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Shirley Jackson once wrote in her journal: “who wants to write about anxiety from a place of safety? although, i suppose i would never be entirely safe since i cannot completely reconstruct my mind.” That verb “reconstruct” is an apt one for Jackson, whose most famous novel The Haunting Of Hill House...

On Wednesday September 4 2024, Magnolia broadcasts Bargain Mansions!

A Tee-riffic Makeover Season 6 Episode 4 Episode Summary

The upcoming episode of “Bargain Mansions,” titled “A Tee-riffic Makeover,” promises to be an exciting journey into the world of home renovation. This episode features a charming stone house built in 1865, once owned by the renowned golf club maker Kenneth Smith. Located on a historic golf course, this property has a unique story and plenty of potential.

Tamara and her team face the challenge of transforming this lovely home into a stunning investment property. The house’s rich history and connection to golf add an interesting twist to the makeover. Viewers can expect to see how the team breathes new life into the space while preserving its historic charm.

As the renovation unfolds, there will be plenty of surprises, from design choices to unexpected obstacles. The episode highlights Tamara’s creativity and expertise as she navigates the project.

In the upcoming episode of “Bargain Mansions,” titled “A Tee-riffic Makeover,” Tamara and her team take on a unique challenge. This episode, airing on Wednesday, September 4, 2024, at 8:00 Pm on Magnolia, features a charming stone house built in 1865. This historic gem was once owned by the renowned golf club maker, Kenneth Smith, and is situated on a picturesque golf course.

The property holds great potential as an investment, and Tamara’s team is ready to transform it into something special. With its rich history and beautiful surroundings, the house is more than just a renovation project; it’s a chance to honor the past while creating a modern living space. Viewers can expect to see creative design choices that pay tribute to the home’s heritage, all while making it appealing for future buyers.

As the team dives into the makeover, challenges are sure to arise. Tamara’s expertise will...

When Kenneth Smith first reached out to Reverend Jeff Hood to be with him during his January execution, Smith’s first question was: “Are you prepared to die to be my spiritual advisor?”

“Well, of course, that was absolutely shocking,” Hood says on the eve of Smith’s planned death. “He knew that I was intense enough or faithful enough with regard to my work that I would probably sign a waiver. I signed the waiver to show Kenny that I was committed to him.”

Smith, an Alabama inmate scheduled...

The Supreme Court has ruled that Alabama can move forward with plans to execute a death row inmate using nitrogen gas — a method of execution by asphyxiation that has never been used in the United States.

The court denied a stay of execution on Wednesday for Kenneth Smith, who was sentenced to death in 1989 for the murder of Elizabeth Sennett, and was already subjected to a botched attempt at execution by lethal injection in 2022. In May of last year, the Supreme Court denied an appeal by state officials to once...

Believe it or not, the dreadful 2004 Catwoman was not the movie Warner Bros. set out to make. After Michelle Pfeiffer‘s stunning turn as Selina Kyle in Batman Returns, nobody initially thought, “Yes, but what if we get some terrible French commercial director to shoot a story about a different cat lady fighting a budget-Emma Frost like it’s a perfume ad?” In the truth, the Catwoman project went through many iterations, not landing on the laughable mess that stalled the career of Halle Berry (who’s actually quite good in Catwoman) until the early 2000s.

Recently, Batman Returns screenwriter Daniel Waters shared some ideas about the original treatment for a Catwoman spinoff that director Tim Burton himself wanted to make after his Batman sequel. As revealed to IndieWire after a screening in Los Angeles in December, Burton had no intention of continuing the superhero route for his Catwoman film.

On the 8th day of Creepmas, we’re celebrating the Victorian holiday tradition of sharing ghost stories. Telling ghost stories during winter was a folk custom that dated back centuries but slowly faded over time. Any tradition that involves scaring each other with horror stories feels like one worth reviving, so today’s Creepmas festivities embrace holiday horror movies that center around ghosts and hauntings. The eight titles below run the gamut from inducing warm holiday feels to ghostly insanity to chilling terror.

The 12 Days of Creepmas continues on Bloody Disgusting, this time with 8 Christmas ghosts to haunt your holiday season.

Keep track of the 12 Days of Creepmas here.

Anything for Jackson

Sheila McCarthy and Julian Richings star as Audrey and Henry Walsh, a well-to-do couple mourning their young grandson’s tragic loss. Still deep in the denial stage of grief, they turn to Satanism. The couple kidnaps a pregnant...

Streaming services shake up their catalogs every month, but few rounds of TV and film musical chairs tend to be as rewarding as the ones that take place each fall. That's because we're entering spooky season, a time in which horror fans attempt to tackle ambitious watchlists and scaredy-cats dip their toes into the horror waters in the spirit of all things autumnal.

In keeping with this tradition, a large chunk of the movies making their way to Max (formerly HBO Max) this September are, if not outright scary, at least vaguely within the boundaries of the horror genre. Sure, there are some comedy classics ("Friday"), historical epics ("Gangs of New York"), and brand new docuseries ("Megan Thee Stallion vs. Tory Lanez: Five Shots") worth tuning into, but for my money, nearly all the best Max picks next month fall under the Halloween watchlist-adjacent umbrella.

You shouldn't have to wade...

Richard Widmark reportedly used his clout to amp up this revisionist western, but the result seems forced at best, and hampered by Universal’s TV-grade production values. The sober screenplay brings in good ideas but the execution can’t quite hold its own with the more progressive westerns of the genre-changing years 1968-’69. A cast of familiar faces makes much of it look fresh: Carroll O’Connor’s venal saloon keeper steals the show, while interesting casting gives us Lena Horne as Widmark’s romantic partner.

Death of a Gunfighter

Region B Blu-ray

Powerhouse Indicator

1969 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 94 min. / working title Patch / Street Date February 27, 2023 / available from Powerhouse Films UK / £15.99

Starring: Richard Widmark, Lena Horne, Carroll O’Connor, David Opatashu, Kent Smith, Jacqueline Scott, Morgan Woodward, Larry Gates, Dub Taylor, John Saxon, Darleen Carr, Michael McGreevey, Royal Dano, James (Jimmy) Lydon, Kathleen Freeman, Harry Carey Jr., Walter Sande, Victor French.

Cinematography:...

Two films made in 1941 led directly to the making of Cat People the following year, The Wolf Man and Citizen Kane. Kane had become a fiasco for Rko when newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst condemned the film as a thinly veiled attack against him. Ultimately it led to the ousting of studio head George Shaefer. His replacement, Charles Koerner, brought with him the motto “showmanship in place of genius.” Seeing the success of the revival of Universal’s low budget horror pictures, Koerner hired writer/producer Val Lewton to head up a new horror unit at Rko. The first assignment given to Lewton was a title meant to capitalize on the success of The Wolf Man and its ideas of a human that turns into a beast, Cat People, but Lewton gave them something far different than the studio brass expected. Rather than a sensational exploitation film aimed at the youth market,...

It’s time for a new episode of the Revisited video series, and with this one we’re looking back at a TV movie that started a franchise, 1972’s The Night Stalker ((pick up a copy Here)! The Night Stalker was followed by a sequel called The Night Strangler, and then a twenty episode season of a TV series called Kolchak: The Night Stalker. A show that served as inspiration for The X-Files and received a short-lived remake series called Night Stalker in the early 2000s. To find out all about The Night Stalker, check out the video embedded above!

Directed by John Llewellyn Moxey from a teleplay by Richard Matheson, which was based on a novel by Jeff Rice, The Night Stalker has the following synopsis:

After several high-profile newspapers fire him for his difficult attitude, investigative journalist Carl Kolchak finds a job following the police beat for a small Las Vegas publication.

Get Fucked Oliver

It was a busy November as Trace and I bounced from Jennifer Reeder’s female-centric text Knives and Skin to Paul Verhoeven’s anti-war satire Starship Troopers. Then we dipped over to Japan for Satoshi Kon’s gorgeously animated Perfect Blue before tackling Thanksgiving queerness in Addams Family Values, which proved, yet again, that straight folks get really upset when we explore Lgbtqia issues in popular texts!

In celebration of the final week of Noirvember, now we’re covering Val Lewton‘s 1942 Film Noir-informed psychosexual thriller Cat People. In the Jacques Tourneur-directed film, Irena (Simone Simon) is a Serbian immigrant living in New York with no friends or family. She is wooed by All-American Oliver (Kent Smith), but can’t consummate their marriage for fear of activating a killer curse that she believes will transform her into a panther and kill. Challenged by terrible therapist Dr.

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Turner Classic Movies and Julien’s Auctions are giving you the chance to own an eponymous mechatronic model employed for Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. All you need is an estimated 2 million to 3 million to make it happen.

E.T and other movie items will go on the auction block when an event billed as “Icons & Idols: Hollywood” takes place live Dec. 17-18 in Beverly Hills and online at JuliensLive.com.

The headliner is the E.T. Hero “No. 1” model that Spielberg brought to life in his 1982 classic. Predating modern CGI technology and effects, the cinematographic marvel, built in 1981, featured 85 points of movement and is regarded as an engineering masterpiece.

“We could not be more honored than to work with the family of Carlo Rambaldi, caretakers of one of the most incredible pop culture figures in the history of Hollywood — E.

The future of HBO Max is a bit strange right now, a fact that has been widely documented over the past couple of weeks. A lot of programming, both acquired and original, has been wiped with little warning, and the programming that survives now has a rocky future ahead of it. The decisions being made over at Warner Bros. Discovery regarding these removals have been controversial at the very best, but all we can really do is sit back and watch what happens live.

At the same time, it's hard to deny that the incoming movies and television shows in September look pretty interesting. You've got Warner Bros. theatrical releases finally hitting streaming, season premieres of shows arriving after far too long of hiatuses, and even some programs from the Discovery+ Magnolia Network. Whatever your mood, it's likely that HBO Max will be adding something that tickles your fancy in September.

There’s a storm outside, the cook has drunk herself to sleep, the other servants are gone, the old lady is an invalid — and the helpless mute maid is trapped indoors with a murderous maniac. No, it’s not a Reality Show about the White House, but Robert Siodmak’s superior ‘old house whodunnit’ that is equal parts Americana, film noir and proto- slasher horror.

The Spiral Staircase

Blu-ray

Kl Studio Classics

1946 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 83 min. / Street Date October 2, 2018 / available through Kino Lorber / 29.95

Starring: Dorothy McGuire, George Brent, Ethel Barrymore, Kent Smith, Rhonda Fleming, Gordon Oliver, Elsa Lanchester, Sara Allgood, Rhys Williams, James Bell, Ellen Corby, Erville Anderson, Myrna Dell.

Cinematography: Nicholas Musuraca

Film Editor: Harry Gerstad, Harry Marker

Original Music: Roy Webb

Written by Mel Dinelli from a book by Ethel Lina White

Produced by Dore Schary

Directed by Robert Siodmak

The handsomely produced The Spiral Staircase...

Back when interracial marriage was a shady topic (are those dark days coming back?) the U.S. military had some adjustment issues. Full integration of the ranks didn’t remove the anti- Japanese bigotry. James Michener’s novel has been transformed into a big-scale romance, with Marlon Brando coming to terms with a split in loyalty between the flag and his private life. The big shock is that the Paul Osborn’s screenplay doesn’t let the military off easy.

Sayonara

Blu-ray

Twilight Time

1957 / Color / 2:35 widescreen / 147 min. / Street Date November 14, 2017 / Available from the Twilight Time Movies Store / 29.95

Starring: Marlon Brando, Patricia Owens, James Garner, Martha Scott, Miiko Taka, Miyoshi Umeki, Red Buttons, Kent Smith.

Cinematography: Ellsworth Fredericks

Film Editors: Philip W. Anderson, Arthur P. Schmidt

Production Design: Ted Haworth

Original Music: Irving Berlin, Franz Waxman

Written by Paul Osborn from the novel by James Michener

Produced by William Goetz...

Next to Universal, few studios have had such a big impact on horror than Rko Radio Pictures. Started in 1927, Rko was the first studio founded to make exclusively sound films, a then-brand-new invention that served as a major draw for the studio. Rko’s life was relatively short (it was killed just 30 years after forming), but during their time, they put out a seriously impressive number of classics, including Top Hat, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Informer, and most notably, Citizen Kane.

Of course, Rko didn’t shy away from horror. While their output wasn’t nearly as prolific as, say, Universal’s, it was still quite impressive, boasting some of the most formative and important horror films of old Hollywood. Rko saw the release of a few all-time classics, including I Walked With a Zombie, The Thing From Another World, King Kong, and the topic of today’s Crypt,...

Mark Harrison Oct 31, 2017

Want to enhance your horror movie? Make sure you sign up a cat...

This feature contains broad spoilers for several horror movies featuring cats, including Alien, Cat People, Drag Me To Hell, Fallen, A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night, Pet Sematary and The Voices.

The relationship between humans and cats over time has given way to a number of cultural impressions and outright superstitions. Ancient Egyptians associated them with gods. In the Middle Ages, they were linked with witches and killed en masse, which probably hastened the spread of the Black Plague through the rodent population. And in the modern day, it's interchangeably lucky or not if a black cat crosses your path.

Like anything with such a wide array of symbolic links, movies have presented cats as characters in different ways over the years. It's their abiding association with the supernatural – whether as an omen...

If anyone wrote the book on complicated parental relations, it’s Anthony Perkins. While Mother is nowhere to be found, this time around Tony is having Daddy issues in How Awful About Allan (1970), an effective, low key TV thriller directed by Curtis Harrington (The Dead Don’t Die). As long as you can leave Norman up in his room, you should have a good time.

Originally airing as an ABC Movie of the Week (because of course) on Tuesday, September 22nd, Allan had to contend with Hee Haw/All in the Family on CBS and the NBC Tuesday Night at the Movies. At the time however, ABC had this format on lockdown with audiences, and for good reason – they always brought in top shelf talent to display on the small screen, and How Awful About Allan is certainly no exception.

Let’s dig out our trusty and totally unreal TV...

A breathtaking mansion becomes the backdrop of grisly murders in The Spiral Staircase, a 1946 thriller co-starring Ethel Barrymore and coming to Blu-ray and DVD courtesy of Kino Lorber.

A release date, cover art, and special features for The Sprial Staircase Blu-ray and DVD have not yet been revealed, but we'll keep Daily Dead readers updated on this release. In the meantime, you can check out the official announcement from Kino Lorber below, as well as the film's trailer.

From Kino Lorber: "Coming Soon on DVD and Blu-ray!

Oscar Nominee: Best Supporting Actress (Barrymore)

The Spiral Staircase (1946) Starring Dorothy McGuire, George Brent, Ethel Barrymore, Kent Smith, Rhonda Fleming, Elsa Lachester and Sara Allgood - Based on a Novel by Ethel Lina White (The Lady Vanishes) - Shot by Nicholas Musuraca (Out of the Past, Cat People) - Directed by Robert Siodmak (Criss Cross, Cry of the City)"

Synopsis (via Blu-ray.

Every week we dive into the cream of the crop when it comes to home releases, including Blu-ray and DVDs, as well as recommended deals of the week. Check out our rundown below and return every Tuesday for the best (or most interesting) films one can take home. Note that if you’re looking to support the site, every purchase you make through the links below helps us and is greatly appreciated.

Blood Simple (Joel and Ethan Coen)

For as accomplished as Joel and Ethan Coen’s debut Blood Simple comes across as to a viewer, like any director, they can’t help but recognize their flaws. That’s not to say their newly restored debut, now available on The Criterion Collection, doesn’t look and sound gorgeous — every bead of sweat dripping down M. Emmet Walsh’s face and every gun blow feels like you’re right there in...

The third week of September has a lot of fantastic horror and sci-fi home entertainment offerings coming our way, including an incredible pair of Criterion Blu-ray releases—Cat People (1942) and Blood Simple—as well as the 30th Anniversary Edition of Labyrinth and the Special Edition of Brian Trenchard-Smith’s Dead End Drive-In. Other notable titles being released on September 20th include the horror doc The Blackout Experiments (which premiered earlier this year at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival), Sacrifice, The Rift (1990), Beware! The Blob, and a Blu-ray set featuring all kinds of Twin Peaks goodness.

Beware! The Blob (Kino Lorber, Blu-ray & DVD)

Newly Re-mastered in HD! The Blob returns... more outrageous than ever in this 1972 sequel to the popular sci-fi classic! Plenty of familiar faces, including Robert Walker Jr. (Ensign Pulver), Larry Hagman (Dallas), Sid Haig (Busting), Burgess Meredith (Rocky), Dick Van Patten (Eight is Enough), Godfrey Cambridge...

This kitty needs no introduction: Simone Simon is the purring-sweet immigrant with a dark atavistic secret. It's Val Lewton's debut smash hit. The real hero is director Jacques Tourneur, who conveys a feeling of real life being lived that won over audiences of 1942 and drew them into his web of fantasy. Cat People Blu-ray The Criterion Collection 833 1942 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 73 min. / available through The Criterion Collection / Street Date September 20, 2016 / 39.95 Starring Simone Simon, Kent Smith, Tom Conway, Jane Randolph, Jack Holt, Elizabeth Russell, Theresa Harris. Cinematography Nicholas Musuraca Art Direction Albert S. D'Agostino, Walter E. Keller Film Editor Mark Robson Original Music Roy Webb Written by De Witt Bodeen Directed by Jacques Tourneur

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Val Lewton never had to be 'discovered,' actually. Life magazine awarded him his own photo layout and the critics praised him as the maker of a new brand of psychologically based horror films.

Bogie's back and Bacall's got him! Or, at least she's got his voice, and a bundle of bandages. A David Goodis hardboiled crime tale becomes an absurd pile of coincidences and accidental relationships, all wrapped up (literally) in a giant plastic-surgery gimmick. Bogart and his new bride Bacall are charming, but there's a show -stealer at large: the great Agnes Moorehead plays the most entertainingly horrible harpy in film history. Dark Passage Blu-ray Warner Archive Collection 1947 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 106 min. / Street Date May 17, 2016 / available through the WBshop / 16.59 Starring Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Agnes Moorehead, Bruce Bennett, Tom D'Andrea, Clifton Young, Douglas Kennedy, Rory Mallinson, Houseley Stevenson Cinematography Sid Hickox Art Direction Charles H. Clarke Film Editor David Weisbart Original Music Franz Waxman Written by Delmer Daves from a novel by David Goodis Produced by Jerry Wald, Jack L. Warner Directed by Delmer Daves

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Dark Passage...

Rko's morale-building wartime thriller adds an element of sexual perversion to its story of Nazi crimes against children, thus creating one of the studio's all-time biggest hits. Bonita Granville is the victim Tim Holt her Nazi-youth heartthrob, and Otto Kruger provides the perverted sneers. Hitler's Children DVD-r The Warner Archive Collection 1943 / B&W / 1:37 flat Academy / 82 min. / Street Date December 1, 2015 / available through the WBshop / 21.99 Starring Tim Holt, Bonita Granville, Kent Smith, Otto Kruger, H.B. Warner, Lloyd Corrigan, Erford Gage, Hans Conried, Gavin Muir, Nancy Gates, Egon Brecher, Peter van Eyck, Edward Van Sloan. Cinematography Russell Metty Film Editor Joseph Noriega Original Music Roy Webb Written by Emmet Lavery from the book Education for Death by Gregor Ziemer Produced by Edward A. Golden Directed by Edward Dmytryk

Reviewed by Glenn Erickson

Perhaps the most popular anti-Nazi info-propaganda thriller of the war, Hitler's Children is a very well made shocker that...

Before he would be forever marked by the Hollywood Blacklist, Edward Dmytryk churned out a succession of B movies in the late 1930s and early 1940s, averaging a handful of projects a year (he had six films in 1941 alone). Right before his first major breakthrough with 1944’s film noir classic Murder, My Sweet, he’d churn out a quintet of wide-ranging projects the year prior. In between a monster movie for Universal (Captive Wild Woman starring Acquanetta), Dmytryk completed four war related items, including Tender Comrade with Ginger Rogers dealing with a new living situation while Robert Ryan serves overseas, the noir-ish The Falcon Strikes Back which concerns a phony war bond operation, and then an exploration of the rise of militarism in Japan as experienced by a returning veteran with Behind the Rising Sun. But none of these hold a candle to another title he unleashed that year, the sensational Hitler’s Children,...

After The Seventh Victim‘s disappointing returns, Val Lewton and Rko clashed over their next project. Lewton wanted a comedy, provisionally titled The Amorous Ghost, as a change of pace; studio boss Sid Rogell, Lewton’s bete noir, insisted on a sequel to Cat People, which Lewton resisted. Then Rko suggested a Universal-style monster rally, They Creep By Night, reuniting villains from past Lewton pictures. Charles Koerner rescued Lewton from this absurd prospect by pitching a maritime thriller. “Call it The Ghost Ship,” Koerner ordered. Lewton also scored a big, though past-his-prime star in Richard Dix, an Oscar nominee for Cimarron (1931).

The result is equal parts The Sea Wolf and M, with a dash of Edgar Allan Poe. Tom Miriam signs on as third officer on the ill-starred freighter Altair, ruled by Captain Stone (Richard Dix). At first Stone merely seems strict, but his homilies about authority take on a...

Val Lewton, Russian émigré turned horror master, was a reporter, pulp novelist and MGM publicity writer before moving into film. He spent the 1930s as David O. Selznick’s story editor, directing second unit work on A Tale of Two Cities (1935) and script doctoring Gone With the Wind (1939), warning Selznick it would be “the mistake of his life.” While not Hollywood’s most prescient man, Lewton’s professionalism earned Selznick’s respect, and their collaboration led to Rko offering Lewton a producing job in 1942.

Rko was reeling from Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons, an expensive flop forcing a refocus on low budget films. Charles Koerner headed the studio’s B Unit, envisioning a horror series inspired by Universal Studio’s successful franchises. Where Universal culled from established literature (Dracula, Frankenstein), Rko worked from Koerner’s whim: he created a title and left the filmmakers to handle trivia like plot and characters.

'The Devil Strikes at Night,' with Mario Adorf as World War II era serial killer Bruno Lüdke 'The Devil Strikes at Night' movie review: Serial killing vs. mass murder in unsubtle but intriguing World War II political drama After more than a decade in Hollywood, German director Robert Siodmak (Academy Award nominated for the 1946 film noir The Killers) resumed his European career in the mid-1950s. In 1957, he directed The Devil Strikes at Night / Nachts, wenn der Teufel kam, an intriguing, well-crafted crime drama about the pursuit of a serial killer – and its political consequences – during the last months of the mass-murderous Nazi regime. Inspired by real events, The Devil Strikes at Night begins as war-scarred Hamburg is deeply shaken by the horrific murder of a waitress. Through the Homicide Bureau, inspector Axel Kersten (Claus Holm) begins an investigation that leads him to a mentally disabled laborer,...

On Monday's battle round of "The Voice," Christina Aguilera went with India Carney and her rendition of "Stay" over that of Clinton Washington. A staggering 40% of you agreed with that decision, ranking Carney as the best of the dozen contestants on the night. (Vote in that poll here.) While Washington was stolen by Adam Levine, the two talents from Team Christina that lost their battles on Tuesday's show weren't as lucky. But maybe you think that Jeremy Gaynor's performance of "Animals" was outstanding or that Vance Smith's singing of "Love Me Harder" was tops. Vote in our poll below for your pick of the top performance on Tuesday's episode of "The Voice."  -Break- On Tuesday, only one of the battle losers was stolen by another coach. When Blake Shelton chose Corey Kent Smith over Jacob Rummell after they both sang "I Want Crazy," Pharrel...

Teresa Wright and Matt Damon in 'The Rainmaker' Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright vs. Samuel Goldwyn: Nasty Falling Out.") "I'd rather have luck than brains!" Teresa Wright was quoted as saying in the early 1950s. That's understandable, considering her post-Samuel Goldwyn choice of movie roles, some of which may have seemed promising on paper.[1] Wright was Marlon Brando's first Hollywood leading lady, but that didn't help her to bounce back following the very public spat with her former boss. After all, The Men was released before Elia Kazan's film version of A Streetcar Named Desire turned Brando into a major international star. Chances are that good film offers were scarce. After Wright's brief 1950 comeback, for the third time in less than a decade she would be gone from the big screen for more than a year.

Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt': Alfred Hitchcock heroine (image: Joseph Cotten about to strangle Teresa Wright in 'Shadow of a Doubt') (See preceding article: "Teresa Wright Movies: Actress Made Oscar History.") After scoring with The Little Foxes, Mrs. Miniver, and The Pride of the Yankees, Teresa Wright was loaned to Universal – once initial choices Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland became unavailable – to play the small-town heroine in Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt. (Check out video below: Teresa Wright reminiscing about the making of Shadow of a Doubt.) Co-written by Thornton Wilder, whose Our Town had provided Wright with her first chance on Broadway and who had suggested her to Hitchcock; Meet Me in St. Louis and Junior Miss author Sally Benson; and Hitchcock's wife, Alma Reville, Shadow of a Doubt was based on "Uncle Charlie," a story outline by Gordon McDonell – itself based on actual events.

'Cat People' 1942 actress Simone Simon Remembered: Starred in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie classic (photo: Simone Simon in 'Cat People') Pert, pouty, pretty Simone Simon is best remembered for her starring roles in Jacques Tourneur's cult horror movie Cat People (1942) and in Jean Renoir's French film noir La Bête Humaine (1938). Long before Brigitte Bardot, Mamie Van Doren, Ann-Margret, and (for a few years) Jane Fonda became known as cinema's Sex Kittens, Simone Simon exuded feline charm in a film career that spanned a quarter of a century. From the early '30s to the mid-'50s, she seduced men young and old on both sides of the Atlantic – at times, with fatal results. During that period, Simon was featured in nearly 40 movies in France, Italy, Germany, Britain, and Hollywood. Besides Jean Renoir, in her native country she worked for the likes of Jacqueline Audry...

Top 100 horror movies of all time: Chicago Film Critics' choices (photo: Sigourney Weaver and Alien creature show us that life is less horrific if you don't hold grudges) See previous post: A look at the Chicago Film Critics Association's Scariest Movies Ever Made. Below is the list of the Chicago Film Critics's Top 100 Horror Movies of All Time, including their directors and key cast members. Note: this list was first published in October 2006. (See also: Fay Wray, Lee Patrick, and Mary Philbin among the "Top Ten Scream Queens.") 1. Psycho (1960) Alfred Hitchcock; with Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, Martin Balsam. 2. The Exorcist (1973) William Friedkin; with Ellen Burstyn, Linda Blair, Jason Miller, Max von Sydow (and the voice of Mercedes McCambridge). 3. Halloween (1978) John Carpenter; with Jamie Lee Curtis, Donald Pleasence, Tony Moran. 4. Alien (1979) Ridley Scott; with Sigourney Weaver, Tom Skerritt, John Hurt. 5. Night of the Living Dead (1968) George A. Romero; with Marilyn Eastman,...

It's Tim. September marks the centennial of famed director Robert Wise, winner of Oscars for the musicals West Side Story and The Sound of Music among several other classic films, and the members of Team Experience are going to spend the next several days revisiting work from the entire range of his career. And what better place to start than at the very beginning: 1944's The Curse of the Cat People, which was Wise's directorial debut, taking over from Gunther V. Fritsch, when the project fell behind schedule. It's part of the legendary run of movies produced by Val Lewton's horror-oriented B-unit at Rko, a studio where Wise had already logged time as an editor (cutting both Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons, no less). But it's not, itself, a horror movie, despite being the sequel to Cat People, one of the canonically great horror films in history. And...

​Nick Robertson begins principal photography on the new supernatural horror film The Pack this June in Australia. The film is being produced by Michael Robertson and Kent Smith under their new genre label Breakout Movies. Lightning Entertainment made the announcement today as a financing partner. The film follows hardened farmer and devoted family man Adam Wilson, who is shocked to discover that the last of his livestock have been mauled to death on his rural ranch.

The post Feral Dogs Go on the Attack in Australian Thriller The Pack appeared first on Shock Till You Drop.

Lightning Entertainment has come on as financing and production partner on Nick Robertson’s Australia horror The Pack and will introduce in Cannes.

Michael Robertson and Kent Smith produce through their new genre label Breakout Movies and The Pack marks the debut theatrical release of Australian post-production and special effects company Kojo and its new distribution arm.

Lightning will handle world sales excluding Australia and New Zealand on the story of an embattled farmer and devoted family man facing financial ruin whose property is beset by feral dogs.

The producers have targeted a late June start outside Adelaide, South Australia, with the support of the South Australian Film Corporation.

“Lightning’s production investment in The Pack underscores the company’s commitment to the growth of our business and our ability to get involved with the right film projects at their inception,” said Lightning general manager and evp Ken Dubow.

The move project extends Lightning’s longstanding relationship...

Lightning Entertainment has come on as financing and production partner on Nick Robertson’s Australia horror The Pack and will introduce in Cannes.

Michael Robertson and Kent Smith produce through their new genre label Breakout Movies and The Pack marks the debut theatrical release of Australian post-production and special effects company Kojo and its new distribution arm.

Lightning will handle world sales excluding Australia and New Zealand on the story of an embattled farmer and devoted family man facing financial ruin whose property is beset by feral dogs.

The producers have targeted a late June start outside Adelaide, South Australia, with the support of the South Australian Film Corporation.

“Lightning’s production investment in The Pack underscores the company’s commitment to the growth of our business and our ability to get involved with the right film projects at their inception,” said Lightning general manager and evp Ken Dubow.

The move project extends Lightning’s longstanding relationship...

Tom Laughlin: ‘Billy Jack’ movie franchise comes to an end; U.S. government, Hollywood studios blamed (See previous post: “‘Billy Jack’: Tom Laughlin Revolutionized Film Distribution Sytem.”) In 1975, Tom Laughlin’s self-produced Western The Master Gunfighter — a remake of Hideo Gosha’s samurai actioner Goyokin, co-starring Ron O’Neal and Barbara Carrera — bombed at the box office after opening at more than 1,000 locations. Laughlin reportedly had spent $3.5 million to market the $3.5 million production, having hired John Rubel, assistant secretary of defense under Robert McNamara, to plan the film’s distribution tactics. Financially depleted and embroiled in more lawsuits against Warner Bros., Laughlin embarked on the Billy Jack series’ fourth — and, as it turned out — final film, Billy Jack Goes to Washington. A 1977 Frank Capra Jr.-produced reboot of Frank Capra’s 1939 classic Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Laughlin’s final directing effort was barely seen even in its drastically edited form.

From Nosferatu to Twilight, gothic films have explored what frightens us – and why we are willing victims of our fear. A few days before Halloween, and as the BFI begins a nationwide season, Michael Newton is seduced by horror, sex and satanism

Beyond high castle walls, the wolves howl. The Count intones: "Listen to them! The children of the night! What music they make!" And those words usher you into a faintly ludicrous cosiness, the comfortable darkness of gothic. For gothic properties are altogether snug, as familiar as Halloween costumes – a Boris Karloff mask, the Bela Lugosi cape, an Elsa Lanchester wig. So it is that many of us first come to the form through its parodies; I knew Carry On Screaming! by heart before I saw my first Hammer film. And yet, within the homely restfulness, something genuinely disturbing lurks; an authentic dread. And watching these films again, we...

The information we had for Fox‘s Sleepy Hollow, when it was first picked up, was a little thin. The fact that it was Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci (Fringe, Star Trek Into Darkness) of course made it instantly a step above anything we’d expect from most new shows, but we remained nervously hopeful and waited.

The trailer, though, sold it for me, and not just because the man playing Ichabod Crane, Tom Mison, is a biscuit. There’s a quality to it that has definitely hooked me. Today Fox released a behind-the-scenes featurette that brings the beautifully produced show even higher up my Anticipated list. Check it out:

Featurette: Sleepy Hollow – Behind the Scenes

Sleepy Hollow: From co-creators/executive producers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci comes the adventure thriller Sleepy Hollow. In this modern-day retelling of Washington Irving’s classic, Ichabod Crane (Tom Mison) is resurrected and...

Main Street Films chairman Craig Chang has appointed Harrison Kordestani to the dual roles of president of both Main Street Films and 982 Media. This comes as Main Street boards as financier the Murali Krishna Thalluri-directed One. The film is a racially fueled post-apocalyptic adventure as seen through the eyes of a 26-year old girl. She is the hope of her world, yet holds fundamental doubts about whether she can live up to this daunting task. Thalluri’s M2E Pictures and Kent Smith of the Kojo Group are producing (they also produced Thalluri’s 2:37). Filming starts later this year in South Africa. Commenting on Harrison’s appointment, Chang said “When founding this new company, and its funding partner entity we needed to find someone who could bring both business affairs expertise and a background in managing creative projects. Harrison was by far the best candidate for the position,...

©2013 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Fox

On Monday Fox unveiled their primetime slate for the 2013-2014 television season to the national advertising community during its annual Programming Presentation at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. The network announced 5 new comedies, 4 new dramas, a first event series, and an animated comedy from Seth MacFarlane.

Some of today’s most inventive directors working in film have smoothly segued from motion pictures to series TV and their new shows have found a home at Fox. What caught my attention were the sci-fi, fantasy shows bearing the names of Abrams, Shyamalan, Kurtzman and Orci.

Among the network’s lineup is M. Night Shyamalan’s new event series Wayward Pines. Set to premiere in 2014 and based on the best-selling novel, “Pines,” by Blake Crouch, Wayward Pines is an intense, mind-bending thriller in which nothing is what it seems. Also on the Fox schedule is the...

In honor of Banned Books Week (which ends on Saturday), the Lawrence Public Library in Kansas solicited submissions from artists of all ages to create "trading cards" for books once outlawed. It's not only a cool art project but also a reminder that books can be both important and awesome. You have fewer than 48 hours to get to your nearest library or bookstore to celebrate what you may not have realized is a very important holiday.Sophia Palmer, Lord of the Flies Webmocker, Rabbit, Run Kent Smith, Slaughterhouse-Five Sophia Palmer, A Clockwork Orange Heather Martin, The Call of the Wild...

Melbourne-based VFX studio Iloura has opened  new studios in East Sydney.

Led by Alastair Stephen executive producer commercials, the Sydney studio has a team of VFX artists, designers, colourists and producers including head of 3D and CG Jonathan Dearing, design director Finn Spencer, VFX designer Kent Smith, senior producer Simone Crow and colourists Marcus Timpson and Dwaine Hyde.

Operating from the Iloura studio is Boffswana which focuses on experiential, interactive and augmented reality solutions for brands.

Iloura is owned by OmniLab Media.

Monsters in horror movies more often represent an internal than an external threat. Henry Frankenstein’s Creature is, depending on how you read it, symbolic of the repressed; when he sees the monster in Bride of Frankenstein his shock isn’t a response to its features, but to what the Creature means to him. He’s a respectable, well-to-do, loving husband who lights up with a manic obsession when confronted with the possibility of playing God, and the Creature is irrefutable proof of that obsessive streak.

In the 1940s Universal’s hold on the genre started to wane, and less effort and artistry was put into the resulting films. After The Wolf Man in 1941 it switched from A to B pictures, and focussed on increasingly silly sequels to the big franchises: Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, Dracula and The Mummy. With films like Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and House of Frankenstein...

Arclight Films' Darclight banner has picked up foreign rights to director Louise Alston's next film, a horror musical spoof entitled Tracey's Slumba Party . The film would be produced by Michael Robertson ( The Reef ) and Kent Smith ( Martyrs ) under their new genre banner Croweater Entertainment. The film centers on a teen girls' sleepover gone-wrong that quickly evolves from "manicures and boy talk to murder and mayhem," says Smith. Alston expects to start filming later this year in South Australia with stars Kate Geck and Mel Sano from the cult punk girl group "Toxic Lipstick." Here's a teaser we discovered over at Alston's site that was cooked up to generate buzz with potential investors. Tracey's Slumba Party Taster from Louise on Vimeo...

Adelaide-based director, producer, writer and CEO of the Kojo Group John Chataway passed away this week.

The South Australian Film Corporation board member was diagnosed with leukemia only six weeks ago, but the disease proved to be extremely aggresive.

In 1991, Chataway joined Kent Smith as partner to found Kojo Productions, first offering Tvc and television production, documentaries, corporate productions, event management. Eventually, with the creation of seven divisions under the Kojo Group umbrella, the company added full production services, live broadcast, corporate communications, crewing and online products to its portfolio.

Chataway directed many TVCs, as well as corporate and educational productions – winning local, national and international awards for his work.

His corporate bio states that Chataway specialised in creative strategies, combining digital technologies through a broad range of communication channels.

Ann Sheridan on TCM: Kings Row, The Man Who Came To Dinner Schedule (Pt) and synopses from the TCM website: 3:00 Am Naughty But Nice (1939) A college professor turns songwriter and falls for his lyricist. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dick Powell, Gale Page. Dir: Ray Enright. Bw-89 mins. 4:30 Am Nora Prentiss (1947) An ambitious singer ruins a doctor’s life. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Kent Smith, Bruce Bennett. Dir: Vincent Sherman. Bw-112 mins. 6:30 Am It All Came True (1940) A gangster hides out in a boardinghouse full of eccentrics. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Humphrey Bogart, ZaSu Pitts. Dir: Lewis Seiler. Bw-97 mins. 8:30 Am Wings For The Eagle (1942) Dedicated aircraft workers compete for the same girl. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis Morgan, Jack Carson. Dir: Lloyd Bacon. Bw-84 mins. 10:00 Am One More Tomorrow (1946) A playboy and a lady photographer allow social differences to come between them. Cast: Ann Sheridan, Dennis [...]...

How do I love The Curse of the Cat People (1944)? Let me count the ways. I love it because of the deceptive, dime-store title; the movie is really a clever and resounding study of child psychology. In the original film, Oliver (Kent Smith) marries the strange and alluring Irena (Simone Simon) before realizing that she's actually, sort of, a creature who turns into a cat and tears people to ribbons. In this sequel, Oliver is re-married, to Alice (Jane Randolph), and they have a little girl, Amy (Ann Carter). Amy has a very active imagination, and despite the best efforts of parents and teachers to get her to come back to reality, she likes the company of her imaginary friend, Irena! Yes, the ghost of Amy's father's first wife comes back to visit, and protect, the child.

Despite the title, there's no horror here, and just a bit of fantasy,...