Filmically Perfect

Herk Harvey's horror tour de force is a low-budget delight and a perfect example of creativity triumphing over a lack of funds! A marvelously creepy and atmospheric film, featuring one of the most bizarre amusement piers of all time--"Saltair," built by the Mormons on the edge of the Great Salt Lake!

Anthony Mann and John Alton combine their amazing powers to bring one of the first and best police procedural/film noirs of the early post-war era! Shot mostly on location, with interiors at some small rented studio in Hollywood, T-Men proves that it doesn’t take big bucks to make a great movie. It takes great people with madly creative minds!

Billy Wilder’s painful salute to the crumbling facade of “old Hollywood” bears watching again and again. Gloria Swanson, who truly was a symbol of all that was grand and glitzy truly shows just how good an actress can be as the doomed Norma Desmond. William Holden and Erich Von Stroheim also shine as her unwilling and all-to-willing minions.

After a decade of big budget Technicolored thrillers, Hitch turned to the low-ball world of TV style shooting for this, one of his most nerve-jangling exploits.

After thrilling the world with his bawdy and award-winning comedy Tom Jones, director Tony Richardson came to the States to make this savage and withering satire based on Evelyn Waugh’s novel. The cast is filed with some of the most memorable faces in H’wood and everything is stolen by Jonathan Winters in a beautiful duel role as “The Blessed Reverend” Wilbur Glenworthy and his pathetic brother. F...

Not surprisingly, it took Germany's "uber-director" Fritz Lang a few years before he was ready to make his first sound film. In fact, he released two more silent features AFTER the release of "The Jazz Singer!" Knowing Lang, he was waiting until either he was comfortable with the idea os sound, or until the technology of sound had reached a level where it did not stifle his creativity. Either way,...

Warren Williams goes toe-to-toe with the demure and extremely cute Loretta Young and the not so demure but still somewhat cute (in a manly way) Wallace Ford in Roy Del Ruth's great comic-drama from 1933. Sex, lies, treachery, and men's underpants come together in this story of a ruthless Department Store manager and his minions.

As far as French film directors go, Raymond Bernard is one of the most neglected. At the time he made "Wooden Crosses" in 1932, there were few directors rated in higher in France. In fact, the success of this film allowed Bernard to mount an amazing three film adaptation of "Les Miserables" that is still considered by many to be the best version of the film. "Wooden Crosses" is an agonizing anti-w...

Arguably one of the best and most gothic of the early sound horror film cycle, with Bela Lugosi at his best as the villainous Murder Legendre. Made on a shoe-string budget, with borrowed sets and a major star paid only $5000, White Zombie remains as a wonderful example of what could be accomplished inside Hollywood by people who were outside the hollywood scene. And because it is in the Public Dom...

WELCOME TO EPISODE 100!! Charles Laughton created a singular work of art with "The Night of the Hunter." A film so intensely personal that it could never be remade or even duplicated. To prove this, a hideous TV version of the story was made in 1991 and has never been seen again. The Film Guys get a little testy in this one, stating their belief that this is a film for lovers of film only and ever...

The last time we spoke about Luis Buñuel, he was making fun of rich hypocrites in The Exterminating Angel. In this earlier film, a far angrier diatribe on the destructive lives of Mexico City’s street children, Buñuel makes one of his most powerful social statements--and still manages to fit in a few surreal elements!!

“The Boys.” “Two Minds Without a Single Thought.” “The Fiddle and the Bow” “Dick und Doof.” No matter what they are called, or in what language, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy are two very funny men. Their genteel yet destructive comedy has delighted millions for more than seventy years and here we discuss their single award-winning short from 1932.

Back again after a much longer hiatus than we expected!! Two movies, both great in their own way but not quite perfect, chosen without consultation between “The Film Guys.” Ironically (or maybe not), they chose similar films about youth in fast cars, crime, and the law. The California Kid is a TV movie starring Martin Sheen and Vic Morrow and Streets of Fire is director Walter Hill’s love poem to...

An intensely personal piece of cinema, which severely damaged its director’s career and almost killed its star. Yet thirty years on it still packs a punch, whether seen as originally released or with Coppola’s later “older and wiser” edit.

Jeunet and Caro's delightful delicacy "Delicatessen" is arguably the best post-apocalyptic cannibal comedy--ever. Combining a singular look, hearkening back to the silent era of great European cinema, with a wild and ultimately touching story of a clown, a girl and a butcher, "Delicatessen" does what perfect movies do--it pulls you in and, just for a time, removes you from your hum-drum existence.

This might better be titled "Sullivan's Travails" for all that poor John L. Sullivan is put through in trying to research his new pet film project "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" Writer-Director Preston Sturges leads us through this story, at times hilarious, at times perilous, at times powerful, by our noses and we love it!

Christopher Nolan is now best known for resuscitating “Batman,” to the delight of the Dark Knight’s minions everywhere. He burst on the scene in 2000 with this remarkable, turned about tale that asks more questions than it can possibly answer and has the distinction of a clever concept that doesn’t overwhelm the storytelling.

It's three for the price of one this week as The Film Guys and Niki Dakota present three films which don't appear on their List of Perfect Movies, but which they love nonetheless. From a tribute to Doris and Rock, to teen sex frustration in Ohio and finally C.B. DeMille under the big top! Come one, come all, it's a panoply of movie mayhem!

A production of The Archers, aka Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, "Black Narcissus" is great for only the spectacular Technicolor cinematography. But wait, there's more! A brooding dark storyline, roiling in repressed sexuality and longing also makes it a fun time for all. Top that off with that fact that not one frame was shot on location--that all was made in and around a studio in the UK-...

From lowly cel washer to head of a cartoon studio bearing his name, Charles M. "Chuck" Jones was one of the great success stories in American animation. Jones' cartoons have the strongest and most definable style outside of Walt Disney's and are arguably much funnier. Jones maintained that he made his films for just one person--himself--and it shows in the adult qualities of his best work, althoug...

Albert and David Maysles' "Direct cinema" masterpiece tells the story of four door-to-door bible salesman and the people and problems they encounter. Much of the film focuses on Paul Brennan, "The Badger," whose life and work deteriorate before our eyes like a real life Willy Loman, the tortured title character of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

The grand combination of Godfrey Reggio's thoughts, Philip Glass' music and Ron Fricke's cinematography make this film not only an emotional learning experience, but powerful cinema. Often copied, but never equally, even by its two companion pieces "Powaqqatsi" and "Naqoyqatsi," "Koyaanisqatsi" screams out wordlessly about the chaotic and ultimately destructive way of life here on Earth.

As the result of an horrible case of writer’s block, Federico Fellini created one of his most seminal and autobiographical films. The story of a world-famous director, saddled with writer’s block, a film he can got finish, let alone begin, and all the people in his life, present and past, who wander in and out of his thoughts like ghosts. A supreme example of the cinema of dreams.

What a way to start your career! Tim Burton’s debut feature and Paul Reubens’ big screen debut as his beloved and bizarre man-child Pee-wee Herman! The stars aligned for this wacky, silly, “dare-to-be-stupid” comedy that is like no other. And as they proved only a couple years later with Big Top Pee-Wee, lightning could not strike twice for this magical combination.

John Frankenheimer's political thriller, based on Richard Condon's novel, is as riveting today as it ever was, remakes notwithstanding. Frank Sinatra is riveting, Angela Lansbury is incredibly evil, and Laurence Harvey plays the ultimate walking dead man as Raymond Shaw.