April 17th sees the release to the Criterion Collection of Wanda, the first and only feature film from Barbara Loden, actor and wife of Elia Kazan. A landmark in US cinema’s independent movement, Wanda is set in the unglamorous sooty surroundings of eastern Pennsylvania’s industrial heartlands and features a central […]
1970’s
The Dunwich Horror (1970) Lovecraft via 1960s New Age Hippie Psychadelia (Review)
Adapting the work of the world-famous horror author H.P. Lovecraft for the screen is a task which still seems to challenge filmmakers to this day. His tales of unreliable narrators coming face-to-tentacled-face with unimaginable eldritch horrors with nigh-unpronounceable names have struggled to make the transition from page to celluloid for […]
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith: “A Fugitive from Justice…Or from Injustice”?
Often cited as one of the most important Australian films ever made and a key text in the Aussie New Wave movement of the 1970s, Fred Schepisi’s The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is a beautifully shot yet heart wrenching and savage account of institutionalised racism in colonial Australia at the turn […]
Myrkas of the World Unite: Is Doctor Who Posh? (Part 2)
The In-Laws (1979) a pure-bred comedy unicorn (Review)
For all the wonders of the 1970s New Hollywood, it’s not rich in classic comedies. Newly reissued by the Criterion Collection, 1979’s The In-Laws remedies that, while also standing up well against the comedy subgenres and styles of the decades before and after. Its premise – a straight-laced dentist is dragged into […]