Bolling Straight: TRIANGLE, BONNIE'S KIDS and TRIANGLE

Tiffany Bolling--70s genius. A mix of Jane Fonda's gorgeous freneticism and Sharon Stone-cut malevolence, Bolling's beauty, acting and sheer screen presence elevate near any project. TRIANGLE (1970), for example, would be some low rent dreck if not for Bolling's luminous presence and strong acting as the fiery private school heiress mating in loose dance orbits with bland hunk new teacher Paul Richards. It would be against the rules to act on her...

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"You rolled, you really rolled" - ROLLERBALL and a 70s Bloodsport Overview

One of the advantages of age is added hues of golden 20/20 hindsight when discussing retro-futurism in movies and for me age doesn't factor into any retrofuturist film more than ROLLERBALL (1975). Today I finally actually watched the whole damned thing (it came on TCM), and understood it, and was thrilled by it in that low-key adultly 70s thrilled way. Why did it take me so long? There are reasons.ROLLERBALL was a film that seemed to come across...

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The Cassandra Signal: SCREAM, HALLOWEEN, TERMINATOR: SALVATION

Saw SCREAM (1996) again last night, and it just gets scarier every time! I've figured out why: metatextual dread. Characters are hip on horror movies and die anyway, so all the stuff we told ourselves as kids would save us is for naught. We're going to be killed while watching it. The only thing close to that kind of meta is THE RING, but a ghost girl coming through the TV is too literal. In SCREAM, the danger comes not from where we're facing on...

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Happy Birthday Cheryl Ladd!

Today, it's Cheryl Ladd's birthday. Happy birthday to an underrated actress, sparkling beauty, sultry singer, and first-class Angel!It's unfortunate that in between the Farrah-mania that erupted in the first season of Charlie's Angels--and led to her leaving to do movies, namely the ultra-bomb Saturn 3--and the later seasons with derided Kate Jackson replacement Shelly Hack and the decidedly awesome method-acting goddess Tanya Roberts in the still...

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Rage of Huberty: CHRONICLE (2012), CARRIE (1976)

The film CHRONICLE (2012) is a teenage daydream of telekinetic power acquired from an alien source and like few others it explores the motivations fate itself might have for bullying kids into becoming homicidal agents of vengeance. The same thing happens in CARRIE (1976) except the telekinesis seems more linked to feminine hysteria; in each film there's an invisible Kali goddess strolling through, monitoring the bullying and torment of a high school...

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