September 5, 1901: William McKinley, the first U.S. president to be captured on film, is shown at the Pan-American Expo in Buffalo, one day before his assassination. September 5, 1916: In response to the outcry over The Birth of a…
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Skelton Knaggs: A Skelton Key
Cue the aging film geek blog confession, annnd action…this goes back to some Saturday at the dawn of the ‘70s, when Philly’s then-prevalent local TV horror host was airing Universal’s monster-rally opus House of Dracula (1945). Myself, I’d been a…
Read more →A Reader Picks the Best Detective Films Ever Made
What is the greatest gumshoe movie ever made? That’s a pretty tough question to be sure. Fortunately, MovieFanFare reader Sal LaRosa can help. He’s come up with the following list of his own personal picks for the best detective flicks….
Read more →First Time Watch: A Face In The Crowd
In 2008, the Library of Congress chose to preserve A Face In The Crowd in the U.S. National Film Registry for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” Well, that could be the understatement of the 21st century. I couldn’t escape…
Read more →I Can Has Cheeziest Movie Songs Ever?
I’m looking for what you might call a “slow week” in my little corner of the world, so that means that there’ll be no provocative explorations of the Movies That Make You Mad; no I-dare-you-to-disagree rundowns of Tea Party Movies; no…
Read more →Guest Review: Invasion of the Body Snatchers
An allegory on the infiltration of communism in America? A metaphor for people turning a blind eye to the McCarthyism hysteria that was sweeping the country in the early 1950s? An attack on the potential dangers of conformity and the…
Read more →Guest Review: The Court Jester
Though massively talented and featured prominently in many films in the 1940s and ’50s – eventually even securing his own television show in the ’60s – for some reason Danny Kaye has not made much of a lasting impression in more…
Read more →Movie Poll: What’s Your Favorite John Carpenter Movie?
Back Street Double Feature and More Coming to DVD
Back Street’s Back, All Right: Among the most requested titles we’ve had over the years has been Back Street, the 1961 adaptation of the Fannie Hurst novel with Susan Hayward as the woman who loves and loses WWII soldier John Gavin,…
Read more →Mighty Ochs: Rediscovering An American Troubadour with Kenneth Bowser
For 20 years, documentarian Kenneth Bowser had wanted to make a film about seminal protest singer-songwriter Phil Ochs. But he was continually greeted with apathy on many fronts. “I knew it was a great story,” says Bowser during a phone…
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