Based on The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy, which is in turn based on the unsolved 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short — one in which her black hair had been bleached and then dyed red before she was surgically sliced in half with a technique called a hemicorporectomy, her skin washed and her body was posed with her hands above her head, elbows bent at right angles and legs spread apart — this 2006 Brian DePalma movie was in development hell until L.A. Confidential was a success and Ellroy’s books got hot.

The director’s cut of the film ran over three hours but was cut down to a little over two hour for the producers. Ellroy was highly critical of the released film and claims that the original cut is a superior version of the film and more faithful to his book.

After a boxing match between them, LAPD detectives Dwight “Bucky” Bleichert (Josh Hartnett) and Lee Blanchard (Aaron Eckhart) become partners and friends, bonding as a trio with Lee’s girlfriend Katherine “Kay” Lake (Scarlett Johansson). Beyond her trying to sleep with Dwight outside of her relationship, she’s also branded with the initials of the mobster whose arrest made Dwight’s career.

On January 15, 1947, their lives change when the Black Dahlia’s body is found.

Dwight soon learns from Madeleine Linscott (Hilary Swank) that Elizabeth was a lesbian and appeared in smoker films, a fact she doesn’t want to be connected with, so she sleeps with him in exchange for his silence and then introduces him to her rich parents. Meanwhile, the man whose initials are on Kay, Bobby DeWitt (Richard Brake) is out of jail, so Lee attempts to kill him and dies in the process. That grief causes Dwight and Kay to finally make love, but when she follows him later, she sees him with Madeleine, the woman who looks like the Black Dahlia who so obsessed her now dead husband.

The end of this goes beyond noir and pulp to madness, as incestual pornographic films, ruined rich families and femme fatales nearly wipe out most of the main players, which also includes Fiona Shaw as Madeleine’s mother, John Kavanagh as her father and Mia Kirschner as the ghostly Dahlia, seen only in flashbacks and death. Kirschner was originally on set simply to feed lines to other actors in their screen tests. potential actors in screen tests. De Palma and writer Josh Friedman cast her and expanded her role from the novel. As Kirschner resembled the real Dahlia, she knew a good deal about the case and had always been told if there was a movie about the murder, she should be in it.

Plus, the cast also has Rose McGowan, Rachel Miner, Angus MacInnes (Rosey from Strange Brew), Mike Starr (the hired killer from Dumb and Dumber) and DePalma regular — and Phantom of the Paradise — William Finley in his final film.

DePalma kept up his string of being seen as a woman hater by winning the Alliance of Women Film Journalists Hall of Shame for this. Other films inducted in 2006 were A Good Year, Basic Instinct 2, Beerfest, Little Man, My Super-Ex Girlfriend and You, Me and Dupree as well as Mel Gibson inducted for his languge about women when he was arrested for drunk driving.

David Fincher had originally planned to direct this movie as a multi-hour mini-series in black and white. He left the project when he saw that he wouldn’t be able to make it to his standards. While I like this movie, I would absolutely go wild seeing what Fincher would have done.

You can get this from Deep Discount.

EDITOR’S NOTE: BASEketball first was on the site on June 24, 2022. Now that there’s a Mill Creek blu ray release, it’s back! You can get this from Deep Discount.

David Zucker made Airplane!, Top Secret and The Naked Gun movies so we should really be forever forgiving everything he does, but he’s a pretty great person by all accounts, serving as a staunch environmentalist and ah, never mind, he made some Republican political ads and a video in which he attacked President Barack Obama for the Iran nuclear deal within a prescription drug ad. At least he wrote 11 updated verses to the song “The Ballad of Davy Crockett,” right?

He also made this, based on a game that he’d been playing forever that makes no sense — the players in the movie are the actual original players of the Zucker-driveway game, asked by the director to be in the movie — and that doesn’t matter because just like any of the Zucker movies, we’re here to see non-stop jokes, as well as Joe “Coop” Cooper and Doug Remer (Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, who agreed to do BASEkeyball thinking that the cartoon would be canceled by the time filming was due to happen) act like idiots.

I think I cast this movie, as it features Ernest Borgnine as league money mark Ted Denslow, Robert Vaughn as the bad guy, Jenny McCarthy as his mistress (and Denslow’s widow) and Bob Costas, Al Michaels, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Dale Earnhardt, Reggie Jackson, Tim McCarver, Pat O’Brien, Dan Patrick and Robert Stack — appearing on Unsolved Mysteries — as themselves.

They made t-shirts of this movie! How did that happen?

Confession: Beyond loving this movie no matter how silly or outright dumb it gets, my brother and I grew up with hardly any other kids around us, so we’d invent games just like BASEketball. One was Street Tennis and whenever I watch this, I laugh because I remember just how complicated our rules were and we were the only two people who would ever play this game.

Sadly, the most I can track down of this 1977 José Ramón Larraz directed and written movie are ten video clips online, but as several of Larraz’s hard to find movies have been showing up, I look forward to someday seeing a full version of this.

With a title that translates as Deep Mourning, this finds another of the obsessions of Larraz beyond mysterious homes in the London countryside filled with impossibly gorgeous and yet murderous women. Luto riguroso takes place in one of the small provinces of Spain and begins with the death of the father of a large family, leaving behind his wife and their daughters.

As the funeral begins, his wife has a nervous breakdown and finally says what she’s always wanted to: he’s made a horrible life for her and never treated her as if her opinion had any weight. This causes her to battle with Piedad de Ella, a daughter closest to the father, who may be way too close to her in temperament for them to ever get along. In fact, Piedad is the one who took care of the father in his final years and now sees no reason to keep on living without him in her life. In effect, she has been more of a wife than her own mother, and now lives in the cemetery.

Meanwhile, the other daughters — Asunción is an alcoholic, Loli is an innocent attracted to a hermit who lives outside of town and the oldest, Tina, is a sophisticated city woman — all come back together for the reading of the will, which goes about as well as you’d imagine.

The father may have arranged in his will that the land he owned will go to his wife and the house itself will be divided among the four sisters, but as Tina and Asunción want to sell the home, Piedad refuses to give up the security of the only home she has ever known.

Loli retreats to the embrace of the hermit and becomes pregnant with his child, as the shepherds that work the hills take special interest in her and if you know the work of Larraz, that can’t be good. Add in the fact that Tina’s boyfriend Mario has an eye for another sister and this house of repressed anger is about to explode.

Also known as Widow of Daytime, Lover at Night and Vedova di giorno amante di notte (Widow by Day, Lover by Night), this is a different film than Larraz usually made, which either had sex, Satan or some combination of both, but always violence and dread. From the forty minutes of so of clips I’ve seen, it feels like his most adult movie — and I don’t mean in a pornographic sense — and I’d love to see more.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This was first on the site on April 15, 2022. Arrow Video is releasing it as a two disk blu ray set with an exclusive second disc containing a selection of award-winning short films by director Chema Garcia Ibarra including The Attack of the Robots from Nebula-5, Protoparticles, Mystery, Uranes, The Disco Shines and The Golden Legend.

It also has a fully illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Shelagh Rowan-Legg, author of The Spanish Fantastic: Contemporary Filmmaking in Horror, Fantasy, and Sci-fi, a fold-out poster featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Oink Creative, and a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly commissioned artwork by Oink Creative.

The set also includes Beyond the Eye of Horus, a visual essay about the use of surveillance and Egyptology in The Sacred Spirit by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas; Pyramid Scheme, a visual essay examining conspiracy, class and capitalism in The Sacred Spirit by Josh Nelson; Domestic Science Fiction, an interview with writer-director Chema Garcia Ibarra;  four behind the scenes featurettes; Elche Vision, a series of six location reports about the making of the film, hosted by actress Lorena Iglesias in character as Esther Armengol, presenter of The Sacred Spirit’s fictional local TV show; promotional videos in which the characters of The Sacred Spirit talk about themselves; uncut background television broadcasts shot especially for the film and presented here in full; an image gallery and theatrical trailers. You can order this set from MVD.

“Cosmic Pharaoh” José Manuel is a member of the ufology association Ovni-Levante (UFO-Raise), which meets weekly to exchange information about the latest messages from the stars and abductions down here on Earth. When their leader dies unexpectedly, José becomes humanity’s only hope, the keeper of a cosmic secret. Even more mysteriously, that knowledge ties into the disappearance of José’s niece Vanessa from the town of Elche.

This movie packs in every conspiracy theory you’ve ever heard — ancient aliens, organ harvesting, secret societies — and places them alongside the very human drama of growing up weird in a dysfunctional family in a small town in the middle of nowhere.

Director and writer Chema García Ibarra has put together something quite strange here and that last image of the Sphinx — inflating as it brings the goofiness, the strange and the everyday together much like the rest of this film — is one that will stick with me for some time.

And that first scene, where Vanessa’s twin sister Verónica gives her class a speech about what devil worshippers look for when they kidnap children? It perfectly sums up the rest of the film, a story about how believers search for meaning and yet often miss the darkness gathering around them if it doesn’t fit the mythology they’ve created for themselves.

You can watch this movie first on the ARROW PLAYER. Head over to ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This originally ran on June 15, 2022. It’s been updated for the blu ray release from Arrow Video. Their blu ray release has brand new audio commentary by writer, director and actor Mark O’Brien and editor Spencer Jones; cast and crew interviews with writer/director/actor Mark O’Brien, producer Mark O’Neill, actors Henry Czerny, Mimi Kuzyk, and Kate Corbett, editor Spencer Jones, cinematographer Scott McClellan and production designer Jason Clarke; a roundtable discussion with Mark O’Brien and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett and Chad Villella of Radio Silence; a stage presentation and Q&A with Mark O’Brien and Henry Czerny from the World Premiere at Fantasia International Film Festival 2021; the Grimmfest 2021 live-streamed Q&A with Mark O’Brien; the original soundtrack; an image gallery accompanied by the film’s original score by Andrew Staniland; a reversible sleeve featuring newly commissioned artwork by Grant Boland and Oink Creative; and a fully illustrated collector’s booklet featuring new writing on the film by Sean Hogan. You can get it from MVD.

This first feature from director-actor-writer Mark O’Brien (Ready or Not) is about Frederic (Henry Czerny) a grieving man already struggling with his faith who decides to help an injured Aaron Smith (O’Brien) when the man knocks on his door and claims to be lost in the woods.

Frederic and his wife Ethel (Mimi Kuzyk) invite the man to stay, but Frederic soon begins to doubt why the man is there and the stories he tells. In fact, he could be there to test everything that Frederic — a one-time priest before he got married — knows. He’s already endured the tragic loss of his daughter. What can be next?

Filmed in striking black and white by cinematographer Scott McClellan, this movie is either a man of lapsed faith against the very human past sins made flesh or a home invasion movie. It could be both. As Aaron starts putting his feet up on the table, reading the brochure on the dead child’s funeral expenses, asking some very personal questions and perhaps getting too close to Ethel, this film proves itself to be a long simmering and suspenseful effort that isn’t afraid to its time, nor worried about a small cast. After all, there’s so much talent here.

The Righteous is also available on digital and on the ARROW player. Visit ARROW to start your 30-day free trial. Subscriptions are available for $4.99 monthly or $49.99 yearly. ARROW is available in the US, Canada, the UK and Ireland on the following Apps/devices: Roku (all Roku sticks, boxes, devices, etc), Apple TV & iOS devices, Android TV and mobile devices, Fire TV (all Amazon Fire TV Sticks, boxes, etc), and on all web browsers at https://www.arrow-player.com.

As director and writer José Ramón Larraz continued exploring the newfound permissiveness of Spanish culture, he made El mirón which translates as The Voyeur.

Roman (Héctor Alterio) is a successful architect married to a gorgeous woman named Elena (Alexandra Bastedo), yet he has an obsession that is destroying their lives: he wants to see her with another man, yet he also is jealous of every glance she gets from other men. As for her, she’s opposed to the idea, yet he keeps pushing her while at the same time neglecting his work and looking at firearms with a lost look in his eye. That might be because Elena may not want to be with the men her husband chooses, but she’s certainly interested in Rafa (Pep Munné), a young man she’s watched make love to her neighbor.

Sadly, when Larraz tries to make a movie that has some level of being respectable, it all gets sadly sort of boring. This film has brief nudity and mostly moments of drama between adults. Maybe if I saw this before Black Candles and Symptoms, I’d have a different mindset, but I have watched Larraz go wild decimating inhibitions and delivering the kind of sleaze that sends filmgoers running for cover. I was kind of hoping for the same incendiary experience here.

Teresa (Paca Gabaldon, using the stage name Mary Francis) is the niece of Juan (Jose “Saza” Sazatornil), who has moved into her home after being kicked out of school for bad behavior. She soon connects with her art model aunt Claudia (Cristina Ramón), who has a lover of her own beyond the sadistic arms of her husband. Of course, seeing as this is a European softcore film, aunt and niece will, of course, grow closer.

With a title that translates as The End of Innocence, you know what you’re getting into with this film. At this stage in his career, director and writer José Ramón Larraz had returned to his native Spain, a place that was no longer under the leadership of the Fascist Franco regime. This film was among the first to play so-called S theaters in Spain, movies that had simulated sex, a theme continued by director Enrique Guevara and his film Una loca extravaganzia sexy and other directors like Javier Aguirre, Carlos Aured and yes, Jess Franco.

Also shown as Secrets of a Schoolgirl, this is the first of several sex-based films that Larraz would make as he explored the new freedom of Spain. He would return to making horror films eventually, but for now, he began working in a new genre.

EDITOR’S NOTE: For another point of view on this movie, check out this article.

It feels like nearly every movie José Ramón Larraz had made up until this point was getting him ready to get this one right. While similar to Repulsion, it has Larraz explore the territory that he loved so much: haunted heroines who may not be so heroic, houses filled with dread in the midst of the London countryside, forbidden sapphic relationships and an atmosphere of looming menace.

Starting with flashes of love and death — and always a lake with Larraz, this time filled with the floating dead body of some female body — we meet Helen Ramsey (Angela Pleasence) and Anne Weston (Lorna Heilbron). Helen has just returned to England after working as a translator overseas, Anne has just broken up with her boyfriend and they spend an evening in Anne’s ancestral manor deep in the British woods, a place overtaken by nature. Before they go to bed, Helen asks what happens after death.

There was once another woman named Cora Porter, there is also a mysterious man named Brady (Peter Vaughan) who Helen says disgusts her even as she spies on him, there’s also a lake that a woman drowned herself in. These are moments that feel like Larraz has explored before, but never with this level of care or craft. As good as his movies have been, Symptoms is where they come together. Helen is not well; an understatement; but the way the movie takes her on as its lead and then inverts her into becoming the antagonist is masterful.

Jean Seberg was originally cast in the role of Helen — I don’t know if I could have handled this, my joy would have been too immense! — but as she was not part of the British Actors’ Equity Association, she had to drop out. However, Pleasence is astounding. She referred to Larraz as controlling and she was hospitalized after an accident on set with a falling light, but she’s the strong center of this incredible film. She and Heilbron remained close personal friends after making this.

This is the slowest of slow burns, a movie made really about two people and a house and that’s all it needs. Pleasence is that most perfect of doomed women, unsure of where she is in space and time, only assured that no matter the love she tries to bring into hers, she will lose it, she will destroy it and the cycle will begin again.

A masterwork.

EDITOR’S NOTE: I originally posted this article on October 31, 2019 but was reminded of this film when the new Arrow Video blu ray was released. It’s one of my favorite slashers, sadly one that was released too late to have many people care about it. 

The Arrow Video blu ray release of Hell High has a new 2K restoration from the original camera negative approved by cinematographer Steven Fierberg, a new audio commentary with director/producer/co-writer Douglas Grossman and cinematographer Steven Fierberg, archival audio commentary with director/producer/co-writer Douglas Grossman and an archival introduction and audio commentary with film critic Joe Bob Briggs. 

It also has new interviews with Grossman, Fierberg, Christopher Cousins, Maureen Mooney and composers Rich Macar and Christopher Hyams-Hart. Plus there’s a location tour, deleted scenes, alternate opening titles, trailers and TV spots, a reversible sleeve featuring original and newly-commissioned artwork by Ralf Krause and an illustrated collector’s booklet featuring liner notes by Michael Gingold, including an exclusive interview with stunt coordinator/actor Webster Whinery.

You can order this bu ray from MVD.

I love that Arrow kept the Joe Bob Briggs intro to the DVD release of this film, as he so perfectly explains why this is an amazingly original slasher that more people need to see.

I had no expectations of what this movie would be like when I discovered it on YouTube. I figured that it would be about a high school class menaced by some sort of slasher villain, but I had no way to prepare for the gritty and just plain weird film that I would be confronted with. This is an incredible feeling and why I keep writing this site, as I want to discover these experiences and share them with others.

Unlike the typical slasher, this film finds itself spending time with the victim — high-school science teacher Miss Brook Storm (Maureen Mooney), who is barely keeping it together after some repressed childhood trauma. It’s also about a former quarterback named Jon-Jon who grows sick of the game and his sinister teammates, so he falls in with the delinquents like Dickens, Queenie and Smiler.

Speaking of that childhood trauma, it starts the film. In a swamp, a man and a woman are making love when he decides to start beating her with a doll that belongs to a little girl. The little girl watches and grabs some mud, waiting for the two to leave the swamp. As they do, she throws it in the man’s eyes and he wrecks, sending the man and woman into poles which impale them as the little girl stares at the accident she’s caused. Yes — that’s Ms. Storm and this murder has now become an urban legend as some believe a swamp monster is the real cause of these two killings.

As Jon-Jon becomes part of this new gang, they decide to ruin the football game by driving on the field in the middle of a play and stealing the game ball. It might seem like this movie has become a teen sex comedy at this point, but don’t worry. Soon, it will stop meandering and get even stranger.

The gang now puts on Halloween masks and belts Ms. Storm’s home with swamp mud before the shenanigans turn into full-blown sexual assault. You’d think that Queenie, the lone girl in the gang, would be against this, but even she joins in, subverting the very slasher nature that you expect from this film.

This is a movie that I want more people to see. Please go out of you way — you don’t have to thanks to Arrow Video — to watch it.