Movie thoughts and fiction updates.
#14 in my ranking of Sam Peckinpah's filmography. The disaster that was the production of Convoy (it was financially successful, but not enough to save Peckinpah's professional reputation) knocked him out of work for several years. Don Siegel, one of Peckinpah's early mentors, needed some second unit work done on his film Jinxed!, and Peckinpah… Continue reading The Osterman Weekend
#13 in my ranking of Sam Peckinpah's filmography. Having trashed his reputation across all of Hollywood, Sam Peckinpah could only return to Martin Baum and United Artists, this time on a much shorter leash than with Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, and work with a story based on an unremarkable novel (Monkey in… Continue reading The Killer Elite
#29 in my ranking of the Classic Universal Monster movies. It's hard to talk about this movie without completely spoiling its twist because all of its faults center around that twist. It's not the twist itself that is the problem, it's that in order for the dramatic impact of the twist to be felt it… Continue reading She-Wolf of London
#25 in my ranking of the Classic Universal Monster movies. The appeal of House of Frankenstein was one part casting and another part happy accident. Boris Karloff simply made the film, and the subplot about the hunchback Daniels' unrequited love was solid. House of Dracula has neither of those things. Oh, it still has a… Continue reading House of Dracula
#28 in my ranking of the Classic Universal Monster movies. For the first ten minutes or so of The Mummy's Curse, I was surprised. I felt like it was a Mummy movie that I might actually end up liking. Well, that turned out to not be the case. The opening didn't go through the familiar… Continue reading The Mummy’s Curse
David Vining, Author 