The all-star cast of The Vanishing (a remake of a French film from a few years prior) convinced us to select this title (we could probably write a blog just detailing the weekly process of elimination when it comes to picking what to watch!).  Kiefer Sutherland plays a writer who's girlfriend (Sandra Bullock in an early film role) mysteriously disappears while they're stopped at a gas station while on vacation. He doesn't realize that she's been kidnapped by an eccentric man played by Jeff Bridges. He spends years searching for any information about her disappearance, when he meets and falls in love with a waitress played by Nancy Travis. After a few years, the abductor reaches out to the still obsessed boyfriend and offers to show him what happened to his girlfriend, step-by-step, and he can't help but agree to go along with it. While one might worry this would ultimately lead to his own death, his girlfriend is clued in to what's going on and takes matters in...

Despite what you may be thinking, 'U' is not for Ursula Andress, although that wouldn't be a bad reason to pick this film. Our feature selection for this week was the Philippe Broca film starring Jean-Paul Belmondo,  Up To His Ears (aka Les tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine ). I acquired the film (in a double-feature paired with Broca's That Man from Rio , which we have yet to watch) in part because both films were referenced as inspirations for the Indiana Jones films. And while it's not like  an Indiana Jones film, per se , it's not difficult to see the elements that justify the statement.  Up To His Ears is the story of Arthur, a rich but despondent individual dead-set on committing suicide. His fiancee's family isn't too troubled by the idea, provided that their daughter be set to receive his wealth. When his financial manager explains that due to volatility in the market, he's now broke, Arthur tries once more to kill himself, only to be st...

Peter Bogdnoavich's They All Laughed is an amusing romantic comedy filled with women he found beautiful (Collen Camp, Patti Hansen, Dorothy Stratten), opposite an eclectic mix of male counterparts (Ben Gazzara, Blane Novak and John Ritter). The three men play private detectives tailing women suspected of adultery, and two of the three manage to get themselves involved with their subjects, and many of the other women they interact with, along the way. Vonna felt Gazzara was way out of his league playing such a ladies man who all the women seemed to be captivated by. Ritter, right in the middle of his star-making run on Three's Company , plays to type as a bumbling romantic, frothing over Dorothy Stratten's character. I've always liked Ritter, and am a particular fan of the film he did just before this ( Hero at Large ). My enjoyment of this film was in large part based on his performance. The real surprise to me was crazy-haired Blane Novak, who co-wrote the film with B...

We had narrowed down our 'S' selection to two different titles, and then after watching The Fablemans and the documentary Spielberg on HBO, we decided to push those aside and finally schedule a long overdue screening of Steven Spielberg's theatrical feature film debut, The Sugarland Express . Goldie Hawn stars alongside William Atherton (who would go on to portray memorable jerks in both  Ghostbusters and the first two  Die Hard  films) as a couple (Lou Jean and Clovis) on the run from law with a patrolman hostage, on their way to pick up their baby from a foster home so they can escape across the Mexican border to live happily ever after. Ben Johnson plays the kind-hearted lawman on their tail throughout the slow-speed caravan through Texas. While Spielberg doesn't orchestrate anywhere near as many car crashes as John Landis does in The Blues Brothers , it seems as if he's got more police cars involved in the chase than Landis assembled for his film.  The Sugarl...

Rosemary's Baby was a key contender in our first half of this series, and this time it made the cut! Produced by genre legend William Castle (who pops up in a can't-miss-him cameo) and adapted for the screen from Ira Levin's novel by Roman Polanski, the film is a horror classic that we just never got around to watching. Vonna, because she intentionally shied away from it, assuming it was a film more in the vein of The Exorcist .  Me, because I always assumed it would be a somewhat boring tale about the long road to birthing the Devil's baby. After the talk of the film in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood , Vonna was finally interested in checking it out. Well, it turns out Vonna's original assessment was wrong, though she ended up seeing the film similarly as to how I had pictured it. It's a slow burn, but I found the settings and the construction of the film to be quite interesting; far more than I would have had I watched it as a kid on video. Vonna was fascinate...

Once again we surprisingly found ourselves with a number of 'Q' options to choose from, and this time out I decided to finally check out the acclaimed Hammer film, The Quatermass Xperiment (renamed The Creeping Unknown in the US). The film features Brian Donlevy in the title role of Professor Quatermass, who arrives at the scene of a rocket crash in a field outside London to check on the crew of the mission to space he was responsible for. Now, I'm not sure what the first film was to feature a rocket ship stuck in the surface of a planet after a crash landing, but by 1955, I'm wondering if this is one of the last. The visual is one of very few things about the film that seems silly to a modern audience (they sure made rockets hardier in those days!), second only to the classic missing bodies that leave their empty clothes behind.  Two of the three astronauts have disappeared (clothes notwithstanding), and the third, Victor Carroon (Richard Wordsworth), who slowly begi...

Ah, Piranha . A Roger Corman production that I hadn't seen on video in many, many years. I've always enjoyed Joe Dante's films, and he has a way of making everything he touches fun; populating his films with friendly, familiar faces. We recently enjoyed the Video Archives podcast discussion on the film, so it seemed an ideal candidate for our 'P' entry in the series.  Despite the great cast, and Dante's flair for black humor, I have to say I was a little disappointed. I think I went in with expectations set too high — thinking it might be on par with some of my favorite Dante films: The Howling , Gremlins , Innerspace , etc. It has its moments, but it doesn't maintain the level that those films do. Still, it is a step-up from Hollywood Boulevard ! Bradford Dillman's character is a surprising change from the many roles I've come to associate with him ( Escape from the Planet of the Apes , Bug , and The Enforcer , and Sudden Impact ). It's nice to ...