31 July 2015

Blood and Lace (Philip Gilbert, 1971)

Opening with a beautiful homage to Psycho via a dream sequence that marries Eisenstein (the past) and Halloween (the future). Everything else that follows seems to come from a different universe. If Mr. Gilbert would've ever made another film maybe that universe could have expanded but he didn't so it's all contained here. A blonde (Melody Patterson) finds herself as an underage orphan after her prostitute mother is brutally murdered. This propels a series of events that could constitute the plot of ten different films. Throw in Gloria Grahame in her What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? role. An ending worthy of Oldboy and Sleepaway Camp that has a time traveling cameo by a fat Freddy Kreuger. A film that subconsciously entered cinema history through it's influence, even if it went widely unseen (until recently at least).













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Director of Photography: Paul Hipp

Presented by William Lustig on 35mm as a kick-off of the essential American International Pictures on-going series at Anthology Film Archives.

30 July 2015

extraño accidente







































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Que Dios me perdone / May God Forgive Me, 1948
dir. Tito Davison
dp. Alex Phillips

Seen at MoMA, part of "Mexico at Midnight: Film Noir from Mexican Cinema's Golden Age"