology to track down his enemies.

Kennedy plays John Kinsdale, a middle-aged, American computer expert stationed in Naples. Each day, he says goodbye to his picture-perfect Nuclear family – wife, two sons, a daughter with an outsized clown doll – and drives to his workplace at a nearby NATO base. There,...

Peter Yates' "Bullitt" is one of the most stylish cop flicks ever made. Those multi-screen opening credits designed by the great Pablo Ferro, that jazzily urbane Lalo Schifren score, those wildly cool outfits donned by Steve McQueen at the height of his laconic sexiness (some inspired by the suits sported by real life detective Dave Toschi) –- it's a stone groove punctuated by spasms of violence and, of course, a raucous car chase through the hilly streets of San Francisco. It's so ineffably pleasurable, you don't mind that the narrative is a sketchily plotted afterthought. Who needs an intricately structured story when you're watching, as Quentin Tarantino wrote in his book "Cinema Speculation," "one of the best directed movies ever made?"

You throw on "Bullitt" for the 1968-ness of it all (it's the apolitical flip-side of the coin to Haskell Wexler's roiling docudrama "Medium Cool"), as well as the...

First came Hal-9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey). Then came Colossus (The Forbin Project), followed by Proteus IV (Demon Seed), and SkyNet (The Terminator series). And that's just barely scratching the science-fiction surface. Individually and collectively, each film reflected the technophobic fears of rogue AIs (Artificial Intelligence) prevalent in their respective times. In turn, all posited the same independent-minded AIs running amok in the celluloid world, decisively turning on their human masters, and creating both headaches and havoc, sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent. More than a half-century after Hal-9000 made his unforgettable, scene-stealing debut, writer-director Chris Weitz decided his turn had come to add his contribution to the “AI run amok” sub-genre. The middling, muddled result, AfrAId (formerly They...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Eric Braeden is best known for his role in The Young and the Restless (Y&r) as the all-powerful Victor Newman. Still, the actor has had his fair share of heartache and tragedy over the years.

The Young And The Restless – Star Eric Braeden – Hard Beginnings

Braeden was born during World War 2, on April 3, 1941. Named Hans-Jörg Gudegast in Bredenbek, Germany, near Kiel, he entered the world under unique circumstances.

As chaos and fire were erupting around him, conditions were so dangerous that the hospital he was born in was bombed the day after he and his mom were discharged.

Was it timing or good luck? That’s hard to say; however, Braeden shared that the way he grew up had him feeling he could “overcome” anything!

Braeden opens up about his continued childhood struggles in his book, “I’ll Be Damned”. He notes that his father died of a heart attack...

Sci-fi is a catch-all term, really. Most folks might think of franchises like Star Wars or Star Trek when they hear it—imagining fantastical vistas with magic wizards and teleportation beams. And to be sure, the space opera is a prized staple in the genre’s cabinet of curiosities; but the more interesting science fiction, or at least the type that sticks around in the old noodle, is the more grounded “hard sci-fi.” With a greater emphasis on speculation and estimation derived from the scientific realities of their times, as opposed to the flights of fancy in their pulps, these are stories created by writers, directors, and artists with an eager eye on the horizon.

It is easy to walk out of a film and announce “that will never happen,” but there have been plenty of times where the sci-fi of today turned out to be the scientific reality of tomorrow.

Artificial intelligence is everywhere. Well, perhaps not literally, but AI is certainly expanding its reach, its power, and its uses. Its potential – both good and bad – is on the minds of anyone who works in technology, communications, journalism, and just about every other walk of life.

Of course, science fiction saw all this coming, just as it foretold the arrival of nuclear deterrence, bioweapons, superflus, climate change, the internet, mobile communications, and so much more. Artificial intelligence, whether embedded in the bowels of a supercomputer or ensconced in the head of an android, has been part of the genre since at least 1907, when L. Frank Baum included a mechanical character called Tik-Tok in his book Ozma of Oz. It’s played a variety of roles in books, comics, TV shows, and films ever since – often working for humankind’s benefit but just as frequently mapping our doom.

It’s the...

It was more than a little heartening to see Roger Corman paid tribute by Quentin Tarantino at Cannes’ closing night. By now the director-producer-mogul’s imprint on cinema is understood to eclipse, rough estimate, 99.5% of anybody who’s touched the medium, but on a night for celebrating what’s new, trend-following, and manicured it could’ve hardly been more necessary. Thus I’m further heartened seeing the Criterion Channel will host a retrospective of Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe adaptations running eight films and aptly titled “Grindhouse Gothic,” though I might save the selections for October.

Centerpiece, though, is a hip hop series including Bill Duke’s superb Deep Cover, Ghost Dog, and numerous documentaries––among them Beats, Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest, making Michael Rapaport a Criterion-approved auteur. Ten films starring Kay Francis and 21 Eurothrillers round out series; streaming premieres include the Dardenne brothers’ Tori and Lokita,...

Is Tom Cruise the last movie star? That’s a topic that’s been debated over the last few years, but if the definition of a movie star includes delivering for audiences exactly what they want and need, then Cruise can arguably make the strongest case out of any filmmaker working today. And all the while, through his many cinematic triumphs (and a fair number of misfires) he’s been painting his masterpiece. The Mission: Impossible series is that great labor. The franchise may have started out as a relatively unassuming action/spy thriller based on a creaky 1960s TV show, but it has become one of the few movie franchises that’s actually gotten better and better over the course of its 27-year existence.

To be sure, the series took a while—arguably four movies—to truly find its footing, but starting with the fourth entry, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol...

I honestly never expected Steven Spielberg in a Criterion Channel series––certainly not one that pairs him with Kogonada, anime, and Johnny Mnemonic––but so’s the power of artificial intelligence. Perhaps his greatest film (at this point I don’t need to tell you the title) plays with After Yang, Ghost in the Shell, and pre-Matrix Keanu in July’s aptly titled “AI” boasting also Spike Jonze’s Her, Carpenter’s Dark Star, and Computer Chess. Much more analog is a British Noir collection obviously carrying the likes of Odd Man Out, Night and the City, and The Small Back Room, further filled by Joseph Losey’s Time Without Pity and Basil Dearden’s It Always Rains on Sunday. (No two ways about it: these movies have great titles.) An Elvis retrospective brings six features, and the consensus best (Don Siegel’s Flaming Star) comes September 1.

While Isabella Rossellini...

If the 1950s was the decade in which science fiction cinema began to mature and evolve, and the 1960s was the era where it started to experiment and stretch in new directions, then the 1970s was the period when the genre more or less went batshit insane.

The movies of the era continued to touch on socially and globally relevant themes, a trend that began 20 years earlier, while also continuing the literary pedigree and even more progressive concerns of the decade prior. But they did so in ever weirder ways, taking big swings (and often steep plunges as well) as many of the films of the decade aimed high but lacked the resources to match their ambitions.

Still, even the clunkier efforts of the ‘70s had their charms, and the creative success stories touched nerves in ways that the films of the previous decades hadn’t quite achieved. But almost...

Gordon Pinsent, the admired Canadian actor who starred opposite Julie Christie as a husband losing his wife to Alzheimer’s disease in Sarah Polley’s Away From Her, died Saturday, his family announced. He was 92.

A household name in his country, Pinsent also appeared on the big screen in Norman Jewison’s The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), Lasse Hallström’s The Shipping News (2001), Michael McGowan’s Saint Ralph (2004) and Don McKellar’s The Grand Seduction (2013).

On television, he played Possum Lake resident Hap Shaughnessy, a teller of tall tales, on the Canadian comedy The Red Green Show from 1991-2004 and was Chicago-based Royal Canadian Mounted Police sergeant Bob Fraser on the CTV/CBS series Due South from 1994-99.

And he served as the distinctive voice of Babar the Elephant in film and TV from 1989 through 2015.

In Away From Her (2006), which marked Polley’s directorial debut — she also received an Oscar nomination...

Well people it’s getting closer to this year’s Romford Film Festival and while I am super excited to be making my way down there for the first time so that I can bring all you awesome Nerdly readers and Nerdly Out Loud viewers some great content, I also wanted to bring you some reviews from the shorts and features on show over the week of the fest.

I decided to start with what I would say is one of our strongest shorts of the festival… Colossus.

Stars: Levi Hood, John Neisler, Nelson Gonzales, Dawn Spatz | Written and Directed by James Roe

Colossus is the tale of a young navy fighter pilot during WWII. The young man is on what seems to be a routine flight when he is shot down by an unknown force that can only be described as otherworldly. Consumed by a hateful obsession, the young...

Quicksand are teasing their upcoming album, Distant Populations, with a heavy new song, “Missile Command.” The album is due out digitally on August 13th and on vinyl on September 24th.

Over a serpentine groove by bassist Sergio Vega and drummer Alan Cage, singer-guitarist Walter Schreifels sings oblique lyrics about love and rain. “True worlds bring/As lights fill up the sky,” he sings. “You better get used to it.”

“It really kind of focuses on Sergio’s whole motif in a very simple way,” Schreifels said in a statement. “He...

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By Todd Garbarini

In January 1998 I attended a book signing in New York City emceed by author Russell Banks and film director Atom Egoyan. They were on hand to autograph copies of Mr. Banks’s 1991 novel, The Sweet Hereafter, which had been made into a 1997 film of the same name by Mr. Egoyan. Despite varying greatly, the novel and the film both concern the aftereffects of life in a small town in the Adirondacks when fourteen children die following an accident involving their school bus when it careens off a slippery, snow-covered road and sinks into the frozen waters of a nearby body of water. Mr. Egoyan claimed that he was inspired to make the film because, he felt, something terrible will happen to everyone at some point in his or her life, and they will need to find a way to move on.

The New Mutants has taken so long in coming out that you can hardly call it new anymore, seeing as it was shot in 2017, but at long last it’s on the verge of arriving. Last weekend, 20th Century Studios revealed a thrilling trailer and the opening minutes of the superhero flick that’ll take things in more of a psychological horror direction. Now, this extended synopsis has been released which clarifies more about the plot, as well as confirming a major X-Men connection.

Probably the most notable member of the film’s teen mutant team is Illyana Rasputin Aka Magik, as played by Anya Taylor-Joy. Comic fans will know that Illyana is the younger sister of Peter Rasputin Aka Colossus. We weren’t sure if The New Mutants was going to make this link clear or not, but the fact that it’s discussed in this synopsis seems to...

Jaime Davlia, President and Co-Founder of Campanario Entertainment and executive producer of the forthcoming Selena: The Series at Netflix, has been appointed to the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s (Nhmc) National Board of Directors.

Davila has been an advocate for mainstream Latino representation in the entertainment industry and an active member of the Nhmc. Most recently, he served on Nhmc’s 2020 Impact Awards Gala Dinner Committee to plan and sponsor the event honoring the Latinx community’s media involvement throughout 2019. Along with his work on the committee, Davila has also hired Nhmc Series Scriptwriters Program alums to projects produced by Campanario Entertainment. As a member of the Board, Davila’s will continue his efforts to bring an impactful presence of Latino stories and representation to film, TV and beyond.

“Jaime has been a great ally to our organization, and we are elated to have him join as a Board member,...

Heady. Intellectual. Gassy. These are some of the terms applied to the wave of brain-based sci-fi started by 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), and lasting until the arrival of more action led material, namely Star Wars (1977). Coming hot on the heels of Kubrick’s epic was Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), an awkwardly titled yet fascinating and suspenseful look at the perils of AI sentience. Damn you, computers. All the way to cyberhell.

Released by Universal in April, Colossus actually received good notices from critics who appreciated the film’s attempts at suspense crossed with intelligent discourse on the wages of war; audiences simply shrugged and moved on, denying the film the sequel it deserved. Oh well - Colossus standing alone is apropos considering the events that transpire.

We open on a Colorado mountainside, as Dr. Charles Forbin (Eric Braeden - The Young and the Restless) triple checks the gargantuan banks of...

Exclusive: Fuse has acquired the broadcast and streaming rights to Campanario Entertainment’s immigration documentary Colossus directed by Jonathan Schienberg. It is set to make its broadcast premiere on February 26 as part of Fuse’s Peabody and Emmy award-winning Fuse Docs franchise.

At a time when children are being put in cages, families are being separated at the border and the president of the United States is degrading immigrants, Colossus is more relevant now than ever. The docu, which made its premiere at Doc NYC in 2018, puts America’s treatment of immigrants and separation of families into perspective by following 15-year-old Jamil Sunsin and his struggle after his undocumented parents and older sister is deported to Honduras and they are separated. As the only U.S. citizen in his family, Sunsin finds himself alone in the country. After a visit to see his family, he navigates the personal turmoil caused...

Deadpool is definitely on his way to the McU. We found out in December that Deadpool 3 is now in the works over at the Merc with a Mouth’s new home of Marvel Studios. And, given the success Fox had with the character, you can bet that we’ll see a lot more of Ryan Reynolds in the red and black suit in the franchise beyond that. Probably in ways that better fit what the McU has to offer, too. And what’s the McU most famous for? Crossovers.

That’s right. According to sources close to Wgtc – the same ones who said Han was still alive and would return in Fast & Furious 9, and that Transformers is being rebooted, both of which we now know to be true – Marvel is developing a Deadpool vs. The X-Men movie. The project is only in its earliest stages, with the studio...

There must be thousands of old TV movies that would reward viewing if they were being screened anywhere... although the odds of finding anything good at random are even more slight than when you go trawling through old cinema releases without a guide. The much-discredited auteur theory can come to the rescue: a show with a director known for other interesting work has a far higher chance of rewarding attention.TV was Joseph Sargent's bread and butter, from relatively highbrow stuff to The Man from Uncle, but he also made several decent cinema films, including at least one masterpiece, The Taking of Pelham 123. When I found a DVD entitled Hiroshima with his name spelled incorrectly on the back, I decided to take a chance on it, and indeed the film, originally it seems a mini-series from 1989 called Day One, has a lot going for it. What immediately cheered me,...

Jim Knipfel Mar 4, 2019

We look at some of the lesser-remembered but influential evil artificial intelligence computer movies, Colossus and Demon Seed.

The ugly turns taken by assorted historical vectors in the late 1960s and early ‘70s—a string of high-profile assassinations, race riots, Manson, the Weather Underground, Vietnam, Nixon, a broader awareness of impending environmental collapse—made the 1970s a particular golden era for dystopian cinema. All the above mentioned forces and more gave us the likes of Soylent Green, No Blade of Grass, Thx-1138, Frogs, The Omega Man, and countless other visions of our doomed future. In and amongst all our other inescapable anxieties and paranoias was an increasing awareness of the role computers were playing in our daily lives.

Technoparanoid fears of dehumanization and power-mad machines can of course be traced back to the silent era in cinema, and much earlier than that in literature and legend, but...

Film-score buffs had a bonanza of riches to choose from in 2018 — notwithstanding the fact that the soundtrack business is almost unrecognizable from what it was even a decade ago. Instead of farming out their new scores to the traditional soundtrack labels, most studios now retain them for their own in-house labels and generally release them digitally. Meanwhile, the labels that once relied on current films for their bread-and-butter releases are focusing more on the niche market for classic film scores: re-releasing old ones with new material, finding worthy titles that somehow never got released, and in some cases even re-recording classic scores.

It’s a complicated business, label executives say. Not only must they track down the best available audio (studios and production companies don’t always retain the elements or sometimes can’t find them), they have to clear the rights (and sometimes the music publishing details have changed). And,...

All but inventing the ‘new liberal exposé’ suspense format, James Bridges’ smart and effective thriller began as a star showcase with a political message. Its fictional nuclear accident hit screens just before a similar real nuclear accident happened in real life, at Three Mile Island. Historical synchronicity? Box office serendipity? One thing is certain — the show strongly affected the way we view the ‘miracle’ of nuclear-generated power.

The China Syndrome

Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator (UK)

1979 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 122 min. / Street Date June 18, 2017 / Available from Amazon UK £14.99

Starring: Jane Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Michael Douglas, James Hampton, Peter Donat, Wilford Brimley, Richard Herd, Daniel Valdez, Stan Bohrman, James Karen, Michael Alaimo, Donald Hotton.

Cinematography: James Crabe

Film Editor: David Rawlins

Production Design: George Jenkins

Written by James Bridges, Mike Gray and T.S. Cook

Produced by Michael Douglas

Directed by James Bridges

In 1979 Saturday Night Live was the hottest ticket on television; we were...

Universal has embarked on a long-range plan to preserve and restore its unreleased movie music and, starting next week, release some of these scores as limited-edition soundtrack albums.

The imprint will be called Universal Pictures Film Music Heritage Collection, and its first release, to be formally announced Tuesday, will be Michel Colombier’s music from the 1970 science-fiction film “Colossus: The Forbin Project.”

Following in August will be Henry Mancini’s score for the 1979 Peter Sellers remake of “The Prisoner of Zenda.” Both will be on the La-La Land label, which specializes in movie and TV soundtracks.

“We’re a century-old media company,” Mike Knobloch, Universal Pictures president of global film music and publishing, told Variety. “As much as we’re always looking forward, sometimes we have to look back, and recognize and value our history. Our catalog dates back to the beginning of cinema and the advent of sound. This...

It was a moment that seemed strangely out of place. The Titanic was in its death throes when the maestro behind the mayhem turned to Eric Braeden and uttered a single word: "Never.” Eric felt the questioning look cross his own face as he turned to the voice. The confusion evident, the speaker, director James Cameron, explained: "The last line in Colossus." Eric smiled, struck by the fact that the director wasn’t referencing his, at that point, 17 (now 38) year run as Victor Newman on the TV soap The Young and the Restless, but, instead, his portrayal of Dr. Charles Forbin in a little sci-fi thriller from 1970 about a computer that takes over the world. At the same time, he was forced to reflect on his own bittersweet feelings regarding that film — Colossus: The Forbin Project — his first starring role in a Hollywood production. (Photo Credit: Getty Images) "I was...

This nearly forgotten Sci-fi masterpiece should have been a monster hit. For some reason Universal didn’t think that a computer menace was commercial — the year after 2001. The superior drama sells a tough concept: the government activates a defense computer programmed to keep the peace. It does exactly that, but by holding the world hostage while it makes itself a God above mankind.

Colossus: The Forbin Project

Region B Blu-ray

Medium Rare UK

1970 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 99 min. / Street Date March 27, 2017 / Available from Amazon UK £6.99

Starring: Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, Gordon Pinsent, William Schallert, Leonid Rostoff, Georg Stanford Brown, Willard Sage, Alex Rodine, Martin Brooks, Marion Ross, Dolph Sweet, Robert Cornthwaite, James Hong, Paul Frees, Robert Quarry.

Cinematography: Gene Polito

Film Editor: Folmar Blangsted

Visual Effects: Albert Whitlock, Don Record

Original Music: Michel Colombier

Written by James Bridges, from a novel by D.F. Jones

Produced by Stanley Chase

Directed by Joseph Sargent...

February’s horror and sci-fi home media titles are coming to a close this week, but before we can bid adieu to the month, there are a bounty of cult classics (and a few notable new films) coming our way on Tuesday that fans should definitely keep an eye out for. Arrow Video is keeping busy with a pair of limited edition Blu-rays for Scalpel and Frank Henenlotter’s original Basket Case, and Tibor Takacs’ Gate II is being resurrected in HD via the fine folks at Scream Factory.

Vinegar Syndrome has put together a limited edition Blu for Prey, and Michele Soavi’s The Sect comes home this week too, courtesy of Scorpion Releasing. Other notable releases for February 27th include 78/52: Hitchcock’s Shower Scene (which is an excellent documentary on Psycho’s most memorable moment), Serpent’s Lair, Hangman, The Brainiac, Colossus: The Forbin Project, Lost Creek,...

A super computer turns into a doomsday machine in Colossus: The Forbin Project, and with the 1970 sci-fi thriller coming to Blu-ray from Scream Factory on February 27th, we've been provided with three high-def copies to give away to lucky Daily Dead readers.

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Prize Details: (3) Winners will receive (1) Blu-ray copy of Colossus: The Forbin Project.

How to Enter: We're giving Daily Dead readers multiple chances to enter and win:

1. Instagram: Following us on Instagram during the contest period will give you an automatic contest entry. Make sure to follow us at:

https://www.instagram.com/dailydead/

2. Email: For a chance to win via email, send an email to contest@dailydead.com with the subject “Colossus: The Forbin Project Contest”. Be sure to include your name and mailing address.

Entry Details: The contest will end at 12:01am Est on March 5th. This contest is only open to those who...

There’s a nagging question at the heart of Denis Villenueve’s Blade Runner 2049, and it’s to do with need. Why does Ryan Gosling’s Detective K need a robot wife (Ana de Armas), programmed to speak in a diaphanous lisp? Why does he need an apartment? What purpose is there for a robot to blend in? Everyone in his world can almost smell his oiled gears, his falseness. So why does he need the trappings of reality? Like Twin Peaks: The Return, Blade Runner 2049 has to interrogate its own incongruous existence so many years after the artifact that gave it life first entered the cultural bloodstream. Why does this film exist, beyond the potential box office? Why have writer Hampton Fancher and producer Ridley Scott gone back here? Who needs this? The film seems aware of itself as an automaton theatrical event. It watches itself; taking place behind glass,...

Ryan Lambie Jul 25, 2016

It's famously one of the worst sequels ever, but why did Jaws The Revenge go so wrong? Ryan looks at its disastrous nine-month production...

It's an oft-repeated adage that nobody sets out to make a bad movie, but Jaws The Revenge is so legendarily, comically bad that it almost looks like an inside job. The fishy sequel, released in 1987 to scathing reviews, famously stars a rubbery shark that growls when its head rears out of the water, Michael Caine spouting bizarre dialogue and some of the most glaring continuity errors this side of an Ed Wood movie.

What separates Jaws The Revenge from the usual bad-movie crowd is its otherwise decent pedigree. It was the product of a major Hollywood studio. The budget was generous. The director, Joseph Sargent, was far from a hack - a veteran of TV and film, he'd previously made the classic thriller...

Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this Blog Post. The opinions I share are my own.

It used to be we worried about the threat of artificial intelligence in movies like Colossus: The Forbin Project or “The Ultimate Computer” episode of Star Trek. Today, though, artificial intelligence is here thanks to Siri and Cortanna and their cousins. We talk to our phones and they answer back and these bots are growing increasingly sophisticated. As a result, what seemed ahead of its time a mere give years ago is looking increasingly prescient.

CBS’ Person of Interest arrived on September 22, 2011 and came with a fine pedigree having been created by Jonathan Nolan with J.J. Abrams on board as Executive Producer. It starred Michael Emerson, hot off Lost, Jim Caviezel, a pre-Empire Taraji P. Henson, and Kevin Chapman. It received near universal acclaim...

Don Kaye May 21, 2019

How Escape from the Planet of the Apes continued the series and created a saga.

It was 46 years ago that 20th Century Fox released the third film in the original Planet of the Apes cycle, titled Escape from the Planet of the Apes. The fact that a second sequel was even produced, following 1970’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes, was something of a miracle: after all, in an effort to end the franchise after just two films, Beneath’s finale offered nothing less that the destruction of Earth itself. But with Beneath an unqualified success at the box office -- $19 million in earnings against a $4.6 million budget -- screenwriter Paul Dehn was famously sent a terse telegram that simply said, “Apes exist. Sequel required.”

What Dehn did was nothing short of brilliant, finding a way to not only extend the story but make it a self-perpetuating...

William Schallert and Patty Duke.

 

Popular character actor William Schallert has died at age 93, having been active in the acting community right up through recent years. Schallert was a familiar face to retro movie and TV fans, even if his name was not as well known. He is remembered by many for playing the harried father of teenage Patty Duke in the 1960s sitcom "The Patty Duke Show". (In a tragic coincidence, Ms. Duke also recently passed away.) Schallert was much beloved by science fiction and horror fans for his appearances in TV series such as "Commander Cody", "Space Patrol", "Men Into Space" and "The Twilight Zone".

Artist Pete Emslie's tribute to Schallert. (For more of Emslie's artistic creations, visit The Cartoon Cave.)

In feature films Schallert appeared in the cult classics "Them!", "The Incredible Shrinking Man", "Colossus: The Forbin Project" as well as the 1983 feature film "Twilight Zone: The Movie...

It's a TV movie graduated to feature status, with four imagination-challenged tales of terror. The script has lots of variety -- a video game possessed by the devil, a truck possessed by the devil, and lastly, a rat possessed by the devil! But the roster of actors is attractive -- Cristina Raines, Emilio Estevez, Lance Henricksen, Veronica Cartwright and Richard Masur. Nightmares Blu-ray Scream Factory 1983 / Color / 1:78 widescreen + 1:33 TV flat / 99 min. / Street Date December 22, 2015 / 29.99 Starring Cristina Raines, Anthony James, Lee Ving; Emilio Estevez, Moon Unit Zappa, Billy Jayne, Gary Carlos Cervantes; Lance Henriksen, Tony Plana, Timothy Scott; Richard Masur, Veronica Cartwright, Bridgette Andersen, Albert Hague. Cinematography Mario DeLeo, Gerald Perry Finnerman Film Editor Michael Brown, Rod Stephens Production Design Dean Edward Mitzner Original Music Craig Safan Written by Christopher Crowe, Jeffrey Bloom Produced by Christopher Crowe Directed by Joseph Sargent

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Nightmares is a low-wattage '...

They were big enough to bring down a Tyrannosaurus Rex, so you can imagine what they would do to humans if they were still around. Cousins to the Great White, the Megalodon emerged from the depths nearly twenty years ago in Steve Alten's Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror. With a special expanded edition of Meg hitting shelves this week, we caught up with Alten to discuss the new version of Meg, Eli Roth's upcoming film adaptation of his beloved book, and much more.

It’s been nearly 20 years since your groundbreaking killer shark thriller Meg was published, and to celebrate the occasion, Viper Press is releasing a special expanded edition of the novel. What new content can fans expect to see in this new version of Meg?

Steve Alten: About a year ago, I decided to create a 20th anniversary limited edition Meg hardback that included Meg: Origins,...

Every decade has their cinematic science fiction obsessions which speak to its concerns of the age; in the 1950s films such as Earth vs. The Flying Saucers and Them! capitalised on fears of alien invasion and nuclear proliferation. In the 1960s films like Barbarella and Ikarie Xb-1 captured the hopes and dangers of space exploration while in the 1970s Silent Running and A Boy and His Dog showed a growing concern for the environment and a mistrust of governments resulting in dystopian futures. Then in the 1980s it was the exploration of inner space with the boundaries of the human mind and body being crossed and redrawn with films like Altered States and the cinema of David Cronenberg. The 1990s ushered in an obsession with apocalyptic imagery and alternate realities with Dark City and The Thirteenth Floor amongst many others.

Through these decades of cinematic science fiction, the concept of...

The director that epitomized the 1970’s, Joseph Sargent, has sadly passed away. (1925-2014)

With a career lasting 50 years, Sargent brought to the big screen such thrilling cinema as The Taking Of The Pelham One Two Three, MacArthur, White Lightning and Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Directors Guild of America President Paris Barclay made the following statement upon learning of the passing of director Joseph Sargent:

“When it comes to directing Movies for Television, Joe’s dominance and craftsmanship was legendary – for the past 50 years. With eight DGA Awards nominations in Movies for Television, more than any other director in this category, Joe embodied directorial excellence on the small screen. He was unafraid of taking risks, believing in his heart that television audiences demanded the highest quality stories – whether chronicling uncomfortable historic events like the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study in Miss Evers’ Boys, or compelling personal stories about inspiring individuals like...

Stanley Chase, who produced the legendary 1950s off-Broadway production of The Threepenny Opera that featured the enduring hit song “Mack the Knife,” has died. He was 87. Chase died Tuesday at a nursing home in Santa Monica, his wife Dorothy told the Los Angeles Times. Chase also produced such films as The Hell With Heroes (1968) and Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970), both directed by Joseph Sargent (The Taking of Pelham One Two Three), as well as Mack the Knife, a 1989 feature version of Threepenny Opera that was helmed by Menahem Golan and starred Raul Julia and Richard Harris.

read more...

Mark Hartley is an Australian filmmaker best known for the hugely entertaining look at the raucous and imaginative 70s and 80s new wave of cinema from his home country in documentary Not Quite Hollywood: The Wild, Untold Story of Ozploitation!

He’s remade one of those films from that era (the 1978 psychokinetic –tinged horror film Patrick) and we recently spoke to the director about his past work and the decision to use this project as a springboard for launching his narrative career.

HeyUGuys: Patrick is a little reminiscent of the new version of Maniac in the respect that it doesn’t feel like an out-and-out remake.

Mark Hartley: It’s kinda interesting with remakes. We wanted to be respectful [to the previous film] but obviously we didn’t want to make the same film again and we never felt like we were remaking someone’s film during the shoot. Hopefully that comes across in the execution.

Feature James Clayton 25 Apr 2014 - 06:27

The arrival of Transcendence leaves James pondering AI computers in the movies and our post-human future...

Johnny Depp undergoes a metamorphosis and inhabits the persona of someone or something completely different. He does this frequently and is so renowned for it that he's come to be acclaimed and appreciated as a 'chameleon' actor. This very talented and charismatic man completely immerses himself in his roles, his essential Johnny Depp-ness very present but clothed in the form of someone or something wholly other than himself.

Flicking back through his varied and colourful career, we find that Depp has become real people like gonzo journalist Hunter S Thompson, children's author Jm Barrie and transvestite B-movie director Ed Wood, Jr. He has become an artificial man with scissors for hands. He has become a rogue rock star pirate. He has become a Mad Hatter, a loopy Comanche,...

For a film that clearly thinks it is very profound and way ahead of the curve, Transcendence is surprisingly retrograde. It recycles ideas and concepts from countless sci-fi films such as Donovan’s Brain, to Frankenstein, to Colossus: The Forbin Project, to 2001, to Andromeda Strain, to even Her which, of course, was made around the same time as Transcendence. And after all is said and done, the ultimate message you get is that, technology is bad. Ho hum.And it seems that whatever box office fire Johnny Depp used to have is fading fast. Are audiences getting bored with him? Maybe audiences don’t like to see him playing a normal guy? Or maybe because most of the time in the film,...

In 1818, around the time British "Luddites" retaliated against the textile industry's increasing use of power looms, Marry Shelley published the first edition of Frankenstein, her horror parable spun from the 19th century's plentiful scientific breakthroughs. A little under 200 years later, director (and Christopher Nolan's longtime cinematographer) Wally Pfister makes his directorial debut with Transcendence, a thriller starring Johnny Depp as the app equivalent of Frankenstein's Monster. Different technology — same technophobia.

'Transcendence' and 60 Other Reasons to Love 2014

As Shelley predicted through her literary proxy Victor Frankenstein, humanity never...

Feature Ryan Lambie 10 Jan 2014 - 15:08

With tech thriller Transcendence out this year, Hollywood seems to be revisiting its 90s fascination with virtual reality, Ryan writes...

Like seasons, hairstyles and fashion, genre popularity in Hollywood runs in cycles. Historical epics have faded in and out of favour since the 1930s, for example, and appear to be on the rise again, with Ridley Scott’s Exodus, Darren Aronofsky’s Noah and two movies based on the Hercules legend all on the horizon. It's not just historical epics making a comeback, either. With Wally Pfister's directorial debut Transcendence, we could be in for a mini revival of the cyber thrillers of the 1990s.

If you don't know anything about Transcendence yet, you can catch up with the first trailer here. Briefly, it's about a scientist (Johnny Depp) who's killed by terrorists shortly after completing some groundbreaking research into machine intelligence. Grief stricken,...

Ed Solomon, the writer behind Men In Black, has been hired to rewrite Colossus, a project set to star Will Smith. You may have heard of him.

You may have also heard of the film (and the book), which is a remake based on a 1970 movie entitled Colossus: The Forbin Project. The film has been in development since 2007 and has had Jason Rothenberg and Blake Masters twiddle with the script before Solomon will get his chance. Colossus would have Will Smith play Dr. Charles Forbin, “who is the creator of a computer that has taken over the world and is the only scientist who can stop it.”...

While the development of an I Am Legend sequel promises at least one future film that will return Will Smith to the “genius scientist” role that is his natural habitat, let us not forget about his remake of 1970's Colossus: The Forbin Project just because we haven’t heard from it in three years or because you want to. The Hollywood Reporter says the project is still on, with Smith drafting his old Men In Black writer Ed Solomon to give the script another shot from within the cold marble confines of Smith’s trailer, promised 10 minutes of ...

A couple of sci-fi project updates, so put on your astronaut helmet and get ready... A few years back, we shared the news that a fledgling writer, Jason Rothenberg, seemed like he might be about to blow up, having been commissioned to pen a Will Smith-starring remake of 1970s sci-fi film “Colossus: The Forbin Project,” along with Leonardo DiCaprio’s “The Twilight Zone” reboot. But it seems both are moving on without the writer. "Invictus" scribe Tony Peckham was hired for 'Twilight' at the end of 2011, and now veteran writer Ed Solomon has been brought in to rewrite 'Colossus,' reteaming him with his “Men In Black” leading man. Smith would star as Dr. Charles Forbin, the creator of a computer that is taking over the world, and the only man who can stop it. This may give 'Colossus' the momentum it needs to get going after nearly six years in development,...

Odd List Den Of Geek 20 Mar 2013 - 06:35

Far from the familiar tools we use every day, computers are the stuff of magic, if Hollywood's to be believed...

Computers. What began as gigantic, wayward things the size of a house have been tamed and shrunk, and now live cheerfully in our pockets as mobile phones, in our bags as tablets or laptops, and on our desktops as workstations and gatherers of breadcrumbs.

To almost every one of us, computers are about as mysterious and unfathomable as cucumbers. But cast a casual eye over Hollywood's output of the last few decades, and you might think that computers were a product of the dark arts. In movies, computers make weird noises, possess strange powers, harbour despotic fantasies, and when all else fails, explode into a million fragments.

With a helping hand from our techie friends over at Expert Reviews here's our compilation...

"Men in Black" scribe Ed Solomon has been hired to pen a rewrite of "Colossus" at Universal Pictures. Will Smith is attached to star.

The story is a remake of the 1970's "Colossus: The Forbin Project", based on a book by D.F. Jones, and is something of a precursor to "The Terminator."

The story deals with a supercomputer being built for the government as a means of protection. The computer becomes sentient and decides that the most effective way it can act as protector is to assume complete control.

Blake Masters and Jason Rothenberg penned the earlier drafts which would use the previous film along with elements of the two subsequent "Colossus" novels.

Source: THR...

This is one of about 30 different projects on Will Smith's slate of films to come. The man just continues to stack them up! Although this is one that was actually first announced in 2010, but there hasn't been any reported progress on it since that initial announcement over 2 years ago. It looks like it's still very much alive, and just might be what's next for Big Willie, who'll be co-starring in the upcoming sci-fi project - After Earth - with son Jaden Smith, and M. Night Shyamalan directing, out this summer. Since 2010, he's been attached to star in the long-in-gestation Colossus: The Forbin Project, based on a novel by Dennis Feltham, and is described as "a...

One minor classic, a worthwhile flick that arrived pre-Spielberg & Lucas blockbuster territory, is certainly the 1970 sci-fi film Colossus: The Forbin Project. This little sweethart is now seeing new life with a new screenwriter. Ed Solomon (Men in Black) set to rewrite the script of Colossus, which has Will Smith attached to headline. This means that Solomon will once again team on a Smith-starrer. Based on a book by D.F. Jones, the original film was the forerunner to the Terminator flicks and presents an all too believable depiction of the rise of the machines. The U.S. and U.S.S.R. put their defensive networks into the... Related posts: Shadow Of Colossus to be Penned by Hanna’s Seth Lochhead; Josh Trank Attached to Direct Will Smith in The Legend of Cain 14 New Solomon Kane Photos Will Smith To Star In “Flowers For Algernon” Remake? Will Smith and Jay-z Make...