Thursday, December 27, 2007

Free & Easy

Check out the free movie downloads from "Pubic Domain Torrents":

The cult classic A Boy and His Dog (from Harlan Ellison's novella) is there.

Along with some Buster Keaton! (There's also a bunch of Charlie Chaplin! And the much maligned Fatty Arbuckle!)

Dario Argento's brooding horror classic Deep Red.

Here's a dull little Psycho rip-off that was advertised as being TOO SHOCKING to be rated by the MPAA: Funeral Home. It's straight PG.

If you're Ed Wood, how do you follow up your autobiographical classic, Glen or Glenda? With a little Jail Bait!

I used to tell people about this movie and they accused me of being a liar: Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter.

Though Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck's movie Dead People was butchered, it still contains some of the most persistently spooky imagery in the horror canon. I've always felt that the Jennifer Lopez flick The Cell was influenced by this.

The best version of Dracula.

Thornton Wilder's Our Town with William Holden.

Frank Sinatra in Suddenly.

Lots of MST3K fodder, cartoons, serials, early Hitch and Roger Corman (including the classics Bucket of Blood and Little Shop of Horrors)!

(via Retromedia Forum)

14 comments:

  1. I see you mention one of my favorites in Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. But bar none the absolutely best horror/western is of course: Johnny Guitar. It stars an actual real life monster. It's enough to give you the willies!

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  2. You mean...Joan Crawford?

    I love that movie. I saw a western series which started with '30s stuff went through Shane and ended with The Wild Bunch.

    Johnny Guitar was one of the best of the bunch.

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  3. Nicholas Ray my man, one of the best directors who ever tried to put a homosexual subtext in a macho genre. The only westerns that are funnier are the ones where Sal Mineo is an Indian. And of course the John Ford Westerns where the Navajos are playing Apaches in Monument valley and are cursing up a storm while supposedly talking "Apache." Watch it with someone who understands the language and you will laugh your balls off.

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  4. Plus Johnny Guitar had Satan in it. Can you guess who it is? A little trivia for the movie maven.

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  5. One of my college profs (the late, lamented David Raksin) scored Nicholas Ray's Bigger Than Life. There's a scene where James Mason walks upstairs to kill his family, and Ray wanted a march--like something Sousa-ish. Mr. Raksin had to dissuade him.

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  6. Trooper,

    No, I'm stumped on the Satan thing. I know Mercedes McCambridge played Mother Teresa at one point. Doesn't Hitchens think she was Satan?

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  7. Close, but she was also the voice of Satan in the Exorcist. You can look it up. She even got a credit.

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  8. Dwah!

    I think I knew that, too.

    Technically, though, she's not Satan, she's Pazuzu. (Yeah, yeah, I know. But we can't just IGNORE Exorcist II: The Heretic can we?)

    Pazuzu, you ungrateful gargoyle! I put you through college, and this is how you repay me?

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  9. She almost didn't get the part. Billy Friedkin wanted to use his mother-in-law because he claimed she was the closest thing to Satan on this earth, but the studio wouldn't go for it. Mercedes was one wild bitch though. Read the latest John Wayne bio by Randy Roberts to find some tasty tibets about her as well as Geraldine Page who was a dirty little tart.

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  10. That's tidbits by the way. Richard Gere is the guy who gets tasty little tibets, but that's a subject for a different post.

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  11. Hmmm. Trooper, your satire blends so seamlessly into everything else you say it's hard to figure out when you're joking sometimes.

    I'll check out that Randy Roberts book, tho'. I'm going to be expecting some salacious details about Mercedes, mind you.

    You know who was a tiger in the sack? Margaret Hamilton! By the time she'd worked her way through the cast of Wizard of Oz, Buddy Ebsen had to step down from his role as the Tin Man, and the studio had to make up a cover story about makeup allergies.

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  12. Dude trust me, Geraldine Page, the Titus of the Hondo set. Which had several notable swordsman including the Duke, James Arness, and Ward Bond. Read the bios of Wayne, John Ford and Harey Carey Jr. if you want a window into what Hollywood was all about back in the day. Not so different as today. Mercedes was on the set of the Conquerer which was in Nevada when they had atomic tests. About 100 people on that set died of cancer. Check it out it is unreal.
    Your posts are great and you should get a lot more play, we need to get your more pub dude. Lets work on that.

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  13. Oh, yeah, I remember when John Wayne died and they ran these stories "Did America Kill John Wayne?"

    The Straight Dope.

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  14. And thanks for the support. I need to do more cross-linking if I want more readers, I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

    Still gettin' mah feet wet.

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Grab an umbrella. Unleash hell. Your mileage may vary. Results not typical. If swelling continues past four hours, consult a physician.