October 23, 2006
Tuesday October 24, 2006

Greetings! Savant's new reviews today are

 
The Addams Family Volume 1  MGM / Fox
Treasure Island  (1934) Warner DVD
Forgotten Noir 2: Loan Shark & Arson, Inc.  VCI / Kit Parker and
Schultze Gets the Blues  Paramount

Hello again ... Harry Medved tells me of a unique Bronson Caverns activity this Sunday in Hollywood to promote his new book, Hollywood Escapes: The Moviegoer's Guide to Exploring Southern California's Great Outdoors. Here's his official News bulletin:

Sunday, Oct. 29, 2006 @ 4:00 pm (Remember: Daylight Saving ends the night before!)

PACK YOURSELF A PICNIC SUPPER & MEET AT BRONSON CAVES AT 4 pm (at the very end of Bronson Avenue/Canyon Drive, above Franklin, Hollywood); Bring a flashlight! See the Caves, eat your sandwich, go to the Barn for the 6 pm screening.

We will be showing a compilation of creature feature clips, some depicting the cave as a monster lair, on a DVD screen in the cave itself - everything from INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS to the immortal Golden Turkey Award winners ROBOT MONSTER, IT CONQUERED THE WORLD and EEGAH! We will also display the Bronson Canyon plot plan of the original "Bat Cave" for the 1966 TV series BATMAN.

Then ...

6:00 PM at HOLLYWOOD HERITAGE MUSEUM (across from the Hollywood Bowl)

Join us for a slide show of historic clips of Bronson Canyon in the movies (like I AM A FUGITIVE IN A CHAIN GANG), and more clips from fantasy films like THE SCORPION KING and THE SWORD AND THE SORCEROR. Harry will sign books at intermission.

Finally after a brief intermission, director Larry Blamire will introduce his 2001 Bronson-based horror movie spoof, THE LOST SKELETON OF CADAVRA (we'll show the film in its entirety).

It sounds like fun and a safe way to go see the caves ... I haven't been there in years, and don't know what it's like up there anymore. The full info is at Hollywoodescapes.com .

It's been a heavy weekend of writing. I was pleased to find so many 'rocket movie' fans writing in mirroring my own level of enthusiasm to 'discover' a seventy year-old Russian Space Movie. I've written to the author of that excellent (let's just say miraculous) French website on Kosmitcheskiy Reys but haven't received an answer as yet.

A lot of reviews are coming. I have screeners for the rest of the Motion Picture Classics Collection, The Astaire-Rogers Collection Part 2, Alfred Hitchcock presents Season Two and Icons of Horror Boris Karloff, as well as such interesting oddities as Lotna, The Most Beautiful Wife, Red Angel, The Clay Bird and Forgotten Noir 3. That's not to mention The Devil and Daniel Johnston, Who Wants to Kill Jessie?, A Tale of Two Cities, Hands Over the City and Body Heat, which are already written. And I'm told that the Tarzan Collection Starring Johnny Weismuller Vol. 2 is on the way. So I'm going to be plenty busy.

Coming soon, spy movies from Fox, Oh! What A Lovely War! and Forbidden Planet! Thanks for reading, Glenn Erickson

Posted by DVD Savant at October 23, 2006 12:12 PM