Movies 'Til Dawn Blog

THE EXORCIST OF FIGHT SCENES

In 1980 (or thereabouts) I saw William Peter Blatty’s ‘The Ninth Configuration’ on the Z Channel, LA’s now legendary first run cable channel which featured lousy prints of new-ish movies. I was perhaps fifteen at the time and was so perplexed and mesmerized by this one-of-a-kind film that I promptly

Read More »

BARS ARE FOR FIGHTS: ‘TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE’

If you’re going to get into a fight, why not combine it with some drinking? It will certainly make the idea of fighting seem more rational than if you were sober. Which brings us to ‘fight week’. On Monday we watched a fight in a diner (which more than likely

Read More »

‘SHANE’–THE BAR FIGHT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4X24dPPg-8https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U_jzOepc8o Yesterday we watched the excellent fight scene from “Bad Day At Black Rock” in which an aging, one-armed Spencer Tracy kicks martial arts ass. Today we’ll watch what I consider to be the Grandaddy of all fight scenes, George Stevens virtuoso bar fight from ‘Shane’. I first saw ‘Shane’

Read More »

BIG FIGHT AT BLACK ROCK

Much as I deplore seeing people physically fighting in real life–it’s always such a jarring and disgusting sight–I LOVE a good fight scene in a movie. Let’s watch a few this week. First up is this fabulous sequence from ‘Bad Day At Black Rock’ in which Spencer Tracy (who has

Read More »

WEEKEND STOOGEFEST

‘Three Little Twirps’ (1943) is the 71st short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Monday, August 3rd through Friday, August 7th, 1942 and was released on Friday, July 9th, 1943 (the 190th day of the Gregorian calendar). It marks the second and final

Read More »

BENNY HILL MEETS…SONNY AND CHER?

As we began this week with a little Benny Hill from his early, black and white BBC program, let’s end the week with another dose of Benny. (This is a practice known as ‘bookending’. Didn’t know that, did you?) Here is a parody of the then new phenomenon known as

Read More »

HARLEM, 1930s

Here is a British Pathe newsreel excursion to the exotic (to the British anyway) New York City neighborhood called Harlem. I leave it to you to have your own reaction to this footage–it seems to evoke strong responses from YouTube commenters many of whom are conflicted about how beautiful everything

Read More »

FANNY BRICE ON A ROOF IN 1929

At the University of South Carolina there is a collection of Fox Movietone Newsreels. It contains seven million feet of nitrate motion picture film and four million feet of safety motion picture film documenting the national and global politics and culture from 1919 through 1934 and from September 1942 through

Read More »

BENNY HILL + MICK JAGGER?

We never got to see any BBC 60’s Benny Hill when he hit the airwaves in America in ’77-’78, just the 70’s Thames. But we’re still blessed for it. The Thames Benny Hill wasn’t necessarily funny in any normal sense of the word but it was hilarious for being something

Read More »

WEEKEND STOOGEFEST

‘Matri-Phony’ (1942) is the 63rd short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed over a period of three weeks, beginning on Thursday, March 5th and ending on Wednesday, March 25th, 1942, and was released on Thursday, July 2nd of that year (the 183rd day on

Read More »

Subscribe for updates

And get a free copy of my book:
"City Island" & "Two Family House" Two Screenplays

Twitter

Twitter feed is not available at the moment.