Welcome to BlogHub: the Best in Veteran and Emerging Classic Movie Blogs
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
You can rate and share your favorite classic movie posts here.
Gigantis, The Fire Monster (1959, Oda Motoyoshi and Hugo Grimaldi)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 24, 2014
There’s something rather amusing about Gigantis, The Fire Monster and not just its idiocy. It’s the American version of the second Godsilla picture and it has some amazingly bad pseudo-science–the monsters are “fire monsters,” which may or may not have been dinosaurs. read more
Dear Heart (1964, Delbert Mann)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 14, 2014
Dear Heart starts awkwardly and ends awkwardly. At the beginning, director Mann and writer Tad Mosel are very deliberately setting up their protagonists and the setting. The awkwardness makes sense. That very solid foundation allows for everything following. The ending, which plays–at least f read more
Bloodlust! (1961, Ralph Brooke)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 10, 2014
What’s startling about Bloodlust! isn’t how bad it gets–the film opens on a docked ship, with the principal cast pretending it’s moving violently so the bad is obvious straight away–but how many not bad elements there are to the film. None of them are enough to make Bl read more
Robocop (1987, Paul Verhoeven), the director’s cut
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 8, 2014
There are a lot of acknowledged accomplishments to Robocop. Pretty much everyone identifies Rob Bottin and Phil Tippett. Bottin handled the startling makeup, Tippett did the awesome stop motion. Director Verhoeven gets a lot of credit–rightly so–and Basil Poledouris’s score is ess read more
The Underground World (1943, Seymour Kneitel)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 7, 2014
The Underground World is absolutely gorgeous. The animation has its issues, but how the animators light their characters and how director Kneitel composes the frames… just breathtaking. The story concerns Lois and Clark on an expedition to an underground cavern. Once they arrive, there’ read more
Dark Stranger (1955, Arthur Ripley)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Feb 5, 2014
Dark Stranger is a high concept story about a writer meeting a character out of his novel. The concept’s ambitious because the script–from Betty Ulius and Joel Murcott–is so thorough. Edmond O’Brien’s writer isn’t a Bohemian who might buy into the idea. He’ read more
The Arctic Giant (1942, Dave Fleischer)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jan 31, 2014
Even if it weren’t for catching all the future films The Arctic Giant influenced, the cartoon would still be a lot of fun. It opens with the discovery of a frozen dinosaur in the the Arctic. Scientists bring it back to Metropolis–King Kong style, but in a freezer–where it goes on read more
Freiheit (1966, George Lucas)
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jan 29, 2014
I knew Freiheit was a student film going in–I just didn’t realize the director wasn’t a teenager. The director in question is George Lucas and I thought he was a teenager because the short is so painfully obvious. It’s a “single person running in the woods” stude read more
Volcano (1942, Dave Fleischer)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 24, 2014
Now here’s an awesome outing for Clark and Lois. They’re on assignment to cover a volcano erupting (hence the title); the cartoon opens with a science report on said volcano. It’s a neat sequence, quickly done and well-animated. Fleischer gets a lot of information conveyed immedia read more
Billion Dollar Limited (1942, Dave Fleischer)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 17, 2014
It’s Superman versus a train full of gold thieves. Only not so much. Lois Lane actually battles the thieves themselves in Billion Dollar Limited, while Superman deals with the runaway train. There’s a lot of impressive action in the cartoon, especially given how little dialogue–I read more
The Back of Beyond (1955, Arthur Ripley)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 15, 2014
The Back of Beyond has perfectly good production values–it takes place in the West Indies, at a British protectorate island (it’s a Maugham adaptation, where else would it take place)–but director Ripley doesn’t have much going for him. It’s a play on TV, sure, but he read more
About
The Stop Button Posted by Andrew Wickliffe on Jan 7, 2014
Hello, and welcome, to the Stop Button “About” page. I’m Andrew Wickliffe and I’ve been blogging here so long the site can get a driving permit. I write about movies, comics, and television. On rare occasion, I write longer pieces in hopes of driving traffic to the older pie read more
The Funhouse (1981, Tobe Hooper)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 7, 2014
The Funhouse is terrifying. Director Hooper opens the film with a dual homage to Halloween and Psycho and then proceeds to do something entirely different in the end of this film. Like those two films, he takes a while to get to the violent acts. He does, however, announce he’s going to terri read more
Repo Man (1984, Alex Cox)
The Stop Button Posted by on Jan 1, 2014
For such an “odd” movie, Repo Man is incredibly precise. Writer-director Cox has four or five subplots–depending on if Emilio Estevez becoming a repo man and his journey as one is considered the plot, as Cox downgrades it to subplot status about three-quarters through the picture. read more
Mad Max 2 (1981, George Miller)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 24, 2013
Mad Max 2 might be the perfect example of pure action. Besides a couple extended dialogue moments–maybe the only times Mel Gibson’s protagonist gets to talk without Brian May’s music over him or just the fantastic sound effects drowning him out–it’s all action. It̵ read more
The Great American Beauty Contest (1973, Robert Day)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 23, 2013
Trying to figure out where The Great American Beauty Contest stands on the women’s lib movement is a headache. Actually, the whole thing is a little misogynist but not for the obvious reason–not because the titular contest’s participants are being objectified (I doubt director Day read more
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986, Leonard Nimoy)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 20, 2013
In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, director Leonard Nimoy establishes a light-hearted, but very high stakes, action-packed environment. Voyage Home is in no way an action movie–the action sequences mostly consist of chases and comedic subterfuges–but there’s a new one every few min read more
The Sting (1973, George Roy Hill)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 18, 2013
There are two immediate peculiar things about The Sting. The opening credits introduce the cast with scenes from the film, so one watches the picture waiting for a particular actor to come up. While it might have been done to get Paul Newman’s face onscreen sooner (he takes about fifteen minu read more
Silent Night, Bloody Night (1972, Theodore Gershuny)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 17, 2013
Silent Night, Bloody Night is notable for three things. First, but sadly not foremost, is Adam Giffard’s daytime photography. Not much of the film takes place during the day, but when it does, Giffard makes it look fantastic. Even though he’s shooting questionable settings… which read more
Rosemary’s Baby (1968, Roman Polanski)
The Stop Button Posted by on Dec 13, 2013
From the first scene of Rosemary’s Baby, Roman Polanski establishes the style he’s going to use until the big reveal at the end. He shoots a lot of over-the-shoulder shots with people moving around out of frame, causing a startling effect when the viewer finds out they’re now in a read more