Great 70's Dads, Memorial Day Special: Gene Evans in THE STEEL HELMET ('51)

"He got up on easy red beach,. and said 'there are only two types of men on this beach - those who are dead and those who are about to die, so let's get up off this beach and die inland' - and that officer I give my steel hat to any day."There's few genius auteurs who are legitimate tough guys, survivors of war, genuine witnesses of fucked up shit like liberating concentration camps and Warsaw ghetto uprisings and whatnot. I can only think of...

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You Dirty Desert Rats: PLAY DIRTY, RAID ON ROMMEL

Late May, summer vacation, Memorial Day. a time to embrace the inner WW2 past life veteran. Where were you when you fell? If you had a past life in North Africa, running raids against Rommel's fuel dumps, and maybe died under the treads of Rommel's esteemed Afrika Corps, you will love Netflix streaming for desert warfare is amply represented.Desert warfare has long captivated the cinematic imagination - a harsh, unforgiving playing field, where...

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Long and Tall XXL in the Saddle

The way John Wayne rides a horse is the closest thing lazy big and tall men have to their own form of liquid poetry. Always bumping our heads going down basement steps, cramping our legs in ordinary airplane seats, dangling over edges, looking apish in hand-me-downs from normal size cousins; we're often light-headed from being head in the clouds all the time and John Wayne is all these things, but turns them upside down through sheer moral charisma....

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Gialli Ressegne II: SEVEN DEATHS IN A CAT'S EYE, SEVEN NOTES IN BLACK, FIVE DOLLS OF AN AUGUST MOON, SHORT NIGHT OF GLASS DOLLS, CASE OF THE BLOODY IRIS

SEVEN DEATHS IN A CAT'S EYE1973 - ***1/2This international-Italian/French co-production stars yeh-yeh girl Jane Birkin as a plucky ingenue possibly going mad in a mansion full of eccentrics, like Paulette Goddard in the 1939 CAT AND THE CANARY if the Bob Hope part was played by a brooding Byronic pretty boy. With photography lush enough that at times Birkin's luminous hair has the beauty of Sissy Spacek's in BADLANDS, this film  bumps up three...

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Fourteen or Fight! WILD IN THE STREETS (1968)

In today's environ of political stagnancy we may no longer remember how it could even be possible, but between 1967 and '70, the establishment was seriously concerned about being overrun by its own children. The suits were scared, the politicians saw the size of the crowds at Woodstock, the small cities worth of people who would appear within a week of some rock star announcing a free concert, and they knew no army could stand in their way. And we...

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Lashes by Covergirl...and Centurions: THE TOURIST, MASQUERADE and THE SEVENTH SIGN

Where o where hath my Angelina gone? The one who burned a whole through GIRL, INTERRUPTED, or even the one who dazzled with her mix of mature romanticism and aerodynamic toughness in MR. AND MRS. SMITH? Like Natalie said in THE BLACK SWAN: "She's gone!!"In SALT (2010 - see my review," From Russia with Adamantium Cheekbones") we saw the once mighty Jolie beginning to look a little frail. We winced when she fell from high bridges onto highway traffic,...

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The Girl who Fingered the Frenchman

The 32-year-old maid told authorities that when she entered his spacious, $3,000-a-night suite early Saturday afternoon, she thought it was unoccupied. Instead, Strauss-Kahn emerged from the bathroom naked, chased her down a hallway and pulled her into a bedroom, where he sexually assaulted her, New York Police Department spokesman Paul J. Browne said. (HP)Ah  France, the big scandal erupting with Dominique Strauss-Kahn is a reminder that...

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Red is the color of my true love's helmet: QUEEN OF BLOOD, JET PILOT

Top: Queen of Blood (Florence Marley) / B: Jet Pilot (Janet Leigh)On Netflix Streaming comes a film that--were it not so beautifully restored--would be much harder to watch: QUEEN OF BLOOD (1966). As it is, the colors have been freshened up and the footage fairly glows. And what footage! recycled from a bunch of Russian science fiction films like 1965's MESTRE NASTRESHU, it's almost Bava-esque in its deep reds and eerie gel lighting, and the AIP-shot...

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