The Latecomers

Show Notes Free Palestine   One of the most unspoiled movies of all time, we watched When a Stranger Calls from 1979. If you have heard of this movie but haven’t seen it, it’s likely that you are only privy to the first 20 minutes of the film. It’s tense, but it gets wild after we leave the house from which the call is coming. Carol Kane shows off her lungs. A husband listens to and believes his w...

Show Notes Free Palestine   This week we give all our co-workers side eye as we follow Dr. Wheeler on her quest for info in Coma from 1978. She’s noticing things none of her fellow doctors are noticing, or want her to notice. Once again, the smart woman knows what’s up and her boyfriend is willingly blind to the truth. Oh, and capitalism is definitely the villain.     Recommendations: The Kingdom...

Show Notes Free Palestine   This week we follow Michael York’s D’artanan into Paris to meet The Three Musketeers! Four silly men vs. Captain Hook, or rather Rochforte and a Cardinal with more interest in the court than the pulpit. A world of excess, adultery and swordfights awaits.   Recommendations: Watch some Roger Corman movies in remembrance. Here’s a list.   Next up: Coma (1978) Rentable   Em...

Show Notes Free Palestine   This week we talk about The Naked Prey from 1965 (though you’d be hard pressed to know when it was made just by watching it). Filmed in Africa and staring mostly native Africans, with only a 9 page screenplay, it’s a tense chase with life on the line. Cornel Wilde, 53 years old and suffering dysentery, runs mostly naked through the wilds experiencing many of the dangers...

Show Notes Free Palestine   This week, we have to warn you that once night comes, you will be alone and no one will hear your distress as you watch The Haunting from 1963. Dutch angles, rococo design, claustrophobic sets, lens distortions, and four distinct and powerful performances lend to deep unsettlement and a slow burn thrill.       Recommendations: Read some Shirley Jackson; Mike Flannagan’s...

Show Notes Free Palestine   This week extraordinary women do bad things in the name of their mediocre husbands in Burn, Witch, Burn from 1962. A movie with many names, none of which is as good as the story it is based on, finds Tansy just trying to surreptitiously help her husband, who is positive his success is definitely because of his own talent, being ridiculed and castigated by the same man....

Show Notes Free Palestine   This week we wax a bit poetic about Kim Stanley as we discuss the 1964 film Séance on a Wet Afternoon. How far will a woman go to be recognized for her gifts? Pretty damn far as it turns out. Two spectacular performances and three seances bring the thrills this week.   Recommendations: Visit a landmark   Next up: Night of the Eagle (can be found as Burn, Witch, Burn) (1...

Show Notes Free Palestine   This week, the French take on Patricia Highsmith in Purple Noon – the first film adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley . See one of the most beautiful men you have ever laid eyes on be the luckiest psychopath in cinema history. Will he pull off his schemes? Will we root for him? Does he go to far in the end? Listen to find out.   Recommendations: Le Diabolique; Elevator...

Show Notes Free Palestine   We travel to Japan this week with Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress. One undercover samurai, one hidden princess and two morons travel behind enemy lines to get themselves, and a whole bunch of gold, to safety.   Recommendations: Other Kurosawa films: Rashoman, Seven Samurai, Ikuru; DO THE THING   Next up: Purple Noon (1960) (rentable)   Email us at latecomers@gmail....

Show Notes Free Palestine   An infamous performance by Christopher Lee – only onscreen for seven minutes and with a mere 16 lines – leaves an indelible and unmatched stamp on the character of Dracula in Hammar Films’ classic Horror of Dracula. Peter Cushing has to kill his best friend while several actors kind of stand around and watch, often disinterestedly. But the women are working every scene....

Episode Notes Free Palestine   Turns out you can’t mansplain your way around a demon, as Dana Andrews finds out in 1957’s Night of the Demon (Curse of the Demon if you’re outside of the US – I think?). A skeptic and self-proclaimed paranormal psychologist who walks under ladders just to see what happens f-s around with the wrong cultist and is about to find out. But then a heady combo of meth, hyp...

Free Palestine   We’re here to see a man about a horse in Stanley Kubrick’s racetrack heist film The Killing. Asymmetric storytelling and a world before cell phones lead to a tense will they/won’t they between a group of thieves and the heist they have planned to a T. It’s a tough break when you succeed in a heist and then can’t make it to the end of the day because of a wicked woman.   Recommenda...

Show Notes Free Palestine   Spencer Tracy gets off the train and walks into immediate danger in Bad Day at Black Rock from 1955. Looking for his savior’s father, he finds murderous racists instead. Anne Francis is more bloodthirsty than you’ve seen her and, along with Ernest Borgnine and Lee Marvin, is worshipping at the shrine of Robert Ryan. Last we saw him, he was a washed up boxer, this time h...

Free Palestine   This week, the film Lemuel has been referencing for two years is finally here Wages of Fear from 1953. It couldn’t go on the AFI list because of the A, but for thrills, it’s certainly packed. Four men, including a Mario AND a Luigi, several tons of nitroglycerin, 40s era trucks and 300 miles of unforgiving terrain. What could possibly go wrong?   Recommendations: Taskmaster (Youtu...

Free Palestine   This week, the fix is in, or it would be if only someone told the fighter – it’s 1949’s The Set-Up directed by Robert Wise. In near real-time, we watch the rise and fall of over-the-hill boxer Stoker Thompson whose dreams of a big payday are dashed by his managers dreams of a medium payday. But is the real villain a woman? Maybe…   Recommendations: True Detective: Night Country (M...

Notes Free Palestine   We are starting off strong (and brief) with the first iteration of The Most Dangerous Game from 1932 – spoiler alert: it’s people, just like Soylent Green (spoiler #2). Faye Wray and Robert Armstrong stuck around and filmed another film on the King Kong set while postproduction was building a gorilla and some dinosaurs. It’s short and tense and there is no mistaking the vill...

Show Notes It's time to make our own list of the thrilling movies that the AFI overlooked. We have films from the US, Hong Kong, Japan, and France - and that's just the first half. This week, we discuss the beginning of our list - those films that overlap the time period that the AFI covered, the first one hundred years of film from 1900 to 2000. Here we offer a brief introduction to those twenty-...

Show Notes Free Palestine   We’ve reached the top, the pinnacle, the film that the AFI has lionized as the MOST THRILLING FILM of all time – from 1960, Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Etched deep in the public consciousness and the cultural zeitgeist, no one over 30 doesn’t know the twist reveal, but watching Gen Z reactions, they still get pulled into the story and are shocked by the places that Hitch...

Show Notes Free Palestine   This week, we watched the first summer blockbuster: Jaws from 1975. Early Spielberg, unfortunate practical effects, and some excellent performances all lead to a thrill ride that won silver in the AFI thrills list. A conscientious police chief who loves his family teams up with a rich, egghead thrillseeker and a salty dog out for revenge and hijinks ensue. It’s a remark...

Show Notes Free Palestine   Lemuel has been dreading this week since the beginning of our countdown and we are finally here - #3 on the list, 1973’s The Exorcist. And he liked it! Kinda… We discuss the need or lack thereof for old age makeup, who the title is referring to, how Karen’s have existed forever, and what’s the point of the prologue? We have a good time with a bad time this week.   Recom...

Show Notes Free Palestine This week Amity gets frustrated with the self-inflicted trials that Cary Grant goes through in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. Never has someone tried so hard to get themselves in trouble and never has someone had so little care for their own life without being actively seeking death. We have an excellent villain and a compelling leading lady and some very cool – a...

Show Notes Free Palestine   We watched one of our collective favorite movies this week with Jonathan Demme’s Silence of the Lambs. There’s new things to notice, even when you’ve seen it a dozen times. Parallels between statues and body positioning? Check. Book titles specific to the moment? Check. Lecter never blinking, except when deliberate? Check. Starling’s conscious covering of her freckles i...

Show Notes Free Palestine   Once again, a group of people in space don’t follow a quarantine procedure and all hell breaks loose in Ridley Scott’s Alien.  A smart woman not listened to – the beginning of so many horror stories. Does the cat live? Does anyone else? Why is there so much imagery that looks like sexual organs? And why is everything wet? Listen up as we talk about this creepy trailblaz...

Show Notes Free Palestine   It’s a trip to the coast this week as we watch Rod Taylor and Tippi Hedrin fight our fine feathered friends in Hitchcock’s classic: The Birds. Since there is more character development than actual bird attacks, we get to really care if these people get their eyed pecked out of their skulls. Do the effects still hold up? Kinda. Is this one of the best child performances...

Show Notes Free Palestine   Get ready for some terrible policing this week as we discuss 1971’s The French Connection, directed by William Friedkin and starring a sweaty Gene Hackman whose character definitely smelled like gin in every frame of this film. These cops may not be dirty but they aren’t clean. We visit a time when cops weren’t assigned cases but rather made them up as they went, and wh...