Spanish film director and original member of the Surrealist movement, Luis Buñuel, directed this version of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe‘ in 1954. It’s a very good and straightforward telling of the story with a totally convincing island locale. The Defoe novel is now more important reading than it’s ever been. That’s because it is the [...]

This 1963 Czechoslovak science fiction film directed by Jindrich Polák is an adaptation of a Stanislaw Lem novel called ‘The Magellanic Cloud.’ Reflexively, one tries to find similarities between this film and Kubrick’s ’2001: A Space Odyssey.’ But I think the better place to look for influence is in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1972 film, ‘Solaris,’ which [...]

This is the last interview Marilyn Monroe ever gave. It was for Life Magazine in 1962. The interviewer is editor Richard Meryman. The film includes various pieces of Monroe documentary and news footage. As she speaks, she seems delicate and somewhat forced in her cheerful girlishness. I’ve never given much a damn about Monroe. I [...]

Here’s the first official trailer for Disney’s upcoming film, ‘John Carter.’ It’s an odd way to retitle Edgar Rice Burroughs’ science fiction novel, ‘A Princess of Mars.’ But that’s what they’ve done. I don’t imagine there are too many people who will go see a movie named for someone called John Carter. But anything is [...]

Gene Fowler, Jr. directed this peculiar Beatnik crime noir in 1959. It starts right off with a Beat jazz club and then just gradually slides into trying to be a crime thriller. It’s about an out of work actor, an unpublished novelist and a movie-star’s son who are teamed up by the club owner to [...]

‘Day the World Ended’ is a 1955 science fiction horror film directed by Roger Corman.  Atomic war has destroyed civilization.  A scientist and other survivors must defend themselves against a monster. Watch parts 3 – 8 after the jump.  

Batman and Robin was a Columbia Pictures serial of 1949. It starred Robert Lowery as the batman and a rather stolid little fellow named Johnny Duncan. It’s a totally awkward, cheesy and humorless affair that very perfectly captures the true spirit of the comic book.  But shockingly there’s no batmobile!  The caped crime-fighting duo drive [...]

Here’s a horror film shot in 1959 and then released in 1961 about a group of young people who find themselves prey for a sadistic hunter on an island. It is quite obviously a rip-off of ‘The Most Dangerous Game‘ which was filmed in the thirties as a warm up for the sets and special [...]

Oh dear! What have we here? This is a Bollywood science fiction (and I use that term very lightly!) film that was apparently made in 1967, though it looks more 1950s to me. It was directed by one T.P. Sundaram. It is ostensibly about an astronaut who gets kidnapped to the moon and then has [...]

The magnificent Hong Kong film director, Wong Kar Wai, is nearing completion of a new film called ‘The Grand Master.’ It’s a kung fu flick! The film was rumored to have been in a production halt, but now it looks as if things are coming together. It’s hard to find accurate information about this director’s [...]