By Craig Leask Who doesn’t like a good old black and white monster movie, especially around Halloween? My other half and I pull them out each year to help us get in the mood for the annual night of haunts. I guess they’re all somewhat simplistic today, but they really are a weird kind of…
By Alan Hurst The 1930’s were a heyday for comedy films. Other decades may have owned other genres, but the world needed – and wanted – to laugh during a decade of intense depression, poverty, and the slowly simmering build up to World War II. Comedy was the great escape. Gangster films also flourished, as…
By Melissa Houghton As a child I was terrified of vampire movies. I’d only seen Dracula (1931) starring Bela Lugosi and later Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) with Klaus Kinski, but it was enough to keep replaying in my mind, plus feeling sheer terror recalling shadowy images of the walking dead. My cure for embracing vampires…
By Alan Hurst Movie fans can usually trace their fascination with movies/film/cinema (take your pick) back to one or two events: the first time seeing a movie in a theatre, an actor or actress who struck a chord, first time viewing of a classic on TV, video or DVD. Whatever it was, something ignited that…
By John H. Foote So yes, this got under my skin today. Seems the Marvel groupies and purists are lashing out at Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola for saying what many of us have been saying for years. The superhero films from Marvel are in no way film art, with The Dark Night (2008)…
By Nick Maylor This Halloween, we here at Foote & Friends on Film will each be taking a look at a specific horror sub-genre, highlighting films that exemplify the best each genre has to offer. Alan’s article came first where he took a look at movies featuring witches. John then explored werewolves. For my piece,…
By John H. Foote Mummies, vampires, witches, werewolves, ghosts, and zombies truly can be frightening. Yet for me the single most terrifying creature I have experienced in a film was a human being, Dr. Hannibal Lector. Scariest moment? A rubber ball comes bouncing down a flight of stairs, still wet from having been tossed into…
By Alan Hurst Witches have always intrigued me. Whether it was watching the TV series Bewitched as a kid, touring the sites of Salem, Massachusetts (home of the infamous Salem witch trials) on a road trip, reading Arthur Miller’s The Crucible in school, or a first viewing of Rosemary’s Baby (1968), the mere idea of…
By John H. Foote Long ago Jack Nicholson passed Marlon Brando as the greatest screen actor of his generation. As good as his friend Brando was, Nicholson had greater range and was fearless with his image. He knew what audiences liked and could not care less, he took roles that interested him, that challenged him…
By John H. Foote He had been rising in the ranks slowly but when he shared the screen with Harvey Keitel in Mean Streets (1973) a trio of stars were born. De Niro, Keitel and Director Martin Scorsese were about to embark on a journey that would alter American cinema. De Niro would – zenith…