Silver Screen Fiend: Learning About Life From An Addiction To Film

A pair of kidnappings expose the complex power dynamics within the corrupt and unpredictable workings of 1930s Kansas City.

1967 film by Arthur Penn

1973 American crime film directed by Terrence Malick

1977 film by Dario Argento

1961 film by Mario Bava

An aborted mission strands a crew on Venus where they find the planet inhabited only by women led by their evil Queen Yllana. Yllana had all the men of Venus killed, now that's she met Earth men, she wants them dead, too.

1996 film directed by John Frankenheimer

Adventurer/surgeon/rock musician Buckaroo Banzai and his band of men, the Hong Kong Cavaliers, take on evil alien invaders from the 8th dimension.

1975 film directed by L. Q. Jones

In the year 2022, overcrowding, pollution, and resource depletion have reduced society’s leaders to finding food for the teeming masses. The answer is Soylent Green.

Due to an experimental vaccine, Dr. Robert Neville is the only human survivor of an apocalyptic war waged with biological weapons. Besides him, only a few hundred deformed, nocturnal people remain - sensitive to light, and homicidally psychotic.

A down on his luck gambler (George Seagal) links up with free spirit Elliot Gould at first to have some fun on, but then gets into debt when Gould takes an unscheduled trip to Tijuana. As a final act of desperation, he pawns most of his possessions and goes to Reno for the poker game of a lifetime. A film set mainly in casinos and races, as the two win and lose (but mainly win), get robbed, and get blind drunk.

Jeff Bailey seems to be a mundane gas station owner in remote Bridgeport, California. He is dating local girl Ann Miller and lives a quiet life. But Jeff has a secret past, and when a mysterious stranger arrives in town, Jeff is forced to return to the dark world he had tried to escape.

Jack O'Connell produced and directed this patchwork portrait of the hippie scene in 1967. The best parts are the rock band live performance sequences, although some of these clips were staged to appear as though they were filmed at ballroom dance concerts. Which is similar to what other films and TV shows at the time tended to do, rather than film an regularly scheduled club or ballroom dance concert with all the craziness of a real gig in full swing. PETULIA (1967) for example featured Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Co. performing at the unlikely venue of The Fairmont Hotel. PETULIA also captured The Grateful Dead playing on the dance floor - not even on a stage -in a very small club setting. REVOLUTION (later reedited and retitled THE HIPPIE REVOLUTION, briefly released theatrically in 1996) had a soundtrack album of studio takes that doesn't include all of or match versions of songs played live in the movie: Quicksilver Messenger Service are hard to make out in the dark, but perform a rousing "Codine" before the band is abruptly cut away from half way through the number; the all-girl band Ace of Cups perform "The Grass Is Greener" live in the park - sounding about as garage as any SF hippie rockumentary ever get; Dan Hicks of The Charlatans does an acoustic solo ditty called something like "He's Stoned" that's a nice rarity; and I'm not too wild about the footage of Country Joe & the Fish or the early Steve Miller Band but it is after all a hippie movie with Hare Krishnas and everything else that defined the wide-eyed idealism of the age.

Stroud, a crime magazine's crusading editor has to post-pone a vacation with his wife, again, when a glamorous blonde is murdered and he is assigned by his publishing boss Janoth to find the killer. As the investigation proceeds to its conclusion, Stroud must try to disrupt his ordinarily brilliant investigative team as they increasingly build evidence (albeit wrong) that he is the killer.

A police detective falls for the bank robber's girlfriend he is supposed to be tailing.

Alain Moreau's investigation into the death of his identical twin brother leads him from the beauty of the south of France to the mean streets of New York City and into the arms of his brother's beautiful girlfriend. Pursued by ruthless Russian mobsters and renegade FBI agents, the duo race against time to solve his brother's murder and expose an international conspiracy.

1942 film by Preston Sturges

Marty, a butcher who lives in the Bronx with his mother is unmarried at 34. Good-natured but socially awkward he faces constant badgering from family and friends to get married but has reluctantly resigned himself to bachelorhood. Marty meets Clara, an unattractive school teacher, realising their emotional connection, he promises to call but family and friends try to convince him not to.

Bud Baxter is a minor clerk in a huge New York insurance company, until he discovers a quick way to climb the corporate ladder. He lends out his apartment to the executives as a place to take their mistresses. Although he often has to deal with the aftermath of their visits, one night he's left with a major problem to solve.