Comedy and horror inevitably overlap in films where funnymen find themselves in haunted houses occupied with a surplus number of ghouls, mad scientists and ectoplasmic mayhem. The Bowery Boys had already run amok in such creepy settings during the 1940s with “Spooks Run Wild” and “Ghosts on the Loose,” back when they were under the East Side Kids banner. But this 1954 offering takes the old haunted house comedy into a wild, almost Dadaist environment.
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One of the most profoundly influential television shows – at least, in my life – was “International Animation Festival,” a PBS presentation that aired during the mid-1970s. Hosted by Jean Marsh of “Upstairs Downstairs” fame, this weekly half-hour series was the rare program that offered a glimpse into the animation universe existing beyond the realm of the standard Saturday morning shenanigans or the old Disney and Warner Bros. shorts that dominated television.
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Beginning in the 1910s, the American Red Cross offered a high volume of fundraising films that highlighted its work. These films were mostly seen in nontheatrical settings – churches, schools, social clubs – and they offered a straightforward presentation of Red Cross workers helping those in physical and economic distress.
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It is never a good idea to approach a film with preconceived notions of its awfulness. That is not easy when the film in question of the 1977 “A Little Night Music,” which has a reputation for being something of a mess.
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During the 1950s, the comedy team of Tommy Noonan and Peter Marshall enjoyed a very mild degree of success on the nightclub circuit and in television appearances. They turned up briefly in the 1951 revue film “Starlift,” but A-list stardom eluded them and the pair spent much of the decade working separately.
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The other day, a woman in a Facebook movies forum asked if she should see Mel Brooks’ “Blazing Saddles.” I encouraged her to see it, even though I am not a fan of the film.
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“Big Timers” is a cheaply-made featurette of the “race films” genre that created productions with all-Black casts that were released exclusively to the racially segregated theaters of the Jim Crow era.
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