Christopher Saunders

LATEST ARTICLES ( 659 )

• Blood and Black Lace

  

  Strange that I've rarely cottoned to Mario Bava's horror films. One can respect his exorbitant style and genre innovations, yet for me he's always been a poor... Read more

  Posted on 30 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Black Cat (1934)

  

  marked the first collaboration of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, and what a collaboration! The stars chew scenery and battle each other, redeeming a rather... Read more

  Posted on 30 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Mummy (1932)

  

  A year after playing Frankenstein, Boris Karloff brings another horror icon to life. The Mummy (1932) ranks among Universal's best horror pictures, well-acted,... Read more

  Posted on 29 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Eyes Without a Face

  

  Georges Franju's Eyes Without a Face (1959) is a striking work of stylized horror. Along with the writing team Bouileau-Narcejac, whose novels inspired Les... Read more

  Posted on 26 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Confessions of a Nazi Spy

  

  "Force is the only language you will understand! And we'll speak to you in your own language soon enough!" Hollywood tiptoed around Nazi Germany for years,... Read more

  Posted on 25 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Bird With the Crystal Plumage

  

  Dario Argento launched his long, sporadically brilliant directing career with The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (1970). It provides a template for future... Read more

  Posted on 25 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• A Bay of Blood

  

  Mario Bava kick-started Italian horror films with gothic gore fests like Black Sunday (1961) and Blood and Black Lace (1964). Even more extreme is A Bay of Bloo... Read more

  Posted on 23 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Inferno (1980)

  

  Nobody watches Dario Argento movies for lucid plots or nuanced characters. Inferno (1980) shows Argento at his fever dream best, a supernatural slasher film mor... Read more

  Posted on 18 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• I Walked With a Zombie

  

  (1943) marks Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur's second collaboration. As usual, they enrich a chintzy B Movie set-up with remarkable depth and ambition. Zombie... Read more

  Posted on 18 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Big Sleep (1946)

  

  "Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains!"Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall made a dynamite couple, onscreen and off. Read more

  Posted on 16 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

  

  Charles B. Pierce made a B Movie hit with The Legend of Boggy Creek (1972), a docudrama about a Sasquatch stalking the Arkansas swamp. Read more

  Posted on 15 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Scarecrow

  

  Despite its dynamite star pairing, Scarecrow (1973) has been lost in the shuffle of '70s road movies. Gene Hackman and Al Pacino enrich an aimless drama, more... Read more

  Posted on 13 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Son of Frankenstein

  

  Boris Karloff bade Frankenstein's monster farewell with Son of Frankenstein (1939). While lacking the artistry of James Whale's earlier films, it's an... Read more

  Posted on 12 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Bride of Frankenstein

  

  (1935) not only improves on James Whale's original Frankenstein, it's easily the best of Universal's '30s horror movies. Not merely iconographic, Bride shows... Read more

  Posted on 09 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Frankenstein (1931)

  

  Many Universal horror films haven't aged well, more iconographic than scary. James Whale's Frankenstein (1931) is an exception. Crude around the edges, it... Read more

  Posted on 07 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Deliverance

  

  "Sometimes you have to lose yourself before you can find anything." John Boorman specialized in art-inflected explorations of masculinity. Read more

  Posted on 05 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Jinnah

  

  Biopics of national heroes are dicey propositions, especially those of a country as contentious as Pakistan. Jinnah (1998) suffered from funding and distributio... Read more

  Posted on 05 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• ...tick...tick...tick...

  

  Ralph Nelson degenerated from a competent genre filmmaker to Stanley Kramer for the exploitation set. As derivative as it is poorly titled,... Read more

  Posted on 02 October 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES

• Massacre Time

  

  Many Spaghetti Western titles are more entertaining than the actual film. Directed by future horror maestro Lucio Fulci, Massacre Time (1967) tries to enliven... Read more

  Posted on 20 September 2016 ENTERTAINMENT

• Keoma

  

  For those who like their Spaghetti Westerns with a shot of strangeness, Keoma (1976) fits the bill. Enzo G. Castellari's experimental oater places a close secon... Read more

  Posted on 18 September 2016 ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES