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.

psycho mrs. morales

Breakdown (Jonathan Mostow, 1997)

The word Hitchcockian gets thrown around more often these days than his films most likely get seen. So, every time I see that word come up in a review I don't attach too much importance to it, and as I watch the film I try to see if there really is any connection to the films of Hitchcock. So as I watched the supposedly Hitchcockian thriller Breakdown, I kept this in mind. While I'm not a fan of the word or its overuse, there was one scene in Breakdown that clearly brought to mind Hitchcock, particularly Strangers on a Train. Both films have extremely tense endings; where the tension comes from the cinematic ability to extend time and events. How long before the Carousel tears into pieces? How long before the 18-wheeler falls to oblivion? Both of these events are rendered longer and more suspenseful by adding the sense that at any moment the place where the good guy is fighting the bad guy is going to be destroyed and the actual fight does not matter because everyone will be dead.

The fight:

The tension:

(the old man is the only who can save the carousel from spiraling out of control)

(this small piece of metal is the only thing keeping the 18-wheeler from falling from a bridge)