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With Kelly Krantz! Liliana Cavani’s psychological, post-Holocaust perverted thriller went down as one of the most controversial movies of all time. In a concentration camp during World War II, concentration camp officer Max (Dirk Bogarde) and his prisoner victim Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) form a sadomasochistic relationship. Their relationship is colored as much by their shared d

NORTH BY NORTHWEST is a hinky Hitchcock tale of mistaken identity, assumed identity, shifting truths, and a man with a huge butt chin using a SpongeBob-comically-small razor. Cary Grant stars as an ad man who gets caught up in a Cold War game of cat-and-mouse (he’s the mouse) opposite double agent Eva Marie Saint, Broadly European Bad Guy James Mason, and the FBI/CIA/NSA/WTFE as

LEGEND is a 1985 fantasy film directed by Ridley Scott and written by William Hjortsberg. It stars Tom Cruise in one of his first leading roles as Jack, a pure-hearted forest-dweller who is in love with Princess Lily (played by Mia Sara). Hoping to show her something beautiful, Jack introduces Lily to two majestic unicorns that live in a remote part of the forest. In doing so, he b

THE BEASTMASTER is a 1982 fantasy action movie directed by Don Coscarelli (best known for the PHANTASM films #TheBallIsBack). Marc Singer stars as Dar, rightful heir to the throne of Aruk and prophesied slayer of the evil priest Maax (Rip Torn). Born with the power to speak to animals, Marc befriends a number of mammals on his journey to reclaim the throne (including other humans,

Featuring filmmaker/programmer Kris Montello and Something Rotten host Blake Hester! SAMURAI REINCARNATION is a 1981 samurai fantasy action film written and directed by Kinji Fukasaku. Shiro Amakusa (Kenji Sawada) is the sole survivor of a massacre of Japanese Christians during the Shimabara Rebellion. Witnessing the devastation, Shiro renounces the Christian God and vows vengeance

Noted Arnie fan Celia Mattison is back to discuss the swords and sorcery classic! John Milius’s CONAN THE BARBARIAN adaptation limits its view of the character to his pursuit of vengeance and conquest. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a rich, pagan paean to one’s drive for self-determination! On this episode, we talk about what rocks in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s star-making r

Two years before ALIEN (1979), Ridley Scott packed a bunch of audacious ideas about empire, masculinity, and class into his feature debut: THE DUELLISTS. Rival officers in Napoleonic France, Gabriel Feraud (Harvey Keitel) and Armond d’Hubert (Keith Carradine) are thrown into a mythical, divinely comic cycle of nearly deadly clashes after d’Hubert is instructed to rein in Feraud

There wasn’t anything quite like Michael Roemer’s NOTHING BUT A MAN before it, and there arguably hasn’t been anything quite like it since. All the same, it’s often cited as “ahead of its time” – a critical, realistic look, almost documentary in nature, at the life of a black American man in the middle stages of the Civil Rights Movement. Duff Anderson (Ivan Dixon), t

Sweet, heartwarming, funny, and deeply weird, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH plays to its creator duo Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s strengths: swift writing, a flair for the dramatic, and deeply affecting images. David Niven stars as the should-be-late British RAF Squadron Leader Peter Carter, who falls in love with American soldier June (Kim Hunter) over the radio on his w

Five nuns. One Briton man-whore. A harem-turned-convent high in the Himalayas. Fellas – what could go wrong??? In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s BLACK NARCISSUS, an adaptation of Rumer Godden’s 1947 novel, external conditions reveal internal torment: Altitude, wind, and culture clashes in the hilltop former harem of Mopu help expose the repressed desires of a sisterh