Tag: Barbara Steele

David Cronenberg’s SHIVERS Arrives on Blu-ray and Digital September 15th

Legendary horror director David Cronenberg gifts Lionsgate this new edition to the Vestron Collector’s series, Shivers arrives on Blu-ray and Digital September 15th from Lionsgate

The Vestron Video Collector’s Series returns when legendary director David Cronenberg’s (The Fly, Scanners) horror classic Shivers arrives on Blu-ray™ and Digital September 15 from Lionsgate. Vestron Video has been a leader in remastering the most unique and wide-ranging selection of classic films. A timeless take on sexual horror produced by Ivan Reitman (Ghostbusters), the film stars Paul Hampton, Joe Silver, and Lynn Lowry. With five new special features including an all-new audio commentary with David Cronenberg, Shivers will be available on Blu-ray for the suggested retail price of $17.99.


A cult favorite, Shivers is acclaimed filmmaker David Cronenberg’s feature-length debut and new to the Vestron Collector’s Series. When the residents of a luxury apartment complex outside Montreal are infiltrated by parasites and transformed into violent, sex-crazed maniacs, it’s up to  Dr. Roger St. Luc to contain the outbreak from spreading to the city at large in a film that “scares and shocks us because it’s so cleverly made” (Roger Ebert).


 BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES

  • *NEW* Audio Commentary with Writer-Director David Cronenberg and Co-Producer Don Carmody
  • *NEW* “Mind Over Matter” – An Interview with Writer-Director David Cronenberg  
  • *NEW* “Good Night Nurse” – An Interview with Actress Lynn Lowry 
  • *NEW* “Outside and Within” – An Interview with Special Make-Up Effects Creator Joe Blasco
  • *NEW* “Celebrating Cinépix” – An Interview with Greg Dunning
  • Archival 1998 David Cronenberg Interview
  • Still Gallery with Optional Archival Audio Interview with Executive Producer John Dunning
  • Theatrical Trailers
  • TV Spot
  • Radio Spots

 
CAST
Paul Hampton                         TV’s “Babylon 5,” Heartbreak Ridge, For a Few Lousy Dollars
Joe Silver                                TV’s “Coronet Blue,” Rabid, Deathtrap
Lynn Lowry                             The Crazies, Model Hunger, A Grim Becoming
And Barbara Steele                TV’s “Dark Shadows,” Black Sunday, Pit and the Pendulum

Watch THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM With Vincent Price’s Daughter Victoria and the Movie Geeks June 30th in St. Louis


ESC Tours Presents a screening of THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM with Victoria Price, the daughter of the film’s star Vincent Price and the author of Vincent Price, a Daughter’s Biography. Co-hosting the event with Victoria will be Tom Stockman, editor of We Are Movie Geeks and director of Vincentennial, the Vincent Price 100th Birthday Celebration. The event takes place Saturday June 30th at 7pm. Seating is limited so get your tickets soon. Tickets can be purchased HERE. A yummy variety of food from Schlafly’s kitchen is available as are plenty of pints of their famous home-brewed suds.


Join Tom Stockman of We Are Movie Geeks and Vincent Price’s daughter Victoria Price for a fun movie night at Schlafly’s Tap Room. Tom and Victoria will present The Pit and The Pendulum(and other movie surprises) along with fun conversation about the life and film career of St Louis native Vincent Price.

Victoria Price is an author and inspirational speaker. As the author of Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography, Victoria is an entertaining lecturer who appears and speaks at horror conventions and film festivals around the world.We Are Movie Geeks’ Tom Stockman is an expert on the life and career of Vincent Price. As the force behind the world famous St Louis Vincentennial in 2011, Tom knows as much as anybody about the Master of Menace, Vincent Price.


This promises to be a unique and fun movie event!


Not much of Edgar Allen Poe’s short story which shares its title is on screen besides the eponymous torture device, but thanks to a deft screenplay by Richard Matheson, a pitch-perfect performance by Vincent Price, sure handed direction by Roger Corman, and the inspired casting of Barbara Steele, THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM is an epic helping of gothic grand guignol that deserves its place on the top of this list. Vincent Price’s Don Medina is a much more lively than his Roderick Usher form the previous year. Price was often accused of overacting, but his frantic scenery-chewing was the correct style for this material. The casting of the otherworldly Barbara Steele shows that American International was properly impressed with her horror debut in the previous year’s BLACK SUNDAY (as they should have been), the Italian film they distributed and this was her stateside debut. Steele is something to behold in THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM, slinking and smirking like a deranged cat around the torture chamber, driving Price and the audience to delirium. Steele wasn’t long for Hollywood though. She fled the set of an Elvis film the next year and returned to Europe where she starred in a string of unparalleled gothic horrors. Corman’s camera stays in time to the berserk performances of his two horror stars, as he experiments with odd lens techniques and hallucinatory framing and you’d never guess that THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM was shot on for only $200,000 as it is consistently dazzling to look at with spooky color camerawork by Floyd Crosby and imposing art design by Daniel Haller. Stock footage of the climactic torture sequence would later find its way into the 1966 spy spoof DR. GOLDFOOT AND THE BIKINI MACHINE, which also starred Vincent Price as well as GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (also 1966). THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM is a fantastic and fascinating viewing experience that just keeps getting better with age.

CAGED HEAT Kicks off ‘A Tribute to Jonathan Demme’ June 9th at Webster University


“Even for criminals you’re just a particularly poor reflection on womanhood.”

CAGED HEAT screens Friday, June 9th at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium (470 East Lockwood). This is the first film in their ‘Tribute to Jonathan Demme’ The movie starts at 8:00pm.


Who doesn’t love a good Women’s prison film? – CHAINED HEAT, HELLHOLE, ILSA SHE WOLF OF THE SS, THE BIG BIRD CAGE, THE BIG DOLL HOUSE, REFORM SCHOOL GIRLS, and THE CONCRETE JUNGLE all sit proudly on my WIP (Women in Prison) DVD shelf. One of the very best of this beloved subgenre is CAGED HEAT (1974), a wonderful exploitation masterpiece and the directing debut of Oscar-winner Jonathan Demme, that has everything you could possibly hope for in a Women-In-Prison movie: nudity, shower catfights, lesbian coupling, race wars, murder, chain-swinging, switch-blade slashing, and shock therapy!


CHAINED HEAT stars Erica Gavin (of Russ Meyer’s VIXEN fame) as Jackie, an accomplice in a drug related crime, who enters the ‘D-Cup’ wing of a tough women’s prison run by a hateful, wheelchair-bound lesbian warden played by none other than my favorite actress of all time (after Pam Grier of course)…Barbara Steele! Jackie’s cell mate Lavelle (Cheryl Rainbeuax Smith – another tragic ‘70s Drive-In fave who deserves her own tribute) suffers from suicidal nightmares while another prisoner, Pandora (Ella Reid), is reprimanded for entertaining her fellow inmates with a mildly lewd vaudeville act and placed in solitary confinement. Her loyal friend Belle (Roberta Collins) begins sneaking through the ventilation ducts to bring her food from the kitchen until she’s caught when she surprises an elderly staff member who abruptly dies of a heart attack. Meanwhile, the prison bully Maggie (Juanita Brown) picks a fight with Jackie and gets them both in hot water. Though the warden is a bit stern, the real threat turns out to be the demented prison doctor (Warren Miller). He subjects Jackie and Maggie to illegal electric shock therapy and prescribes a more permanent `cure’ for Belle: corrective brain surgery, which he intends to perform with a Black and Decker power drill!!!


Jonathan Demme’s script provides believable characters and several imaginative dream sequences, and his direction is filled with impressive camera angles and novel wipes and dissolves. He even commissioned an appropriately down and dirty soundtrack from blues legend John Cale. Because of these frequent artistic flourishes, CAGED HEAT is one of the few WIP movies to win the respect of critics. Demme of course went on to even bigger (but not necessarily better) things, becoming one of the most successful directors of his generation, winning the Best Director Academy Award in 1991 for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, but in my book CAGED HEAT is still his greatest achievement!

Admission is:

$6 for the general public
$5 for seniors, Webster alumni and students from other schools
$4 for Webster University staff and faculty

Free for Webster students with proper I.D.

Here’s the line-up for the other films that will be part of the ‘Tribute to Jonathan Demme’:

6/10 – Crazy Mama  (1975)
6/16 – Melvin and Howard (1980)
6/17 – Stop Making Sense (1984)
6/23 – Something Wild (1986)
6/24 – Married to the Mob (1988)
6/30 – The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
7/1 –  Philadelphia (1993)

Look for continued coverage of these films here at We Are Movie Geeks

Advance tickets are available from the cashier before each screening or contact the Film Series office (314-246-7525) for more options. The Film Series can only accept cash or check.

The Webster University Film Series site can be found HERE

http://www.webster.edu/film-series/

 

24th Annual ST. LOUIS INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL Nov. 13-23 – The Schedule Has Been Announced!

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Oscar bait performances by Reese Witherspoon, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Timothy Spall, a Tenacious Eats “Movies for Foodies” event, and a tribute to the St. Louis-born silent film star King Baggot are some of the many highlights of this year’s St. Louis International Film Festival. Cinema St. Louis announced the 2014 line-up today and it’s the usual hi-quality mix of independent films, foreign films, locally-made films, end-of-year studio awards product, and retro programming.

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The 23rd Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival (SLIFF) will be held Nov. 13-23. SLIFF will screen 389 films: 89 narrative features, 76 documentary features, and 224 shorts. This year’s festival has 239 screenings/programs, with 69 countries represented. The fest will host more than 125 filmmakers and related guests, including honorees Doug Pray (Contemporary Cinema Award), Katie Mustard (Women in Film Award), and Timothy J. Sexton (Charles Guggenheim Cinema St. Louis Award).

makings of you

The festival will open on Thursday, Nov. 13, with the premiere of THE MAKINGS OF YOU, a St. Louis- set and -shot drama by Matt Amato. Amato, an award-winning director of music videos and commercials, returned to his hometown of St. Louis to shoot his feature debut. The film stars Jay R. Ferguson (of “Mad Men”) and Sheryl Lee and Grace Zabriskie (both of “Twin Peaks”).

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Here are just some of the many, many highlights of the 23rd Annual Whitaker St. Louis International Film Festival:

  • Jonathan Demme’s 1974 Women’s prison opus CAGED HEAT – Barbara Steele, Erica Gavin, Rainbeaux Smith, Roberta Collins !?! – I’m so there!
  •  A Tenacious Eats ‘Movie for Foodies’ event featuring a gourmet meal prepared around a screening of the 1964 Beatles movie A HARD DAYS NIGHT
  • The King Baggot Tribute – Honoring the St. Louis-born silent screen legend with a 35mm print of the 1913 version of IVANHOE and hosted by We Are Movie Geeks own Tom  Stockman
  • Oscar Bait! Oscar Bait! Oscar Bait! – Reese Witherspoon in THE WILD, Timothy Spall in Mike Leigh’s acclaimed MR. TURNER and Benedict Cumberbatch in THE IMITATION GAME
  • The world premiere of Pirate Pictures new feature FOUR COLOR EULOGY directed by Wyatt Weed of SHADOWLAND fame
  • An appearance by cult actress Grace Zabriskie, best known for her role as Sarah Palmer in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks
  • Documentaries Galore! – from Cheerleaders to William S. Burroughs – if there’s a great documentary produced this year, chances are it’s showing at SLIFF
  • A pair of ‘Master Classes’ – one on interviewing techniques by Documentarian Doug Pray and another on ‘Women in Film ‘ by Documentarian Mary Dore who will screen her new film SHE’S BEAUTIFUL WHEN SHE’S ANGRY
  • A tribute to the Nicholas Brothers, two of the greatest dancers of the 20th century to be presented by Bruce Goldstein, director of repertory programming at New York’s Film Forum, a friend of the brothers and writer and co-producer of a 1991 documentary on the team.
  • A screening of MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS, which takes place at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis at the St. Louis Art Museum which was built for the 1904 World’s Fair! How cool is that!?!
  • BOB REUTER’S LAST TAPE with a Concert by Bob Reuter’s Alley Ghost – an intimate portrait of the late Bob Reuter, an iconic local musician.

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And of course there’s more, more, much more! The St. Louis International Film Festival is always an incredibly well-run and well-attended fest. There will be much more coverage of it here at We Are Movie Geeks so stay tuned!

In the meantime, visit Cinema St. Louis site where the entire schedule is posted and start marking your calendars

http://www.cinemastlouis.org/about-festival