
Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) May 10th, 2020
Steamboat Bill Jr. is probably the first Buster Keaton film I’ve seen and I regret to say I saw it for the first time just a few days ago on … Continue Reading Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) May 10th, 2020
Socially Distant, self isolated and sheltered in place.
Steamboat Bill Jr. is probably the first Buster Keaton film I’ve seen and I regret to say I saw it for the first time just a few days ago on … Continue Reading Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928) May 10th, 2020
Pillow of Death closes out the Inner Sanctum Mystery series with maybe the best movie title ever. Don’t get me wrong, Frozen Ghost and Weird Woman are phenomenal titles that … Continue Reading Pillow of Death (1945) May 10th, 2020
Strange Confession is an odd addition to the Inner Sanctum Mystery series. It’s missing the melodramatic intrigue and whodunit plot typical of the previous films. No, Strange Confession‘s story is … Continue Reading Strange Confession (1945) May 9th, 2020
House of Dracula follows House of Frankenstein in the Universal Monsters franchise and like most serials I expected a modicum of continuity. Unfortunately that’s the exact amount of continuity in … Continue Reading House of Dracula (1945) May 8th, 2020
My nascent appreciation for Charles Laughton burgeoned earlier this year when I first experienced his acting in The Old Dark House. It is a fantastic movie reuniting James Whale and … Continue Reading Captain Kidd (1945) May 4th, 2020
The Frozen Ghost sucked, and much to our chagrin, the next movie on the list is another Inner Sanctum Mystery. That’s too masochistic, even for me. So I told my … Continue Reading Phantasm (1979) May 2nd, 2020
The Frozen Ghost is another in the Inner Sanctum Mysteries series starring Lon Chaney Jr. This was not an easy film for me to follow. It’s a shame that The … Continue Reading The Frozen Ghost (1944) May 2nd, 2020
A couple of years ago my wife and I began watching the Universal Monsters series because we realized we’d never seen any of them. Not wanting to miss out on … Continue Reading The Mummy’s Curse (1944) April 27th, 2020
70 years before The Avengers regularly broke box-office records for The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Universal Studios had its own cultural juggernaut with the Universal Monsters. Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff … Continue Reading House of Frankenstein (1944) April 26th, 2020
Coming off the heels of Shadow of a Doubt, Alfred Hitchcock outdoes himself with Lifeboat, the quintessential bottle episode. That’s a TV term and I don’t know of a film … Continue Reading Lifeboat (1944) April 19th, 2020
Originally a radio show, the Inner Sanctum Mysteries jumped to the film medium like a Tales from the Crypt precursor with 6 films starring Lon Chaney Jr. We chose to … Continue Reading Calling Dr. Death (1943) April 19th, 2020
As I write this we’re in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic. Despite calling this blog ‘The Quarantined Critic’ it’s a subject I’ve neglected because it doesn’t often come up … Continue Reading Things to Come (1936) April 15th, 2020
The Criterion Collection began publishing Blu-Ray discs between 2008 and 2009. Some of those earliest discs owe their sky-high secondary market price to Criterion’s commitment to film restoration and including … Continue Reading The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) April 4th, 2020
I don’t know what to say about Bottle Rocket. I want to avoid talking about how it’s Wes Anderson’s 24 year old feature film debut. I’d prefer to dodge discussing … Continue Reading Bottle Rocket (1996) April 3rd, 2020
If… is the first film in a trilogy starring Malcom McDowell as Mick Travis. All three films are available on the Criterion Channel until the end of April when they, … Continue Reading If…. (1968) April 1st, 2020
The last day of the month means the last chance to watch a movie leaving the Criterion Channel. All I knew going in was someone on r/criterion called the ending … Continue Reading The Day of the Locust (1975) March 31st, 2020