One of the last gasps from Empire Pictures, Deadly Weapon proved to be a especially lame way to make an exit.
If I’m going to be this long in coming, I can at least have the decency to bring a whole crapload of reviews with me, right? First the roundtables…
Here’s the Bad Place, which I’ve perverted into an examination of gothic romance:
Crimson Peak (2015), in which the house is full of ghosts, but they’re the least of anyone’s problems…
Dragonwyck (1946), in which you’ll know the girl is in trouble when her charming rich relative turns out to be Vincent Price…
The Maze (1953), in which the gothic and the Lovecraftian meet…
and…
Rebecca (1940), which, so far as the movies are concerned, is kind of the start of the whole thing.
And here’s Dino De Laurentiis (or at least a downpayment on him):
Hannibal (2001), in which De Laurentiis and Thomas Harris foolishly turn Hannibal Lecter into a franchise character…
and…
Mandingo (1975), in which Dino convinces Paramount Pictures to help him impersonate Franco Prosperi and Gualtiero Jacopetti.
Finally, here’s everything else:
Americathon (1979), in which the White House launches a telethon to keep the USA in business…
Cobra (1986), in which crime is a disease, but Golan and Globus have found the cure…
Hercules (1983), in which Luigi Cozzi splits the difference between cashing in on Conan and cashing in on Star Wars…
The Adventures of Hercules (1984), in which he does it again…
Midnight Special (2016), or Close Encounters on Witch Mountain with D.A.R.Y.L. the Extraterrestrial…
Moon Zero Two (1969), in which Hammer gets an early start on their notorious 70’s out-of-touch-ness by offering a boring space Western in riposte to 2001.
and…
Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), which was almost worth suffering through the prequels.
King Kong (1976)
If this review seems more than a little lopsided, it’s because I’ve had to deal with nearly forty years of conflicting impressions about this movie. There’s the unfavorable opinion I got from it as a child, which stayed with me until I saw the movie again with adult eyes some 30 years later… and got a different, equally unfavorable impression.
I could simply say, “It’s dumb, but it certainly looks good. What harm could it do?” Then I realize: that’s probably just what Kong said.
Will Laughlin is the Braineater.
Cheating? Nonsense!
May 28
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…and Dino interfered with the production so much, Nigel Kneale had his name taken off it—what more do you want?
HALLOWEEN III: SEASON OF THE WITCH (1982)
(But just in case anyone does have an issue, I’ve also transferred ORCA (1977).)
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Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
In Mr. Ricco, Dean Martin looks and acts as tired as his surrounding material.
It blows!
May 16
…in which Dino De Laurentiis spends mega-bucks turning John Ford’s thirties drama about a culture clash in the South Seas into a turgid tale of forbidden love, but the results are just a tempest in a teapot…
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Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
James Garner plays an atypical bad guy role in the reasonably entertaining spaghetti western A Man Called Sledge.
As a teenager, Agostino “Dino” De Laurentiis enrolled in Rome’s Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, gaining experience behind the camera as a grip and an assistant director, and in front of it as an extra and in bit parts. By the age of twenty he had produced his first film, but the coming of WWII put his career on hold. When it resumed, De Laurentiis became an international name as the main producer behind the celebrated Italian neorealist movement, with both La Strada and Nights Of Cabiria winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. However, it was, perhaps, the 1956 version of War And Peace that most pointed the way forward, with its American cast and director drafted into a European film, in a production that was in all conceivable ways BIG.
At the beginning of the 1960s, De Laurentiis built his own production facilities outside Rome, from whence issued everything from biblical epics to pop-art spectacles, and from spaghetti westerns to Shakespeare. In the early 1970s, he relocated to the US, and initiated that phase of his career for which he is, perhaps unfairly, best-known—and most notorious—with a series of productions whose ambitions were matched only by their wrongheadedness. Meanwhile, the “DEG” logo of his production company, De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, began (like its contemporary, Cannon) to convey a certain message to genre fans, appearing on Amityville sequels, Halloween sequels and Stephen King adaptations seemingly without number; while the producer balanced out his Academy Awards when Body Of Evidence took home the Razzie for Worst Picture in 1993.
But it is hard to argue with 2000’s choice of Dino De Laurentiis as the recipient of the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award—if only for the sheer scale of his contribution to the motion picture industry: at the time of his death in 2010, he had been involved in over 600 films.
So join us this month as we consider just a few of them:
It’s FROM THE BIBLE TO BARBARELLA—all through May at the B-Masters Blog!
Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!
The action thriller Live Wire is serviceable, but considering its premise, it should have been a lot better.
Feeling a bit disastrous
Apr 24
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It’s mostly disaster movies this time around, folks, where pilot in meltdown + gun-toting idiot + food poisoning = FUN!FUN!!FUN!!!
We also have a Lost Civilisation, and a Turkish film that will make your head spin. Oh, and the world ends. Again.
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Deluge (1933)
The Phantom Empire (1935) (Part 1)
The Phantom Empire (1935) (Part 2)
The High And The Mighty (1954)
Julie (1956)
Zero Hour! (1957)
Terror In The Sky (1971)
Seytan (1974)
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Liz Kingsley is the insane genius behind And You Call Yourself a Scientist!