4/30/12
The Best of Amicus: part five
4/21/12
Movie of the Week: Journey to the Beginning of Time (1955)
Titled Cesta do paveku in its native Czech, this award-winning film was groundbreaking for its era, portraying prehistoric life accurately, rather than just for cheap thrills.
It's a little didactic and slow, but if you have the temperament for this sort of thing it's very rewarding. The miniatures and stop-motion effects are too lovely to miss. How unfortunate that tens of millions were spent converting a melodramatic piece of tripe like Titanic to 3-D, when this film remains relegated to lo-rez youtube videos. It's like a Sawyer's View-Master reel come to life.
Mostly filmed in Czechoslovakia, although for the introduction they had a second unit shoot within the halls of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where I worked as an exhibit artist for a few years.
The Best of Amicus: part four
Tales that Witness Madness could be the weakest of all the Amicus films, but the short (five-minute) "Mel" excerpt is worth seeing.
4/20/12
Long Drawn-Out Trip: Sketches from Los Angeles
Made in 1972 by British illustrator Gerald Scarfe, best known for creating the animated sequences from Pink Floyd's The Wall.
4/16/12
The Best of Amicus: Part Three
The last chapter of Amicus' last portmanteau film, The Monster Club, could be their high water mark. It's a truly creepy, Lovecraftian piece of horror.
The whole movie is pretty great, really. The framing segments with John Carradine and Vincent Price in the club are very charming, the stuff ten-year old boys' dreams are made of.
chapter 2/3
chapter 3/3
4/12/12
The Best of Amicus: part two
Here's the "Waxworks" segment from 1970's The House that Dripped Blood.
Skip ahead to the 6:15 point.
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4/11/12
Futurechimp Theater: Away from It All
The Monty Python troupe created this short to screen theatrically before Life of Brian in 1979, but only in the U.K. and Australia, where it was commonplace for boring travelogues to be shown before the features.
Never heard of this before. It never appeared on home video in any region, so it was very rare, at least before youtube came around. It certainly takes its time getting there, but it's worth it.
4/6/12
The Best of Amicus: part one
In this first of a ten-part series, we'll screen a single chapter from one of the many Amicus horror anthologies, made between 1964 and 1980. First is the "Wish You Were Here" segment from Tales from the Crypt: