Movies I Watched in October, Part 1

I'm way, way behind on this post, so let's get through this as quickly as possible. Couple of sentences each, tops! And, without any further ado...



I've seen it before, of course, but watched it again for a recording of our Out of Theaters podcast (listen to the episode here). I have to say, I'm not a huge fan. It's scary, sort of, but more because director William Friedkin beats the audience into submission with loud noises and "shocking" visuals than anything else. If you want to see a really scary Devil movie, stick with "Rosemary's Baby." It's much, much better.


Watched it yet again with Allie. Hilarious. As I write this, the Writer's Guild of American has just released its list of "The 101 Funniest Screenplays," and "Horsefeathers" wasn't anywhere to be found. (The great "Duck Soup" did make the list, along with the less-than-great "A Night at the Opera.") Proof, of course, that lists are meaningless.

Here's one I'd never seen before, a whip-smart 1962 thriller about the supernatural goings on at a British college. Great performances, wonderful atmosphere and a genuinely unnerving climax moved this to the top tier of my "Little Known Horror Classics" list. Be sure to catch it, either on Amazon Prime or next year when TCM inevitably reruns it.


Really enjoyable, consistently exciting and even a bit inspirational, this Ridley Scott science fiction epic (accent on the "science") deserves all the praise it's getting -- and it's definitely Scott's best film since his early '80s heyday of "Alien" and "Blade Runner." Check it out on the biggest screen you can find -- it's that kind of movie.


Solid documentary about Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, two Israeli cousins who wanted to be movie makers in the worst way -- and that's exactly what they did. The meat of this doc comes from the outrageous clips -- no-budget action epics and limp sex comedies with a few oddball high-profile attempts mixed into the bunch ("Superman IV," anyone?). The punchline is saved 'til the end, when we learn that Golan and Globus refused to appear in this movie because, after hearing it was in production, they decided to make their own doc -- and managed to film it, edit it and release it before "Electric Boogaloo" was even finished. Now that's how you make a movie!

Coming up next: Los Angeles 2019, a wolf in merrie olde England and a couple of Halloween movies that will have you shivering in  antici .... pation.